I'm ba-a-a-ck!

Sort of. For the sake of my brother's lonliness and sanity, I will attempt to make an update. The past three to four weeks (I've lost count) have been a whirlwind of deciding to sell this house, attempting to ready the house for sale, and listing the house. In the past six years that we've lived here (and bear in mind, we moved in with a four year old, a one year old, and a newborn) we've kept just about everything that's come into the house. Baby furniture, clothes, toys, books, etc. Every now and then I'd do a sweep and send some things on to the cousins, but for the most part, we still had almost all of it. Now imagine trying to lay hands on every one of those items and sort them into catagories: Give to Mom and Dad to save for Melissa and J; Cart over to Carol's house for a yard sale; Pack into boxes now; Leave unpacked; and throw away. This process was HUGELY overwhelming, and I've literally never physically worked so hard for so long in my life. Labor was harder, but over much more quickly. During that process I literally (and I really mean literally, not literally in the sense of "figuratively" which is how most people use the word), I literally went through more than 30 large sized trash bags either in yard sale or trash. Plus about two dozen boxes. The first yard sale netted about $140 for us and about $5.00 each for the kids (we let them sell their own toys) The next one is scheduled for May 30th. We had too much stuff and not enough time to sell it all in the first one. We also carted a whole truckload of baby stuff up to Norwood to transfer to Mom and Dad, who drove it back to Mass, to save for Melissa and J, in Providence. It's a long way around, but it seems to have worked. At least the stuff isn't in this house any more!
The next step was starting to prepare the house for listing. This meant removing all personal photos from the walls, emptying about 3/4 of the books out of the bookshelves, clearing off the kitchen countertops and cabinet tops, clearing off the shelves in the entryway, packing up about 1/2 my china, Clearing out the playroom side of the attic to lay down carpeting, repairing and painting the water damage in the front hall, retouching paint on walls, doors, and mouldings, scrubbing down the exteriors that we could reach, washing all the curtains and cleaning all the windows, and cleaning all the rooms of the house from top to bottom. Oh, and getting rid of the big ugly shelves from our bedroom, and moving the treadmill to Don's sister's house for the duration. Are you tired yet? I sure was!!!
Then, last Monday (the 4th) we met with the realtors and went over the paperwork, and the house was officially listed on Tuesday the 5th. We had our first showing on Thursday, another on Friday, two more on Monday, and one on Tuesday. Yesterday, we received an offer on the house. Today we made a counteroffer. Now, we still have to go through mortgage approval, inspections, appraisals, etc., but I'm quite please at the pace this is going so far.
The scary thing is, Don's job search hasn't quite kept pace with the house sale. There have been some developments, but it's been very frustrating overall. I can't really go into details, but if you're praying folk, please send some his way.
We're looking at a tentative move date of July 1st. Thinking about all that needs to happen between now and then is enough to make me nauseous. Because in addition to all this, I've been working, Don's working, and the kids still have school, baseball, birthday parties, and lots of nerves to assuage.
One bite at a time. That's how you eat an elephant, and that's been my survival strategy for this process.