The Renovation

When we made the decision to put our house on the market, it wasn't lightly done. we talked about it and went around and around, and I went faux shopping for new homes (have I mentioned how much I love walking through other peoples' homes?) and then we talked about it some more and decided it might be a good time to put our home on the market. So we signed with a realtor and then the problems began. Once you start working on your home to get it ready to sell, you realize how much is missing. You start by , say, rebuilding your deck (which by the way is now beautiful). Before you know it, the deck is rebuilt but it turns out the doors need to be replaced. So you replace them only to realize that the light fixture is awful and an abomination (how have you been living with this up until now??) so you replace the light fixture and that's when you learn that the wiring is faulty.... we had hoped our home would be on the market by now. It's getting hot and well into summer and this morning I woke up to realize that my summer vacation is being eaten by this project. It is a full time job. How do people who work 50 weeks out of the year possibly get this done?? We are in the throes of both a heat wave, and rebuilding our house, or as Matt puts it "You're owning this house, one board at a time". We have become the couple everyone dreads as a 20 something. The couple that spends a Saturday evening hanging out with friends talking about their trips to Lowe's and Home Depot. So much for partying like rock stars until we were dead. Now we party when a light fixture goes in and works the first time we flip the switch. What I'm curious about is what we will do in our new house. Will we be more responsible and instead of living with stuff actually fix it upon breaking? Will we be careful about spilling things on the carpet, and about pet hair and about keeping the bathrooms perfectly clean? I admire my friends who live minimally, who are constantly giving things away and whose homes always look great no matter when I show up. Like, I could show up at 1 in the morning and they would be lying quietly in their beds with the covers straight around them. For some reason, that's not me. My friend Cat used to go on these wonderful rampages every few months where she would call me, screaming that her home was driving her crazy and she couldn't handle it anymore. She would tear through, getting rid of everything, cleaning every corner until it shined and then, calm down. When she moved to Rome, like every other time she moved, she had huge yard sales and sold everything, or almost. I never fail to be amazed by this lack of connection to things. The ability to let things go in order to foster relationships with people, in order to build a life with someone you loved. Buddhism loves Cat. Of course, she's Catholic, and I'm the one who always thinks I'm going to be Buddhist, but then Methodistism is so much more forgiving about attachment to things. So as I watch our first home prepare to go on the market, I am torn again by wondering what will happen. By attachment to the memories we have in here. Even though I haven't lived here for long, Matt has been in this house for seven years, and through it gone through roommates, break-ups, meeting me, getting married, having me move in and completely change his lifestyle. Even as I write this I can hear the sounds of powerwashing outside, along with the sounds of geese from the pond. And I know whatever the outcome, we must try.