Working too hard

Ooh! I am working too hard! A woman who asked about seeing the inside of my house to be for sale called and still wants to come in! Now...I was aiming for a mid-March listing....and it has set off a mad scramble! Yesterday I put in 14 hours! They are coming in a week, I guess its shaping up OK!

I have moved a bit in my adult life and each time has torn at the heart strings. Once I couldn't bear to go back on the last day. "Frog Hill." It was an old (just 90 or so,) ramshackle southern vernacular farm house and smelled deeply of mousey dung...but it was situated by a pond and actually had a dock in a cove of a creek. My children were all in the same elementary school (a feat since they are separated by 9 years from oldest to youngest) and...believe it or not...rode their bicycles to the little school! Plus they wore uniforms which I swear were made of cast iron and the color was complimentary to them!...And...we had no TV....my oldest son tempered my feelings about the house when it was decided to sell: "Frog Hill? I hated that place!" He had been uprooted from No. Virginia, had to make new friends...and NO TV!!!

Well, none of us hate the place we live in now...and all of them grew up here and now the youngest is 23 and in Law School in NY. The Frog Hill hater is 32 and lives in LALALand!!! And loves L.A! My daughter is a few miles away with an apartment and roommates...she loves TV.

So, what I started to say before I began reminiscing is that this time I notice a big difference in my feelings about closing up shop in one place and moving on to another: a lack of sentimentality. Is it self-preservation? One reason has to be that my hormonal nesting instinct flew away with my nestlings!!! And also because as an antique dealer (who has sold thousands of items in the last 22 years) I have learned to let go. Its because in that 20 something years there have been painful "forever" losses. Its because I don't want to pick up after 4 grown adult peeps anymore...(oh boy, you got that straight!) Well, all of the above...and more....I've owned, still own and sold 5-6 houses since Frog Hill...and I've always managed to hit the market at its down cycle (and this one now is pretty down...) and the stress the market creates makes me want to dance in the streets when one sells...never mind the hassle of moving that is ahead...

So. I accept the challenge...I will continue to declutter and pack ....paint and repair where I must...get the outdoors as spiffy as the indoors and CHAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGE ahead to the future with conviction and excitement...because I've learned from experience that when you close one door you open another!