Summer Cleaning

Image credit: Photo by canonsnapper on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

It's summer: the season of kids around 24/7 and of subsequent blog neglect.  It's also the season of summer visitors, passing through in cars bulging with luggage, fast food wrappers and warm, disheveled smiles.  While some people like to do spring cleaning to prepare for those visitors, I (a hopeless procrastinator) prefer to do summer cleaning.  And with the kids out of school, not only do I tend to need to do it anyway, but really, what better way to keep two bored kids occupied than by sorting old toys and rearranging furniture?  So, we have been slowly working our way through the house and ridding ourselves of clothes, furniture and toys that are outgrown or just unused.

Most things go to charity and a few hopeless odds and ends find their way to the trash, but those things that are too nice to throw away but a little too worn or, um, scribbled upon in permanent marker end up being freecycled.  Now, as a good sex addict codie, I know I really ought to do my freecycling through some other source than the website so bound up in addiction that it cannot be named, but I've found that nowhere else can I post any kind of crazy old junk -- from broken electronics to a nest for spiders that was once a stroller to a table with a dinosaur drawn on it in Sharpie -- and have ten people lined up to cart it all away in as many minutes.  I've tried alternatives, believe me, but they just don't work. Left to choose between feeling unscrupulous for actually using The Site That Shall Not Be Named and distressed for having to take perfectly usable items to the dump (and guilty for not having maintained every part of every item in my home in pristine condition, with its original packaging and instruction manual), I've chosen unscrupulous.

And it honestly does make me feel unscrupulous.  Seven years of hanging out with people who have used The Site That Shall Not Be Named for the worst of purposes and those who have been harmed by it have given me a nagging underlying feeling that everyone on the site is at best a liar and at worst a serial killer.  And when I use the site, I feel like I'm trying to get away with something too, although it doesn't start out that way.

I start by posting a perfectly accurate description and picture like: "Small bookshelf. Unfinished wood. 36"x 36" x18". Decorated in blue Sharpie with a 3-year-old's depiction of PacMan eating dots, several smiley faces and the words 'i lik dinasors.'" Five minutes later, I have ten messages in my inbox each begging me to please, please bestow upon her (or him) the honor of carting away my bookcase.  Some of the messages just say something like, "I want this if still available." And I find those only mildly suspicious. After all, maybe some of those are from some crazy person who just likes to screw with people who post things for free on The Site That Shall Not Be Named. They say they are going to come pick it up but -- psych! -- they never do.  Instead, they sit giggling at home at the thought of that item sitting on the curb one extra day before someone else gets it.

But other messages try to convince me that they are more worthy of my esteemed stuff than the other people who might want it. These messages usually read something like, "My granddaughter would love this for her birthday next week!" or "I've always wanted one of these, but can't afford it!" These messages leave me wondering things like "Do you really have a granddaughter at all?" or "Maybe you are actually the CEO of AT&T but have some weird mental disease that makes you pretend you are poor while you go around collecting other people's old stuff."

So, with nothing else to go on, I always offer the item to the first person in my inbox and tell them so, but I always feel vaguely as if I'm lying, because I suspect that the liars I'm writing to will think I am.

Last week, I offered an old tricycle to a man who called himself Joe and said he wanted it for his kids. (Read: he doesn't have kids and was going to trade it to his dealer for crack.) When the trike hadn't been picked up a day after he said he was on his way right over, I called the number he sent.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is this Joe?"

"Um..." His bewilderment pulsed through the telephone line.

Just great, I think. Joe is one of his aliases. Ignoring his confusion, I plunge on, "My name is Mary. You responded to an ad about a trike on The Site That Shall Not Be Named."

I can hear "Joe" struggling to recall this. "Oh, yeah!" he said at last, "Is that still available?"

"Yes, I was calling to see what happened and if you were still interested."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry.  My girlfriend just had a kidney transplant last week and she's not doing so well."

A kidney transplant? Seriously? "So, you've obviously had other things on your mind. Totally understandable," I lied.

"Yeah. But I still do want it. I'm heading over right now!" said Joe.

"Ok."

That was one week ago. I never saw Joe, who (I assume) after finishing the bottle of whiskey he was drinking, got distracted by a prostitute, lost his car in a poker game and (once again) forgot all about the fact that he promised his drug dealer a trike. Or who went to visit his girlfriend in the hospital instead and happened to find another trike that would be just perfect for his kids.  Either way, the trike went to "Anna," who wanted it for her "grandson."  Or at least that's the story I'm telling.  Since I post things on The Site That Shall Not Be Named, you really shouldn't believe a word I say.  After all, how likely is it that I actually have kids or am doing any summer cleaning if I've actually managed to write this blog post?