I staged my house to sell. Yes, you know the house–the one with literally thousands of books scattered mindlessly and moths procreating in jars throughout the kitchen next to tadpole colonies.
Yes, believe it or not, this is MY house. I staged it myself…with a little help from a few friends who loaned artwork, lamps, patio furniture and the like.
Just like Lisa LaPorta commands on Designed to Sell.
I recklessly decluttered.
I rented a storage unit and hid all the offensive Little Tykes cars, Little People villages, farms and zoos, Hot Wheels tracks and Star Wars Lego villages.
I organized everyone’s clothes by color.
I threw away half my tupperware and countless useful bug jars in the name of “creating space and giving an illusion of storage.”
(I’ll probably never again own a stuffed egg caddy from the 1970s. Gone forever are the jello molds from the 1960s. I don’t know how I can live without four bundt pans, but I guess I’ll have to learn.)
Yes, I skewered myself in the name of home staging. I planted flowers, edged beds, created herb gardens, spread pine straw, bleached grout, repainted rooms, touched up trim, replaced ovens, purged books, alphabetized canned goods, removed personal photos and children’s artwork–all in the name of home staging so that my house would sell, BY OWNER, in a timely fashion during a less than robust housing market.
I pressure washed that patio myself!
And then I sold my house to one of my dearest friends in all the world who has seen my house with peanut-butter encrusted grout, spider sanatoriums in every corner and endless laundry mountains.
(No, you don’t need me to tell you God has a definite sense of humor, but I do seem to be a frequent vehicle of such a reminder.)
So here I sit the night before the movers arrive–a night when I am supposed to be deciding which items we cannot live without for the next few months versus which which things can go to some random storage unit in South Georgia–now I sit at my computer and sob and sob and sob to leave my friends and my home for eight years, only to return to the home of my youth–a town I haven’t lived in since 1985.
Times, they are a-changin’.
That is certain.
It’s about to get really interesting.
Have you ever had a period of time where life flies at you so fast and furious you feel like that double-eyed fellow in the old Ripley’s museums?
Well, that’s me these days.
We went to pick up Joseph from Space Camp. Here are a few images I captured:
You can just imagine how many people fell over in laughter and just had to have their pictures taken with this fetching sign. I am hoping to use one of them for my Christmas card this year!
After spending three hours at a cutting-edge space-science museum, the most fun was found in some red clay dust found in the parking lot.
Can’t you feel the joy?
Incidentally so far the only questions I’ve gotten from Space Camp involved hippies and a request to see Terminator movies. (Thankfully I can easily handle both those…so much better than last year!)
On the rare book scene, I have succeeded in infesting my house with book lice thanks to an unusually large, and frighteningly old estate acquisition.
Yes, book lice. Should you be so lucky!
I sell books online for my local library system, and that works exceedingly well. I love the ladies who run the store; many are active women in their 70s and 80s who heft book boxes about with aplomb and can tell you the most obscure details about every Southern writer from our area.
Yet the other day I picked up a large collection to sell online and was taken aback to find that one box was brimming with books of an, ahem, incredibly questionable and racy nature.
I mean these ladies are ex-English professors and pillars of the community! The whole thing is troubling to say the least. I can only imagine that they took a quick peek in the box and thought it was brimming with “art books.”
I sealed all the “reading” materials in a box and stuck them in my garage so I could return them to the library. Later that day, I was pulling in the garage and accidentally ran over the materials with the van.
(This was of course accidental…I promise!)
To further protect the precious works, I plunked them in the back of the van and dashed off. One nearly-squashed squirrel later, I found myself whiplashed in the middle of the road screaming to my three children at the top of my lungs, “Close your eyes! Don’t look! Cover your eyes with your hands! Do it now!” while these books shot out of their shoddily-taped box and rocketed all over the back of the van.
Poor Joseph was trying to help. “Mom, I can load them back in the box…let me help! See, I’m already strapped out!”
“No!” I panicked. “No, seal your eyes! Please, please!”
I hastily scrambled in the back seat and threw the books back in the box. I then drove straight to where I was meeting H and dumped the books off with him.
I did what any self-respecting wife would have done. I let him take those books back to the library.
And if you want to know what is particularly funny about H’s interchange with the library ladies when dropping off “the box,” you’ll have to email me for details.
Believe it, or not!
Isn’t it fascinating when you see your child leaping forward developmentally with apparent abandon? That is when I know God is working mightily.
The past two weeks have been such for Edward.
Last week we went swimming with two slightly older friends–one who is a fairly skilled diver and swimmer. Edward watched this friend absentmindedly, attempted dives halfheartedly, and later annoyed the friends by splashing them and simultaneously blathering “blah blah blah” in an cloying voice.
I was so thrilled when this most patient child finally told Edward that what he was doing was “dumb” and held up a kick board to shield himself. Edward actually garnered enough self control to stop his mind-numbing action immediately. This is big for him.
