One Last Week

Well this is the last week living at the current house. The newspaper has been cancelled. The cable and garbage pickup get cancelled this Friday. The mail starts getting forwarded to our new address in a few days. The new lawn service will start next weekend. The freezer is empty and the refrigerator is almost bare. I've been drinking coffee out of paper cups because everything is packed up. It's about as real and final as it gets.

But regular life goes on too. Monday morning started off the same, with J up at 4:30am to catch his flight. Normal chores are still on my list of things to do. Laundry, going to the pharmacy and post office, taking the recycling, meeting friends for goodbye dinners, checkups at the vet. Toilets need to be scrubbed and carpets need to be vacuumed. And somewhere in there I have to pack up the very last of our belongings that are still here-clothes, pots and pans, canned food in the pantry, bathroom stuff. AND we go on a big 12 day vacation the first week of May that I have done absolutely zero prep work for. Since I may not have a computer for a little while once we move, I have to take care of all that this week too.

On this coming Saturday morning J will pull out of this driveway with a small moving trailer behind him. I will be right behind him with my SUV loaded down with junk, houseplants, and the three cats. Then we make that 250 mile drive north once again. Not too many of those left, thank goodness. It doesn't sound like much, but when you always have to make that drive at 3am to avoid the horrendous, ridiculous, standstill traffic going through "the city", then that drive gets very tiresome very quickly. If I never see that particular stretch of interstate ever again, I will count my blessings.

We are coming back down here the following weekend, to do more cleaning and yard work, and to pick up a few last things. And that should be it for awhile. I've already handed over the key to the house and the code for the alarm to the estate sale company. After next weekend the house, and all that remains inside and out, is all theirs. And we've left a shitload of stuff. If you walked into my house right now, you'd never know we even moved anything at all, because we are leaving behind all the furniture.

We're disappointed that the estate sale company can't do our sale until June. But in a way that's nice too because we can move, go on our vacation, and not have to think about anything for a few weeks. We don't have to come back down here for awhile. In fact, they don't even want us at the sale itself- it's their policy to have the client not be there. Which is fine by me, I don't really want to watch the living room set we paid $5000 for walk out the door for $500. J said he still wants to come to town that weekend, and late on the last day of the sale he is going to stroll in and pretend to be a customer, so he can check out what's left. They didn't meet with J, so they have no idea what he looks like. He just wants to get a good idea of what all we will have to deal with once the sale is over. No estate sale sells out completely, and whatever remains will just get donated. If we left it behind in the first place, we don't need it in our new life.

We also finally met with our real estate agents this weekend. It was surprising for me. Not because of the meeting itself. But it made me realize how negative I always am, how much I beat myself up. I guess from the way I've been talking to my agent, she thought the house would be an utter disaster. But she walked in with her partner and they were both like, there is nothing wrong with this house! Fresh paint on the walls and that should be it. I was prepared to replace hardwood floors and kitchen appliances, everything from floor to ceiling, they said no need. She explained to me, this is NOT new construction, there is no reason to redo the entire house and try to compete with brand new homes. I mean, I wanted to replace the fridge because it has scratches on it. She said that is not even anything to worry about. They said our basement gives us a $25,000 added value over most of the non-basement homes in the area. I like the sound of that! They did say that we should have the carpets professionally cleaned once the house is empty, then they can see if we need to replace it or not. I know there are stains from the cats, and we've always overlooked them. I'm not sure the average home buyer coming in will be able to do the same.

So it's probably going to be July before we get the house on the market. And I'm okay with that. Again, it gives us time to relax and enjoy life at the new house. We won't have to rush back down here and do a bunch of stuff right away. And these days, agents handle most of that anyhow. I know we will have to make a few trips back here for things, but not for awhile. It's good timing. A few years ago when the economy tanked, the value of our house dropped to about $80,000 less than what we paid for it. Now it's worth about $60,000 more than what we paid for it. So we really want to sell as soon as we can, so we can get our new mortgage paid down down down. Although the new house is much smaller, it was about $100,000 more than this house, because of the almost 8 acres of land. The current house has been paid off for a few years now, so it's our goal as we go into our 50's eyeballing retirement, to get the new house paid off as soon as we can. Selling this house for full market value would get us there quickly.

Since we bought the new house a year ago, we've spent every weekend either packing or moving a load up there. Even on "free" weekends we were busting our butts at home doing work. I feel as though I haven't had a moment to catch my breath in a long long time. I know if I worked outside of the home, I couldn't do this. I know if J didn't have the travel job, we couldn't move at all. But it has all been extremely tiring, and I'm so ready for it to be over. It has been very very difficult these last few months, having most of my "life" sitting in boxes in a garage 4 1/2 hours away. Everything- my crafts, my books- even most of my clothes. Even our bed is up there already, and we've been trying to sleep on the tiny lumpy guest bed here. Most weekends J ends up sleeping on the couch because of it. I'm tired of that too. I've been living here for many weeks now with just two pairs of jeans, one pair of shoes, one set of earrings, and a few shirts that I wear over and over again- the jeans now have holes in them! That has fed into my depression quite a bit. You would like to think you aren't a materialistic diva, but when you have to live without all your things for a few months, you realize you ARE materialistic. And that's okay.

I know when we first bought the new house, we thought of it as just a "second" home that we would move to "one day". But every time we went up there, we loved it more and more, and it became almost impossible for us to think about anything else. We knew we couldn't wait several years to move there permanently. I won't say this has been the worst year of my life, but it's certainly been the longest and most exhausting. It's been stressful, but as always, it's stress and anxiety that I bring on myself. As far as any outside influences go, everything has been smooth sailing because J always makes it that way. I guess it's because his job requires him to take charge and make decisions and be strong, and that always carries over into whatever we're doing at home. When I start to go off the rails with my anxiety, he gently leads me back to the path without fail. He is definitely a steady yang to my crazy-ass yin.

Well I'll be back soon. I don't know when I will have the internet up and running once we move. Hopefully it will be quick and painless. We are out in the country, we don't even have cable TV out there, so I'm not sure what we're going to end up with. But whatever it is, it's worth it just to be there instead of here.

Our new front porch- by next week I'll be having my morning coffee here!