Part One, the Prelude, is here.
After I listed the trains, inviting the good people of Craigslist to make me their best offer, I went on my merry way, if “my merry way” means dragged myself to the linen closet for purposes of reorganization and deep depression.
I had to take frequent breaks to check my email to see if Craigslist had responded to my Thomas siren song.
The good news was that I had about ten emails.
The bad news was that none of them said “I am coming over with a suitcase of cash right now. I’d like to pick up a cupcake for you on my way. What is your favorite flavor? Personaly, I love buttercream icing.”
Every email had some variation of “Is Thomas still available?” and I wrote back, “yes, are you interested?” which makes me think that I could probably lead a prostitution ring. Except it wouldn’t be successful because I never heard back from most of those people again. Apparently, they’d hoped that the trains were playing hard to get because they lost interest upon hearing that they were available. Those brief exchanges made me confident that internet dating was not for me.
But oh sweet Lord, the people who did write back.
One woman asked if I could inventory the trains. Seriously, if people think that I have nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon than sit there and make lists of Thomas trains, they’ve obviously been reading my blog and those are not the people that I want anywhere near my home. So I wrote back that perhaps she could tell me which trains she was interested in and I could check for her, but that was too personal a question and I never heard from her again.
Another woman asked for a photograph of all the trains. So I took a candid shot. I find it really tacky when people pose their trains just to make a sale. There’s got to be some integrity in these things. I emailed this photo and for some strange reason never heard from her again:
By the way, that upside down train on the bottom right that says “Murdoch’s Tender”? It means the Tender of Murdoch, lest you think that it’s graffitti about Murdoch and how tender it is.
Another woman wanted The Flying Scottsman. The Flying Scottsman? Which one is he? So I googled The Flying Scotsman and it was a retired train that sold on Amazon for over $500. Fucking hell. I always knew that buying Young Ladrinka those educational nuggets would pay off some day! Woohoo!
The only stumbling block seemed to be that I didn’t have it. Fuck.
By the time Husbandrinka came back home with the kids, the trains were strewn all over the living room floor and I was sitting on the sofa, surrounded by just-about-to-be-organized linen. It was the perfect storm– a day of haphazard housework, Craiglist people who refused to bend to my will and give me large amounts of cash for anonymous trains and the goose that laid the golden egg, The Flying Scottsman, nowhere to be found.
I was in pure pre-nervous breakdown by this point, and that’s when Husbandrinka looked lovingly at the trains and said, “how can you think of selling them? He’s played with them for years.” He may have also mentioned that our grandchildren will play with them one day. Which means that I will be living with these trains for the next twenty years.