Thomas Wolfe Was Right

No, you can’t go home again. Or at least, I don’t recommend it.

Fini

So it’s done. The check’s in the bank, the lawyers and real estate agents have gone their separate ways, and our home is being invaded by strangers.

I think I recognize the face. . . .

One thing about a new home is getting to know the neighbors and sorting them out.

Sitting Pretty

I’m realizing the depths of my shallowness.

Yes, you really can get there from here

     While we’re happily transplanted into the condo, the homestead on the other side of town is still on the market. There’s yet another open house scheduled for Sunday. Yes, like everyone else with a house for sale, we’ll make sure the grass is cut and the mums in the planters are watered, but before that we’ll first be checking the weather as obsessively as a prospective bride planning to trade vows in a pasture. Over the past couple of years the driveway has decided to form a puddle rivaling Lake Michigan with every rainstorm.

          Meanwhile, we also have another challenge – our road. As I may have mentioned before, when we bought our house over twenty years ago, we saw on the description that it sat on a private road. “Private road?” we thought with child-like naiveté, “How lovely!”

          It wasn’t until a few years later that the other shoe fell. A private road means our town is under no obligation, in fact has no intention, of repairing it. Since to create it, the developer originally slapped a layer of asphalt the thickness of pancake batter over what I suspect was a half-hearted sprinkling of pebbles, things have deteriorated over the years.

          Yes, with the frost heaves and thin spots, sensible travel on the road is limited to less than five miles per hour, but come on folks, the street is only three houses long. Plus, if you went any faster, you’d be headed right into the buttress of trees at the end.

          Our former neighbors (and sadly, maybe us, too) are looking into the cost of repairing it ourselves, but no one around here is pouring asphalt in the fall so it’ll likely have to wait until spring.

          Although the town does plow and sand us faithfully, maybe the snow season will begin in November and put down a glorious layer of the white stuff that will mask our problems until someone signs on the dotted line.

Useful Knowledge

I could use an owner’s manual for our new place.

Come on over

The best way to entertain is to tell yourself sternly that you’re not going to fuss. You’re going to keep it simple.

Wallflowers at the Dance

Absolutely no one showed up for the open house at our place on Sunday – granted the weather that day was spectacular, but still. . .no one?

Quiet day at the condo

Our relentless pace has slowed down a bit.

Land management

Our move is complete.

          That is, as long as you don’t count the boxes filled with tools of his father and his father before him that My Guy is still hauling over from the house. And the many pictures we’ve left on the walls to brighten the now-empty rooms for buyers. Oh, and the shed and garage treasures still to be disposed of – anyone interested in a cross-buck for sawing wood, or perhaps a vinyl panel left over from building our outside shower?

          Our neighbor took the wheelbarrow and my hairdresser came over on Sunday for a big roll of tar paper for the roof of the mudroom he’s adding to his house. How serendipitous that I got my hair cut last week.  At this point, any conversation with us can be dangerous: “Really? You’re thinking about chickens? Well! We just happen to have a length of fencing that would be perfect!”

          Since we’ve only now put the house on the market, we’re wearing a path over the 1.8 mile stretch of Main Street between it and the condo. Sanity prevailed over thrift and we hired someone else to paint two rooms that were looking a bit battered, but we’re still bopping back and forth. I spent much of Sunday morning weeding, but with an acre and a half of land, the process had a teaspoon-and-ocean kind of feel to it. There’s an open house planned for next weekend, so that means back to the homestead for more yard work and touch up.

          Today I hope to get outside here and gain control of the flowerbeds surrounding our condo.

A Moving Experience

No, I haven’t fallen into the failing septic system out back or collapsed after the umpteenth trip carrying boxes from the old house to the new. We’ve spent the last two weeks in a different dimension.

Crap

As if putting every blessed thing we own into a box, and then cleaning every blessed space where those things sat isn’t enough fun, we’ve had visitors to the back yard today. 

Real Estate Glamour

It’s 60 degrees and raining – not very July-like – and so today will be a good packing day. After our flurry of whipping the homestead into a state of unrealistic tidiness for all the real estate photos, I may even welcome the return of boxes everywhere.

