For Sale
One preschooler. Strawberry-blonde hair; bright blue eyes; rosy cheeks; full, pouty lips; three feet tall. Answers to the name S, also known as Stinky, Sunshine, Sweetie, Love, Darling, Punkin Pie, Baby Girl. Personality traits include, but are not limited to, reserved, stubborn, hot-tempered, dramatic, sassy. Known for selective hearing, flamboyant tantrums, tornadic paths of destruction.
Price: Not looking to make much off her, only want to get my money back to basically break even. $3,500 for the birth; $600 for formula after she weaned herself at 6 months; $8,212 for meals since she's been on solids; $7,040 for daycare; $3,375 for medical expenses such as insurance premiums, dr. visit co-pays and medications; and about $2,000 for clothes and basic supplies. Rounded up to cover my eBay listing fee and time to write this ad, which comes to... $25,000.
Holy crap - do you realize what I could have done with an extra $25K over the last 3 1/2 years?? I could have gone on the trips to Australia and Europe that my single friends took. I could have bought a cool new car (not the minivan we got). I could have gotten a gym membership and hired a personal trainer and gotten back down to my ideal weight.
Not to mention the sleep I could have gotten. I'm estimating I've lost about 3,000 hours of sleep since she and her sister were born. Y-I-K-E-S. Which has resulted in my starting to drink coffee. Ooh! There's another $3,000 in Frappacinos/fancy coffees to keep me awake and functioning.
Man, I miss sleeping in. Of course, I love when she pads down the hall in the morning to my room and climbs into bed with me to snuggle for a few minutes before we get up. I guess those few minutes would counteract the hours of missing sleep from the night before. And she is funny, intelligent, imaginative, caring and thoughtful. I suppose I should deduct the value of her helping with the shopping, making dinner and tidying up the aforementioned areas of destruction. Plus, she's very selective when it comes to doling out hugs and kisses; those are priceless.
Ok, sorry - going to have to pull this post down. No matter how much she may drive me crazy, nothing is more valuable to me than her.
This is based on a prompt from The Red Dress Club. We want you to imagine you've just had a fight with a friend, a co-worker, husband, significant other, child - you get the picture. You're mad. It's time for revenge. What would you sell? Write a humorous listing for eBay or Craig's List. Talk about the history of the items, why they must go. Word limit is 600. I took a little bit of liberty with the directions on this. Constructive criticism is always welcome!
12 comments:
Ok, this was a super sweet post. I want to sell mine too sometimes.
I'll take her! Wait, I don't have the money....but yeah, you want to keep her anyway.
Love this!
you're right... she's sounds like a keeper! felt like that many time myself though.
so true, how much could i have bought with the 25K over the years! and your last line does make me go AWWWWW... but we all have days like this. :)
For a second there, I thought you were describing my 4 year old if he was wearing a strawberry blond wig...
Excellent and well written. I love how you added up all the little pieces to the grand total - then the second thoughts crept in.
And the sweet ending.
Yes, they make us want to sell them or even give them away on really bad days - but those hugs get us every time...
Here from TRDC.
Sigh. Our only hope is they strike it rich some day thanks to our amazing parenting skills and they pay us back in cold hard cash. ;)
When you write it that way, it's scary to think of what they really do cost!
This makes me scared to do the math for my boys. You didn't add in the cost of all their toys and clothes! I mean, we could all be rich by now.. ;)
Very sweet post!
Oops! Nevermind; I see the clothes now. ;) But the toys, omg the TOYS! *dead*
I really like the way you ended this.
And, yikes! Kids are expensive!
There's a lot of days I want to sell my son.
It's scary to think how much kids cost. I have two - yikes!
Aww... very sweet. She sounds like a keeper!
But damn, these kids are pricey, huh?
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