IT’S A SMALL WORLD, AFTER ALL

Kendrie -- Day 98 OT
Blaine -- who the heck knows, but he had his lip repaired today and said it hurt like hell.

Yes, it is indeed a small world. Or maybe it’s just that MY worlds are so small they occasionally bump into one another. That happened this week, in sort of a funny way. Not funny as in ha-ha, but funny as in coincidental, fluky, small-world-sort of way. Or could it be that my worlds are so BIG that they occasionally bump into one another? Like my thighs?

Wait. What was my point again?

Oh, yeah, small world stuff. I spent the weekend before last cleaning out my kids’ closets, getting ready to put away their winter clothes and drag out the summer stuff. I have to confess this makes me very happy, considering Kellen and Kendrie SHARE a closet the size of a coat closet in their bedroom, no lie, so having all those jeans and sweaters in there makes for pretty crowded quarters. Shorts and t-shirts are much more manageable. Regarding the cramped space, Blaine put in an extra bar, I’ve tried putting shoes on the top shelf ….. I’ve even considered calling in the Dream Closet people, but with only twelve square feet of space, I’m not sure they could accomplish much.

Wait. What was my point again?

Oh, yeah, closets. In going through their clothes, I began to separate the too-small outfits into three piles: good enough to sell on ebay, mediocre enough to donate to Goodwill, and so crappy not even the hurricane victims would want this stuff.

Several of the “good enough to sell on ebay” outfits were actually matching brother/sister/sister outfits that the kids have worn the past few years for church and Easter photos. On a side note, wish me luck that they don’t turn up their noses this year, thinking they are too “old and mature” for silly matching dresses --- especially considering I’ve already bought them for this year! I keep waiting for the day they refuse to humor my oh-you’re-so-cute-in-your-matching-clothes requests …. I’m not sure if the matching Easter outfits, or the matching PJ’s at Christmas will be the first to go, but I’m not ready to give up either just yet, let me tell you.

Wait. What was my point again?

Oh, yeah, ebay. I’m not any kind of power ebay seller, like my girlfriend Renee, who has dozens of items going online at any given time. I only sell two or three times a year, and I just sell clothes that don’t fit my kids any more, but are still in good shape. I don’t make hundreds of dollars …. Heck, sometimes I don’t even make enough to cover the ebay fees and postage and I wind up LOSING money, prompting me to wonder why didn’t I just take it to Goodwill to begin with??? But it’s fun to track the items and if I’m lucky, I make a little bit of money, at least enough to pay for the gas to drive the bags to the post office. I really should check into that postal delivery from home option.

So I called Renee this week, the Queen of All Things Ebay, and asked her opinion: “Hey, I’ve got several sets of matching outfits that the kids wore for Easter the past few years. I think it might bring more attention to the sale if I put a photo of the kids in their matching outfits up on the site …. What do you think? Is that a security issue? Pictures of my kids just floating around on the internet?? Am I risking their safety in the hopes of making a few measly dollars?” But, she reminded me that I’ve been putting their pictures up on this Caringbridge site for over two years now and have never given it a second thought, have gone public with the dates our family is gone on vacation, dates we’re going to be certain places ….. yeah, good point. So up the pictures went, notions of security by the wayside.

Two days later, I got an e-mail from ebay that someone had a question about one of my sale items. “Good!” I thought, “at least someone is checking out my stuff.” It’s depressing to put items up on ebay, pay the insertion fees, and have not one single person bid on it. Like the universe is sending me the message, “Hey, lady, we don’t want your crap.” So when someone sends a message, usually a question about an outfit, or combining shipping charges if they buy more than one thing, I take it as a good sign. At least someone is *considering* my crap.

I opened the message, only to have the text of the message read: “Oh my gosh! I follow your daughter’s story on Caringbridge!!”

Now, how funny is that? She must have recognized the photo of Brayden, Kellen and Kendrie that I had previously on this site, the same photo that I had just put up on ebay in an attempt to sell the clothes ….. that cracks me up. Maybe that’s a great way to increase my ebay sales …. Try to coax all of you CB readers to go to ebay and check out the sale items listed under kristieokc, my ebay name. You should go there just to see what Kendrie looked liked before diagnosis, when she really had hair. Or, I could end every ebay auction with a web link to this Caringbridge site, and try to bring two of my worlds even closer.

What’s even more interesting is that this is the second time something like that has happened. The first time I was selling a bunch of outfits with matching hats, purchased during Kendrie’s Bald Phase #1, and the lady who bought them told me how happy she was to have found them because she was trying to adopt a little girl with leukemia ….. so I wound up introducing her to my online support group. Again, I’m telling you, it’s a small world.

Anyway, I just found that pretty coincidental. It’s not like I have millions of people reading this site, or that there can possibly be millions of people scouring ebay for matching brother/sister Easter outfits. And yet one person managed to find me on both. Small world, don’t you think?

One more thing before I sign off ---- I hope you guys have been following Keegan’s site the past few weeks as he has begun his relapse protocol. He’s having a rough go of it lately with some ara-c fevers and unplanned ER visits and I’m sure he could use the support from all of you. And in extremely depressing news, an adorable little girl named Hunter on our list serve found out this week that she has also relapsed. What makes Hunter’s relapse even more insulting is that she just finished treatment in February, and had gone in this week to have her port removed, and to get one final “all-clear” spinal, only to have the spinal show leukemia cells in her CNS. Thankfully Hunter’s bone marrow was clear … small consolation for a child who finished two plus years of chemo, only to have to start all over again. Please take a moment to go to Hunter’s site and give her some words of encouragement as she faces this newest battle.