Hello, Goodbye

Back in March, April was a shiny, gleaming goal on my horizon. March was so full of deadlines and April held almost none and a vacation to boot. Now I'm looking back at the last five weeks and wondering where they disappeared to. I don't have to wonder much though because I know the answer. As so often happens when we come down from a particularly stressful time, I got sick. Then I went on vacation. Then I got sick again. On top of the vacation and the getting sick, we finally started gearing up in earnest to relocate to Georgia.

It's exciting and also terrifying. I distinctly remember insisting up, down, and sideways that I would never buy a house again. Ever. That was only 15 short months ago and here we are. House shopping. Of course, that means we're also selling our house. Eventually, everything will get done but at the moment the searching for a new house, getting our current house ready to sell, working full time, and searching for a new job is about two things more than I can handle happily. My advice to myself has warped from "never ever buy a house again" to "never buy a house, then you never have to sell a house!" If only.

One of the most frustrating things about preparing our house to sell is that all the projects that I have wanted to do in the last year are finally getting taken care of. Just in time for me to not enjoy them. The back door, chipped from the previous owner's scratching dog, has been repainted. Holes from the previous owner's pictures, paintings, and wall hangings have all been neatly spackled and painted over. Piles of stuff the previous owners left behind in the garage have all been disposed of. We've cleaned out our closets and junk drawers. The list goes on and on. The good news is that it is all getting done and our house looks so much better for it. Every time I look around though I feel irked that it took us having to sell the house to accomplish so much. I've learned my lesson for our next home though- just get on top of this stuff early, don't procrastinate with weak excuses (for example: We might want to repaint this room later, so why fix it up now?).

One of the funnier to-do items is to use up as much of our food as possible, since anything that is open cannot be transported and we're not sure if our stuff will end up in storage for a while between homes. This has resulted in some funny meals, some tricky meal planning, and, the biggest hardship of all, a good bit of drinking (open alcohol bottles are not allowed to be shipped). Most recently, I've taken to trying to use up as much of our hot cocoa mix as possible. I've already completed this exercise with the coffee and tea. It's a little warm in TX in May for cocoa though so I started wondering if I could bake with it. The answer seems to be a resounding yes- bring on the brownies and chocolate cake!