January 15, 2015 5:55 AM

Let the fun begin

If anyone’s looking for a house in Portland, here’s our listing, hot off the virtual presses:

“Act now! This listing won’t last long! Beautiful back yard, hot neighbor sunbathes nude. Cat not included.”

http://www.rmlsweb.com/v2/public/report.asp?type=CR&CRPT2=BgUFB2ddDnZYXFBYT1VZUQzDzDuDeZbPDRyXMn3Yi9lAgfXgzDzDdgh

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in a coffee shop in NE Portland. It’s 1:00 on a sunny, if someone chilly, Wednesday afternoon…and I can’t go home. In fact, I haven’t even been able to take a shower today…and I’m pretty excited about it.

It’s the first day our house has been on the market, and if Day One is any indication, we may not have to wait very long. The house was shown at 10:30, 11:00, 12:30 and it’s scheduled to be shown at 1:30, 3:30, 3:45, 4:15, 5:15, 6:00 and 6:30…and those are just the ones I’m aware of from the last time our realtor texted me. I went for a walk thinking I’d be able to take a shower once I got home, and by the time I was heading home, there were already realtors leading people through the house. This was after the house had officially been listed on RMLS for perhaps two hours.

If any of the showings lead to an offer we can feel good about, I think we’ll be in good shape. The house we want in N. Portland is still out there. Our offer went in late last night, and we’re still hoping for good news. We’ve done our part; a good deal of the rest of what will happen now is out of our control…and I have to find a way to be OK and at peace with that. As that noted sage, Tom Petty once said:

“The waiting’s the hardest part.”

It feels as if we’ve descended into a very strange sort of existence. We still live in the house we’re trying to sell, but we can’t actually LIVE in it. We’re adapting to the reality of the house being staged, so when Erin leaves for work in the morning, I have to wander around making certain everything is just so. I can’t imagine anyone living in a space as immaculate as our house. We’re not slobs- Erin has a pathological hatred of “chaos,” which to me seems to be code for “everyday life,” but what do I know?- but neither are we neat freaks. The dining room table has devolved into a mail storage device (we eat sitting on the couch, watching TV like an old married couple…you can do this when you don’t have kids), and for my part, I have a pile of shoes at the bottom of my closet that only seems to grow. I’m pretty OK with that.

The point is that for the next however long it takes until we get- and accept- an offer, we get to live like Martha Stewart on Adderall, picking everything up and putting everything in its place. Not that I previously knew or much cared that everything evidently HAS a place.

We could be living like this for days, maybe weeks. There’s really no way to know, but that’s what we have to do to play the game and create the illusion. Hopefully it won’t be for very long, because I have a feeling this is going to get very old very quickly.

More than anything, I just want to be able to take a shower.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Technorati

Technorati search

» Blogs that link here

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 15, 2015 5:55 AM.

A balanced life is hard to achieve was the previous entry in this blog.

Today's nominee for Mother of the Year is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Contact Me

Powered by Movable Type 6.0.2