Day 50

Here is a copy of an email I sent last week to someone who had listed her garage sale on Craig’s List.

Hi, I actually live in your neighborhood and saw your ad with the American Girl Horse and the Breyer Horses and stable at your Garage Sale this Saturday.  Anyway, I would love to potentially buy these for my girls as gifts, however my husband is deployed so I will have them with me on Saturday. 

I hope I don’t sound like one of those crazy garage sale people*, the short story is that we are actually working on a year long project in which we don’t buy anything new for a year.  I blog about it at www.thesimpleyear.com, we started it when my husband deployed in April.

Anyway, I am searching for good used gifts for them for Birthdays and Christmas and your items sound like they would be good for my girls.  If you would consider possibly selling them to me early, I have a sitter on Friday morning and could run by when I don’t have them in tow. 

Kind Regards,

Kerry

*I should probably start with the fact that just hitting send on this email puts me in crackpot league and I know you are shaking your head at me right now.  But, the woman was remarkably nice about it (her husband was retired Air Force) and invited me to “come on over” as I have found is very typical of military families.  They are always very go-with-the-flow and incredibly supportive of “their own”, even when it comes to the somewhat daft military spouses. Even after 10+ years of marriage, I never ceased to be humbled by this crowd.

After buying a trunkful of well cared for toys (some still in the original packaging), I chatted with the “proprietor.” She said, “I read your blog.”  Then, she added with a bit of a smirk, “I’m not sure why you call it The Simple Year, it doesn’t seem that simple to me.”

OK, she may have a point.