Remember how your high school English teacher would tell you "write first, title last"? That the title should come from the body of the work to reflect a key sentiment, phrase, or image? Well, I've never been able to do that. I'm type A and I do things In Order, and I could never get my left brain to accept that naming a piece was the last step. After all, it's the first thing you read. So it goes first. (I also judge books by their cover, but what can you do?)
I don't have a title for this entry, and I'm typing blind (no, not literally. geez). I wanted to write, I have some time (see what waking up unassisted at 5am can lead to?), and I have so much on my brain. Let's see what blogging does.
Our house is on the market. We've been working like crazy people for two weeks to get it ready because we have an accepted offer on another house. Not the one I originally walked by each day to ask it to help me out, but the one in the neighborhood that must have heard me and decided it wanted me because it went on the market about two weeks into my walks.
It's very odd living in a house you are trying to sell. We decluttered and cleaned (OK, we hired people to do that for us). The place looks amazing. AMAZING. I saw the listing and thought "I want to buy that house." I'm so proud of how it looks and all the work we've done over the years. Especially the care and maintenance my husband has given the home. He often drives me nuts with some of what I see as overly obsessive details, but in this case, some of that has paid off. (SOME of that. Not all. He reads this and I need him to know this is not carte blanche for the rest of what I hope will be 60+ more years together. I will still argue that some things can be ignored without any consequence.)
We had our first showing yesterday and two more scheduled for today, and our open house is this weekend. I'm excited and uneasy at the same time. Having strangers walk through and judge your most personal spaces is weird. It's just weird. And though most of what makes it personal has been removed or hidden away, I'm thinking more about how the energy here is personal. We've already shaken it up by turning our home into a show piece (we do NOT live this way, and the house knows it). I want at least one of these strangers to love the house and buy it, obviously. But I want all the people who see it to like it and appreciate it, because it is a reflection on me in some way. I hear Sally Field's Oscar speech in my head as we get ready for the showings. ("You like me! You really like me!")
I have all the expected feelings about this process. Excited for the new house. A little sad to be leaving this, our first house, and the one in which our grownup life took roots and the only home our children have ever known. This house has been very good to us, and I hope it will be OK when we aren't here to look after it.
But most of all I want the process over because I am not the type to make my bed every day just in case someone wants to come see the house while we're all at work and school.
Oh, my friend. I absolutely relate to your feelings. And what a drag it is to keep the house visitor-ready all the time! (Though my neat-nick husband loved it...but he, of course, didn't have to DO it...) We took all negative feedback from showings so incredibly personally, and now that I've bought someone ELSE's house, I know how judgemental I was about theirs. Yours is beautiful, though, and I know it's going to be scooped right up really quickly!!!
ReplyDeleteSince I can't relate to the whole house thing, I'm going to comment on the part of your entry that I CAN relate to- I always title things right off the bat too. :) Always. It's my favorite part of writing things. And it DOES go first. When I'm bored I like to come up with what I would title the biographies of people I know.
ReplyDeleteAndrea, that's why I had the title of my blog for almost a year before I wrote anything. What's my biography called?
ReplyDeleteKS~ I know, right? Even though the wallpaper in the house we are buying is certifiably ugly, I feel disrespectful thinking it.
I actually am a title-last person, though sometimes it's the title that makes me want to write a thing. Generally, though, I pull it out of whatever I've just written.
ReplyDeleteOne more house thing...though I loved my old house passionately, I am actually not as nostalgic about it now as I thought I'd be. I was very methodical in my release of it, and now I'm so happy in my new place that looking at pictures of the old place only make me warm, and not sad or wistful at all.