"Project Pookie Launch" ~ Join Us For A Most Awesome Rummage Sale!

I’d like to tell you about my wonderful daughter, and ask everyone to stop by our “Online Rummage Sale” to help her achieve her dream.

Actually, first allow me to back up for a moment and say this: When I post here on my blog, typically I talk about the homeless and at-risk young people that are a part of my life. There are occasions, however, when I find it necessary to step back from all of that and focus on the needs of one of my own biological children. Now, for the first time, I feel the need to do that here online. One of my own needs a little help, and of course she is no less important that one of my “strays” (as I affectionately call them). This is not a negative situation I’m talking about, though. Quite the opposite! She has the opportunity of her lifetime in front of her, and I would like to help make it possible for her to grab it.

(If you’d like to skip the story I’m about to tell and just find out about our sale, go ahead and scroll your happy self on down to the last paragraph here.)

My daughter’s name is Kristen, but since she was about three days old, Kristen has been known as “Pookie” to those who love her. Many variations on this nickname frequently come into play: The Pookster, The Pookinator, and of course the simple “Pook”. Thus, we are calling this little half-baked idea of a rummage sale (yeah, I can admit that) – drum roll please – “Project Pookie Launch”.

Having been born into a family that loved and cared for her, Kristen has not experienced many of the disadvantages that my “strays” have dealt with, but that doesn’t mean she was born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, and it certainly doesn’t mean she hasn’t struggled. Her father jumped ship when she was just five and she hasn’t seen him since, so she has grown up in a single-parent home. She’s had health problems for most of her life; I won’t waste too much space on that here, but suffice it to say that she missed a lot of school. She worked hard to keep up, though, and proudly became the first person in her family to graduate high school in over 40 years (yes, that includes me, but my life is another story). This was no small feat, either. In 2007, her junior year of high school, she was hospitalized and we almost lost her. This happened in her second semester that year, and yet she bounced back and worked hard and maintained all her credits. She went on to her senior year and graduated from not just any high school, but a rigorous prep school (listed in Newsweek Magazine that year as one of the top 4% of schools in the country). Did her Momma proud.

Now, let’s back up once more, because this matters: When Kristen was three years old, she took her first trip to Disneyland. It was her reward – for lack of a better word – after she recovered from surgery. This wasn’t because of health problems; she’d been mauled by a pit bull when she was two and a half. See, I told you she’s had a rough time of it!

Anyway, of course she loved Disneyland. Every kid loves Disneyland! But Kristen took a special liking to it, and she’s been passionate about Disney her whole life since. Whenever she’s had an opportunity to get to California, she’s had to spend a day at Disneyland (I don’t even know now how many times she’s been there). All through her teens she continued to regularly watch her favorite Disney movies (The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, in particular), she was the only high school student I knew who still kept her Lion King action figures on display in her room, and for her high school graduation gift she just wanted to go to Disneyland (that wish was granted by her grandparents). My point is that this girl loves Disney!

Pookie is now entering her third year of college, and this is where we get to the fun part of the story. After a long process of applications and testing and interviews, she has been accepted into the Disney College Program, where she will spend a semester working in the Disneyland theme park and taking classes through Disney University. Yay! Once this semester-long internship is completed, she has high hopes that she will be offered the opportunity to stay on with Disney and follow a career path that they’ll help her plan (this is something they do with their successful interns). She wants this very badly – as you can imagine – and plans to put everything she’s got into achieving her goal of a career with Disney. As her mom, of course I want her to reach her dreams and I’ll do everything I can to support her. Everything and anything I can!

But… You knew there’d be a “but”, didn’t you? It’s going to be expensive to get her to Disney. I suppose the word “expensive” is relative, and there may be some of you reading this who’ve had experience with the Disney College Program and did not find it all that difficult to send your bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young student off to seek their dreams. For our family, though, it’s quite costly, and as the time for her to leave draws nearer, it’s really hitting home with us. We are realizing that, without a little boost, we simply don’t have the funds to get her there with all the things she needs. Never ones to give up without a fight, of course we came up with an idea to raise the needed money: We’ll have a rummage sale!

Now, having a little bit of sense in our collective heads around here, we realized that we couldn’t have a successful “normal” rummage sale because this is Phoenix, and it’s summer, and it is approximately 386 degrees outside. Well, I exaggerate, but only a little bit. Anyway, we discussed this, and a light bulb flashed on above my head (I suppose it could have been a heat-related hallucination, but I like to think it was a light bulb, like in cartoons) because I had a great idea. We’d hold the rummage sale in my online booth! Open it up to the world! Local folks can rummage-sale-shop to their heart’s content from the comfort of their own computer screens and then just come pick up the items they’d like, and everyone else can order their items by mail.

Lots of stuff was donated and gathered from far and wide, as well as from right here at home. Items were sorted and dusted, treasures were inspected and photographed, stockings were hung by the chimney with… Wait, that’s a different event. In any case, we put lots of work into it (and are still working!) and now we have the booth loaded with all sorts of goodies. All the variety and different kinds of things you’d find at any “regular” rummage sale, and at genuinely low rummage sale prices!

And so, you are cordially invited to join us for the first, the one and the only… “Project Pookie Launch Online Rummage Sale”!

Here’s the info you’ve been waiting for:

From Saturday 07/31/10 through Saturday 08/14/2010, visit Rummage Rampage, my booth at Bonanzle. Browse the various awesome items and be thrilled at the amazing prices. Then shop, shop, shop! If you live in the Phoenix area, you can ignore the shipping prices shown and just pick your item up in person (if you want, that is). If you live somewhere else, you can select your items and have them mailed to you. In either case, please click on my profile when you arrive (it can be found in each and every listing and on the main booth page). That’s where you will find specific instructions on how to receive discounts, save even more money (gasp!), and possibly get lower shipping rates than those shown. And visit often during the sale dates, because we keep getting and adding more stuff!

See you there! I mean, see you here: Click Here To Visit Rummage Rampage ! J