When I started to announce that I was thinking of moving… everyone asked…”are you ready for market?”….um… yes?, Noooooo…. I was not. I had no idea what “ready for market ” is about…. I should probably tell you that this is first time I’ve sold a house or bought one… and I’ve never bought a vehicle… but that’s another blog for another time!
Now I watch all things HGTV… but when I decided to have my tile roof washed…. it was whole ‘house of cards’… pun intended… holy crap!! and I mean that in the literal sense… but I’ll back up …..
I had a guy come to give an estimate… and he said ” when was the last time you had the roof washed?”….(as we are looking up at the green algae growing on one side…) and I look at him and say…”uh… about 10 years ago???” (completely lying and he knew it!!) ( what? you have to wash the roof? isn’t that what rain is for? whaaaaa????) CRAP! I hate Ken right now! surely this must be some kind of boy knowledge!! dammit! so they came with air compressors and hoses…it took 5 days…and the day after they were done I went outside to walk around and take a look see!! oh my holy heaven evil smell on earth!!… pure decomp…something was rotting… the dogs and I looked everywhere for some poor creature that had bit the dust somewhere along the line…nope… and the next day it was worse…. like, make my eyes water worse… the following day… I held my breath and shoved the dogs out the door and quickly closed it… lit a whole houseful of candles and I didn’t go outside… i’m a fan of denial…divorce does that to you!
My friend Randy came over to help with some of the” Preparing for Market… ” and He insisted (bless him) that we find the smell…it was everywhere…It was in the gutters!!! “Randy go see if there is a dead animal in there”….the look on his face…yikes! HA!! Turns out that at least 20 plus years of roof poop, pollution, rotting leaves… bird nests… all washed into your gutters… will make a strong stomach lurch!! It was the image of a diaper gone wrong .. So the gutters came down… all while trying to hold all the, um, crap in the gutter so it didn’t slop out…this process took 4 days… add in patching the holes and repainting the trim … it was another week before I could “get to market.”..I’ll spare you the details of having to try to clean it all off the stucco….sigh. Seriously I just thought a clean roof would make the house prettier….shoot me. There are more outside things that have to be attended to…but the inside has been the greatest test.
I decided to pack myself…. I knew I needed to go through things…. So I got a Pod, boxes and tape and labels…I was set…. !! a week later… i still hadn’t packed a thing….what the heck? …. so I decided to tackle that one section of the closet…yep a whopping 4 ken shirts…I was being a drama queen…and that’s when I got the black garbage bags…and began the charity pile….!! Next it was time to face Ken’s office… seriously we all call it that… Where is the vacuum ? “in Ken’s office… I don’t even want to tell you the last time he used that office… I’m talking YEARS! Many many Years! I’m amazed how I hung on to just a room.
Then there was my office…wow. It was stacked with divorce…till the stacks fell over and it looked like a big garbage dump… I would just stand at the door and toss…I had an amazing attorney… She was a rock and as she liked to say “I’m the voice of reason”…well the voice of reason was still living in my office years later…. I would have set it on fire…but the office is in the house and well, you know, fire is bad!! I sat at the doorway… there were documents , pictures, emails, bank statements, tax returns… from allllll the years of marriage. I finally remembered someone once saying “how do you eat an elephant?” …answer “one bite at a time” sigh…so I tried setting a time limit… ‘you have to be in there for an hour’…uh no. An hour was time to re-read cards and emails and emails to his mistress…. nope nope nope. So I went to 10 minutes I glanced and pitched! and when my phone beeped at 10 minutes I ran out of the office and did a happy dance that rivaled a quarterback in the end zone! …yes, I lead a slow life sometime!!
The rest of the house has been easy peasy… I kept the wedding china… I picked it out to begin with and I like it… it didn’t seem to be attached to the house or Ken… cool. I’m at the tail end of this part of the journey and i’m glad i got through it at my own pace with my own decisions about “stuff”…. Nobody can really do it for you… I learned to make the… keep pile, the throw away and the “I can’t deal with it right now” pile!! But I have 5 pods all set to move to Texas!! and when I get there… it will be a cleaner start! … well I hope anyway!
So now I can , almost, “go to market”…. but there are still things that have to be done!! and I’m sure they will come with their own tales as well.
Thank you for letting me share this journey!
Moving50 