Someone Buy Our House

We're "On The Market," As They Say

The family room with our little bedroom TV mounted above the mantel,
as per our realtor's instructions.

The kitchen cabinets are white now so watch out.

The realtor described our bedroom as "elegant."  I'll go along with that
if by elegant she means, "Beaver's clothes are not scattered all over the floor,
and the dog is not sprawled on the bed."

I'm in need of a new word, a word to describe the state of Trying To Sell One's House.  The state of being On The Market. The day to day existence which centers around obsessive tidiness and the desperate tossing away of one's soul.  Because I am unable to sum up my feelings about this situation in a word or two.

I've done this thing house-selling gig twice before in my life, and I have only a couple vague but not wholly unpleasant memories of incidents and accidents related to the ordeal.  This time, however, I'm one hundred per cent stressed, and I don't know why, and I want it to all go away now.  So please, buy my house.

It all started innocently enough when Beaver decided to leave his job at I'm Teetering on Technical to join Cobblestone.  We got put in a situation where perhaps maybe in a year or two, we might move, or we might not, but who knows?  In addition we were successful in saying a final goodbye to our last homeboy to leave home (son 2 out of 3), making the entire household seem barren and awesome.  To me and Beave it just felt like a good time to downsize.

It's not going very well.  After two weeks on the market only three Potentials have walked through our home, and all three said "not interested."  My reactions are to be pissed, and hurt, and seriously pissed and hurt.

Beave and I built this house 19 years ago because it was big enough and practical enough for a young couple with a small budget and three small boys.  Yeah it's not fancy, but after 16 years of living south of the Mason-Dixon line, I wanted a traditional Yankee style house, and boy did I get one.

We've had some great times here, some very interesting times.  Think of all the shenanigans both known and unknown to the parents!  The barefoot soccer, the forts in the woods, the kick the can, the woodpeckers, the chipmunks, the hawks that killed the chipmunks on the woodpile, laying on the couch playing video games with the cat on your stomach, watching all of the Johnny Depp movies with Mom, devouring the neighbor's eggrolls, admiring the other neighbor's bevvy of blonde girls, Paulie riding his bike around the block waving the American flag every other weekend, kids everywhere, babysitting, mowing lawns, shoveling snow... bringing friends home, cooking out, helping Dad shoot off fireworks at the end of the driveway, LAN parties and make-out parties in the basement, riding bikes to school, waving to walkers, waving to every car that passes by, trading bedrooms, sharing bedrooms, making your bedroom your own, developing pictures down in the darkroom, taking turns reading out loud in front of the fire while the cats push you aside so they can have more room, the little neighbor boy scratching his name into the paint on your front door... lots of stuff happened here.  Now it's someone else's turn to raise a family here.  Where are you, little family?  I know you're out there somewhere.