This Old House

Oh, my dear friends, I don't even know where to begin. I don't even remember when I last wrote or what I talked about, and I'm afraid to look, as I am ashamed to have neglected you for so long. Let me make no excuses and simply say this: Approximately 70% of my personal belongings are currently a mile down the road in a mini-storage unit and my house is now on the market.

Anyone who has either bought or sold a house is now groaning with sympathetic back pain. Yes.

We called in the troops in a major way last week: My mother came Monday through Wednesday. Patrick's mom came Tuesday (her third day trip in two weeks). My father and the Baby Mama came Thursday and Friday. Friends came Saturday. Patrick's father and stepmother came Sunday. We cleaned the yard and took it all to the city dump (where I left my wallet, unfortunately), cleaned out four years of funk from the basement, weeded out dishes and books and body lotions and clothes and food and baby stuff that we won't be using in the next few weeks and packed it up to ship off to either the storage unit or the Goodwill. We scrubbed and painted and sweat and moaned and argued and shot lots of dirty looks at Patrick, who kept finding more stuff that needed to be done. Also, we staged the hell out of the house. We were working feverishly until 11:01 yesterday morning.

Then, the photographer came yesterday morning at 11:03, and the realtor last night at 5:30. The house went on the market officially at 6pm and was online this morning.

This is the most major undertaking I've ever been a part of and I CAN NOT believe how much work was done and how much my back hurts even thinking about it. We completely transformed the house from a very lived-in, family-oriented comfy house to a real show house (complete with fluffy pillows in the bathroom and table linens set out just for looks). I say, unequivicably, there is no way on God's green earth that we could have pulled this off without our families. I am so grateful to them.

We hope someone sees the house and falls in love with it, just like we did. I will never forget walking into our house and thinking, "Sold." Walking around the house and yard, I had to bite my lip to keep from giggling. Patrick and I had an impromptu rendez-vous in the backyard, where he said, "What do you think?"

"I love it," I said, smiling. He looked at me, returned the grin, and said," So do I."

Nothing has ever changed my mind and I would buy this house a hundred times again. Preparing the house and property for sale has been therapeutic for me; getting it back into excellent condition makes me feel like I'm honoring the place where we have been so happy. I'm saying goodbye to it, one coat of paint at a time.

Now that the first major hurdle has been hurdled (or whatever you do to hurdles), I will be able to post more often and hopefully catch up on my Hulu queue (Oh, Echo - what in the world are they having you do this week?) as well as sleep without dreaming of which wall to paint next or which closet to pack up. Although, last night I dreamed that we sold the house in four hours and I was all disappointed this morning when I woke up and still had to make the stupid bed.