Saying goodbye to a house and becoming homeless...

It appears we have a contract on our house after just a few days. At least we have signed an agreement and they have stopped showing it...for which, we are forever grateful! Talk about an interruption in your life! We still have to survive the home inspection on Monday morning (he's coming at 8am on my only day off!!!). The house is over 60 years old, so you KNOW there's "stuff" that will be wrong with it. The guy is apparently an electrician by trade that will be doing the inspection....so let's not even think about what he will have to say about the antique fuses, posts and crap in the attic. Oh well! We will just have to wait and see.

It really hit me a couple of days ago when I was out mowing the lawn, which I've done a hundred times. I worked on those flower beds and everything over the years and it is just simply hard to think about not seeing them in my yard any longer! It really started getting to me, but then I realized later I just needed a good cry and felt better later. We never get too old for that.

We didn't expect things to move so fast. Yet, here we are looking at closing in August with virtually no place to go! Connie has graciously said we could camp out at her house, if we needed to. However, I think she will frown when time continues to move on and we haven't found a house to actually move into! Not very good for a continuing friendship, I imagine.

We scan through the listings in our area almost nightly, considering the good bad and ugly. There's a whole lot of ugly out there.

My house is not ugly. It has been a haven for three children and their friends, two different dogs and several cats. Memories warm my hands as I touch the doors and cabinets in their rooms. I can almost see them running around in their jammies when they were supposed to be getting into bed.

We've laughed and cried in this house. We've celebrated a wedding and been saddened when death comes calling. We've never really had "people over" like many couples do. I'm really not sure why except we were always working or going to "invite them when we get the kitchen remodeled." Time just came and went. This house would have liked it. It did host some fun birthday parties and sleepovers. Science fair projects were created in that kitchen and drill team practice was held in the living room. Steve and I practiced our ballroom dancing on the hardwood floors here.

The house hardly looks like it did when we bought it, with its TOTALLY beige wallcoverings and paint and the brown shag carpet over the hardwoods. What were they thinking??? Steve has spent so many hours working on this house, I cannot even imagine trying to add them all up.

Why is it that things only become precious to us when we know we are saying goodbye?