          Yesterday we sat with the real estate lady and sorted through documents for a good portion of the morning. I had on a more presentable pair of black shorts and a new-ish tee shirt, now that I had a reprieve from the back-breaking work of shoveling mulch, handwashing the green film from the shadier parts of our siding, and vacuuming and scrubbing floors.

          Before beginning the heavy paperwork, we settled at the kitchen table with her iPad and viewed the photos she’d taken the previous day. Our house, which is a fairly unpretentious place, gleamed invitingly in the pictures. The kitchen beamed back at us, the dining room glowed, and light ricocheted off the living room floor. The upstairs bedrooms somehow had gained at least three feet in square footage and even the Pepto Bismol tile in the guest bathroom wasn’t so bad.

          A small frown crossed the realtor’s forehead when the second bathroom popped into view.

          “I’ve noticed . . . see the tile there? The grout is a bit darker here.”

          I’m sure she’d reviewed all the photos before coming to see us, but as though the thought had just occurred to her, she said, “You know what? If you could just scrub that with a little bleach, I could re-take that before I go. Oh, and if we put some of those beautiful tiger lilies you have on the counter it would look terrific!”

          It was already a humid 85 degrees outside, but we need to sell this house. 

          I dug around through my stripped kitchen cupboards, found something that could pass as a vase, put on my sandals, and went outside. Pickings were a little lean so I climbed the hill next to the house and clipped two tiger lilies and one day lily, along with a few ferns.

          My morning shower was already proving to have been pointless. Perspiring, I left my now-muddy sandals outside and carried the flowers and the vase upstairs.

          I dug the bottle of Clorox out from under the sink. Black shorts and a black and white tee was not the best uniform for this job.

          Hoping she wouldn’t suddenly decide to come up and oversee my efforts, I stripped down to my underwear and got to work.

          I didn’t see a huge change in the grout but I was a little cooler.

Stress versus a stroll with a little dog

So that snowball has started its roll down the hill and it’s picking up momentum and objects at an alarming rate.

Free at last

Day one out from under contractor misery. 

The Purge Continues

As we try to clear the decks for The Big Move, some furniture just needs a home other than our basement 

Laura Ingalls Wilder has nothing on us

Remember that chapter in On The Banks of Plum Creek?  

"A cloud was over the sun. It was not like any cloud they had ever seen before. It was a cloud of something like snowflakes, but they were larger than snowflakes, and thin and glittering. Light shone through each flickering particle."  

Well. . .

I Know All the Best Places

We are on the verge of a major life change here, and before it even happens my day-to-day life is filled with new experiences. I’m now not only spending an inordinate amount of time at liquor stores (source of all the best free boxes), but I can now speak knowledgeably on thrift stores in our area.

Brexit Exit

I’ve always been grateful my husband never went into politics. Maybe, just maybe, I could have managed being charming and fully dressed on a fairly regular schedule, but introductions have me completely beat. When I meet someone for the first time, I do the whole ‘repeat the name back’ thing and even try creating a picture in my mind with their name. No dice. Seconds later that name is wiped as clean as a school blackboard at 3:15.

Pity poor Mrs. Cameron. All that time shaking hands, asking after each child (by name, no less) of a constituent she hasn’t seen since hubby last ran for PM in 2010. And where did it get her? Frantically rounding up the toothbrushes and Larry the cat’s food bowls.

Last I heard, David Cameron was sticking around for a couple more months to help smooth the Brexit transition. Then out of the blue comes the announcement that today is his last day in office. Now David and Samantha are reduced to calling relatives to see who has a spare room.

Do the furnishings at 10 Downing remain for the next tenant as they do at the White House? At least that will simplify a move so sudden that you can’t help but check to see if the First Couple is being trailed by creditors.

And how does taking up residence at one of these stately homes work? Is it similar to the house we rent every year at Cape Cod? You know, couches (saggy) and dinette set (a bit worse for wear) are provided, but you have to bring your own sheets and towels.

My husband only ever reached the lofty position of Finance Committee in town, thankfully an appointed position. Looks like I came out ahead – we’ll have been in our house twenty years this January.

What Every Girl Needs

When we moved from the city to our small town nearby, we were excited to be moving to a place only thirty years old. Our first home was built in 1926, so the next one, constructed in 1967, was practically brand new in our eyes.