A few days later, Edward shocked me beyond belief by laying out a decent dive into the deep end of our neighborhood pool. Apparently, when I thought he was in “La La Land,” he had been watching his friend. His swim coach was equally surprised when he claimed he knew how to dive and then dove off the diving board to prove it.
At swimming lessons the next day we saw a dear friend from kindergarten days. He was with another boy and the two were lounging by the pool watching the lessons, dangling their legs into the cool water.
Edward sauntered up to the pool, took keen aim, and laid out a perfect dive in front of the two boys.
The new boy turned to Edward’s friend and admired, “Wow, that dude’s good! Who is he?”
The friend replied, “That’s Edward. He’s my friend!”
I blinked back tears behind my sunglasses.
Edward is a dude who’s been “good” at multiplication, reading and memorizing. He’s a dude who I’ll wager knows more about the Tudors than most adults. Yet I think this was the first time Edward had ever been genuinely admired by a peer for something athletic.
Then the child who has been terrified to stand on his head and flip over at gymnastics, a child fearful of somersaults and a child who would never consider a backward handspring, began doing back flips under the water in rapid succession.
The next day at gymnastics he garnered more shock and awe by doing an assisted back handspring.
Something is going on in that brain of his, and I am beyond awe.
Still, isn’t that the way God works? He wants to bless us so much more abundantly than we can ever imagine, and so often He comes through so mightily just when life has begun to look rather bleak.
“If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” Matthew 7:11.
I have more stories of Edward’s progress that I will share next week. In the meantime, I am going out of town for the long weekend and will be back Tuesday!
Peace!
9,854 Times I have asked Sue to stop playing the “pan flute” a well-meaning baby sitter bestowed upon Edward.
Yes, she’s a tiny Ian Anderson…
8 Numbers of bacon slices Sue and Edward felt H should have for his Father’s Day breakfast–that and a cup of mandarin oranges! I guess nothing says Father’s Day like bacon.
And having lots of help while fixing a sprinkler system in 102-degree weather…
Why puppies and puzzles don’t mix well:
777,777 Number of prayers that have been prayed for sweet Elliot, who is doing quite well after his heart surgery and may actually come home this week! Thank you for praying!
I’ve written before about the evil leveled against me by my “Internet service provider”–a term I use loosely.
I’ve railed on the dangers of their wires criss-crossing my yard and tripping unsuspecting trick-or-treaters.
I’ve lamented the unsightly holes, mosquito-attracting mud bogs and outright grass murder their many attempts at “burying” important wires have wrought.
I’ve threatened “supervisors,” “client retention agents” and poor call center workers alike.
I’ve racked up overages on my cell phone waiting to speak with a “live agent.”
I have seen this company install signal “boosters” all over my house–the last one in my daughter’s room because it was the optimal site.
I’ve been charged by this company for work done down the street.
I could rail on and on about my displeasure with this provider but that would only bore you further.
And lest you wonder why I wouldn’t just switch to a different provider, let me assure I have tried other providers to no avail. There are few choices in this sad sister of a town: remember our restaurant options?
A year later and this billboard still stands, the restaurant thriving! Thriving I tell you!
OK, I digress. Back to the cable issue.
Yesterday they actually managed to send a live person to my house to, yet again, “check the line.”
This fellow plodded his muddy feet all over my house (even when I told him the problem was with the outside line) and then charged out into the yard only to emerge, triumphant, twenty minutes later.
“I found it, ma’am. Yes I did,” he encouraged, sweat dripping onto my newly-mopped floor.
“Found what?’ I countered, fully ready to believe that rodents or snakes or bats had severed a cord or built a damaging nest.
“The (insert complicated cable part here) had melted. You see that occasionally but not that often.” Figures…
“I’d like to have that old (complicated cable part) for my records if you don’t mind,” I challenged.
He returned a few minutes later with this:
Doesn’t look so complicated, does it?
Are you buying this?
Does anyone agree that he might, just might have grabbed some old part out of his truck in an attempt to appease the ignorant but slightly belligerant housewife?
I’ve got the piece in my posession and there is nothing melted about it.
Nothing melted at all…
I haven’t abandoned blogging, but between swimming lessons, irrational bat fear, Huck Finn camp black eyes and trying to teach cursive to a 7-year-old, I’ve had little time online.
Seriously, my Internet connection is sketchy again–it’s up for like 30 seconds at a time–so I’ll be doing short, quick, blog bursts that I’m sure will be a relief to some. (In fact, I’ve tried to post this for two days and haven’t been able to do so…)
Joseph, who is nine, is quite interested in learning how to prepare food for himself, which I applaud! H reminisced about his own childhood culinary forays and popped up, not surprisingly, with the Steak-ummm.
(No, I didn’t know they still made that product either.)
