the ocean

I've mentioned that we're buying a house, but I forgot the little detail about selling the place we live in now. Because I am not Gwyneth Paltrow, despite my stunning array of vagina candles, I'm not really in a position to own multiple estates at once. So we put our current place on the market and started having showings a week ago, which was not the least stressful thing we've ever done. Since the standard for being able to show your place is basically to make it look like you don't live there, we banished half of our belongings to storage over the past month, leading to lots of delightful conversations about whose fault it is we packed all of the umbrellas or why three dozen kinds of facial cleansers are truly essential on a day-to-day basis. We also gave some things to goodwill, by which I mean abandoned them in an alley behind a Salvation Army. Oh, and we sold some things online, which I highly recommend if you're ever feeling too good about yourself. Nothing like having someone in a "Let's Go Brandon" t-shirt try to knock $30 off the price of your vintage oak bar cabinet at the last minute before putting it in their Toyota Sienna to bring you back down to earth.

There's also the factor of having to leave your house on a moment's notice so strangers can paw through your few remaining things without feeling uncomfortable. We actually had a bit of a "miss" in this regard when a couple showed up half an hour early and found me carrying the dog's poop to the trash room, which was probably not a selling point. We've also spent a fair amount of time just sitting in the park near our house with the dogs, trying to remember if we remembered to we hid my CPAP away. (When people are imagining their futures in a home, they don't want to imagine tubes coming out of their face.) But I guess the good news is that we are under contract, so we can probably start using the bathroom without a spray bottle of Clorox in hand again. It truly is the little things that make a house a home.