Moving On

We left for vacation with just about the cleanest, most tidied-up house I’ve ever lived in.

We returned with this thing in the front yard.

Like many things we do around here, it’s a convoluted story that gets all the proper steps mixed up.  We’re just hoping it turns out for the best, as we’ve been blessed with so many times before.

A couple of months ago a friend put their house on the market and began searching for a new home.  It was the talk of playgroup that day, and it got me thinking.  What if we wanted something different?  Does it exist in our price range?  Is it even logical to sell at this point in time?  I set up a search on Realtor.com and started playing around.  At first, Mike wasn’t happy that I would even consider this kind of thing without talking to him first.  I’m just playing around, I said. What’s the harm?

Well, the harm comes when you both get the bug.  And call a realtor friend to “just look.”  And fall in love with a neighborhood.  Before we knew it, we’d gone from innocent browsing to putting an offer on a house that isn’t even exactly for sale.  Did I mention we tend to do things unconventionally?

The initial plan was to get through the holidays before we listed our house.  You know, enjoy the season, take some time to make some minor repairs, freshen the place up a bit.  At the height of my packing and preparation frenzy for our Disney trip, Mike decides that we can totally get the house market-ready before we leave … in 3 days.  What the hell, I thought. We’re going to have to sell the house if we get divorced in the process anyways – might as well give the man something to do! And do he did.  He’s probably going to regret it someday, but I have now seen the man in action.  Apparently my Honey-Do lists have been too short and not fraught with enough time-sensitivity.  He painted, packed things up in boxes, cleaned, and organized, all while I tried to fit liquids in 3 oz. airplane-friendly containers.

And so now there is a sign in our yard.  It’s been two weeks, and while we’ve had a good amount of showings with positive feedback, no one’s made an offer yet.  I know this is normal, especially for this time of year, but it’s nerve-wracking for us.  The only thing we’ve ever known is our house in Nashville, which sold for our asking price in less than a day.  Ah, the good ol’ days of the housing bubble.

Where are we headed?  We don’t know for sure, but it’s definitely not far.  We love Elena’s school and absolutely don’t want to switch her to a new one, so we’re looking at a very small area within the town we live in now.  We want trees with trunks bigger than 6″ in diameter.  We want a neighborhood with kids.  We want a basement.  We want a house that we walk into and know that we are home until our kids no longer call it home.

Here’s hoping it’s out there, and that someone feels compelled to call this house, which we’ve loved and lived in for nearly seven years, home as well.