H set Joseph up in the kitchen with hot pads, a spatula and a non-stick pan. He plopped the package proudly on the countertop.
Here is an opportunity to test yourself. Study this photograph and see if you can determine what’s offensive and troubling about this image.
So Joseph walks over and begins to study the package. He then quickly tosses it aside like so much filth and cries, “Horrible! Dad! Why? Why? Why would you try to get me to eat horse? Horse! Aghhhh! What is wrong with you?”
H is puzzled, “What are you talking about? Horse? What do you mean? Steak-ummms are pure beef!”
Joseph, a child who can discern diced broccoli hidden in apple muffins, is wary and shrewd: “You can’t fool me. I know horse when I see it! Look here–’Hot, sizzling Philly’…everyone knows philly means horse!”
Mean, mean daddy…
Update: Elliot came through surgery better than expected today! Praise God! Thank you so much for all your prayers!
Elliot is a 22-month-old boy at our church with a complicated heart condition. I will never forget his parents–heavy with pregnancy and responsibility–coming before the church seeking prayer after Elliot was diagnosed in-utero with a seemingly-hopeless heart condition.
Doctors felt Elliot would not survive the birth process, and told his family that even if he did, he would most likely die during the first few days of life.
Elliot lived. Elliot fought. Elliot defied all the odds because, as we all know, there are no odds with God.
God has brought Elliot through three dicey surgeries in his short life.
I first met Elliot and his mother in the church nursery. For me, an 8:30 nursery gig is a tough deal. I struggle mightily with mornings in general and oftentimes find myself growing bitter about having to be at the nursery when others are either in church or bed.
Such was this morning. Elliot’s mother brought this smiling, glasses-bedecked toddler into the room; the unusually tiny boy was tethered to an oxygen tank; tubes and wire wound about him endlessly.
My first thought was panic. Did she expect me to take care of him and handle all these tubes and wires? How could I do that and take care of all the other babies?
So soon I felt an inward embarrassment and paradigm shift in my own view of the situation, the day, and even my own life. This sweet mother plopped down in the floor of the nursery and proceeded not only to take care of Elliot but also to help with the other babies.
Elliot cruised about, amazingly careful with all his wires and tubes; he was able to crawl and play, occasionally stopping to emit a troubling cough, but then moving on to another toy. And slowly, calmly Eliot’s mother began to weave her tale of his life story, God’s faithfulness and her own relentless love as a mother.
I left the nursery with a shift in my own understanding about tirelessly loving a child with special medical needs, graciously outpouring your life for someone else and cherishing each day regardless of tomorrow’s challenges or fears.
The miracles God has wrought through this child and his family have touched our church and our town. Eliot is now 22 months old and speaks fluently and eloquently in both English and Afrikaans.
Today as I submit this post, Elliot will undergo the Fontan procedure in Philadelphia to heal his tiny heart. His family’s prayer is that he will sail through surgery with no complications and emerge stronger than ever and able to leave the oxygen tank behind.
If you are so led, please join me in praying for Elliot.
“For as many as are the promises of God, they are all YES! in Christ Jesus.”
II Corinthians 1:20.
We began our day with Sue’s swimming lessons which have been, by far, the most unusually pleasant swimming lesson engagement I’ve ever experienced with a three-year-old child.
In the past, I found myself chasing smallish boys through mud and trees, seeing tiny boys create a tee tee fountain arc over concrete to the delight of tiny swimmers, and screaming at seemingly-innocent boys to not let a frog or turtle drop into the pool.
I’ve found myself 8 months pregnant donning an unholy maternity swimsuit in a last ditch effort to salvage swimming lessons for a fussy, unexcited brother-to-be.
Sue, however, is cool with the swimming. She saunters up to the pool, cover-up casually tossed over her shoulder, and sits down on the steps to await her turn.
Sue’s swimming lesson counterparts are two, 2.5-year-old boys. These boys sob, cry, flee, screel and bargain endlessly for extra Smarties.
Last night Sue was describing the lessons to her daddy: “I don’t know why I am in this class with these baby boys. All they do is cry and run and cry, Daddy. They are babies and I am not a baby. I am a swimming girl.”
Today began with an overcast sky and slight drizzle. I wasn’t sure the lessons could commence, but the rain held and Sue swam half the length of the pool to the delight of her “coach” and obvious chagrin of the sobbing, flailing two-year-old boys. As we pulled out of the driveway, the rain began in earnest, coating the pavement with giant frog-like hopping drops.
I breathed a sigh of relief, for I revel in a rainy Summer day indoors. Such a grand excuse to feed everyone lunch pancakes and allow them to play unusually noisy games like “hall ball” followed by mandatory solitary book reading. (That’s my personal favorite.)
And as you might have guessed, the championship game was indeed rained out. Yet that only gives the White Sox more time to recuperate, more time to contemplate and more time to prepare to DOMINATE!
Yes. I do love the rain…
