This Is It!

Back to school.  Those three simple words fill me with such emotion today that I am annoying myself.  If you have been following my blog even for a brief time, you must know by now that my oldest is a senior in high school and you probably already have decided that I am not fine with this at all.  Interestingly, it has nothing to do with me getting older though I am none too happy with that fact either but, my displeasure in his new found 'senior' status stems from what will happen at the end of this short year.  Yes, he is going to graduate and leave me.  Yes, I know how selfish (okay bordering on certifiable, I know) I am being in never wanting that to happen but I feel like a two-year-old in the throes of a tantrum.  NO! NO! NO! I don't want my children leaving home!  I love all the noise and chaos, the endless stream of meals to be made and the never-ending laundry (that might be a stretch) and I love how much they need me even if it is just to find something that had it been put away properly, they would not need me to find at all.

My son's departure next summer will completely upset the apple cart that is my life so to speak.  Take 'back to school photos' as an example.  I have a tradition where each child stands by the front door, hand on the handle, backpack on shoulder, smiling at the camera.  So what will I have to do next year?  Hire a stand-in? Do I really only need to cajole three not four children into taking this picture?  Impossible.  What about my group shot in front of the door?  Who is going to bully the younger ones to get the larger shot in the picture? (that never seems to grow old for him).  Who will yell 'shut up' to his siblings or blast the radio to drown out their never ending stream of chatter all the way to school?  I don't know of any stand-in worthy of such a lofty honor.

Before I became a first-time mom, I read 26 books on everything from baby in utero to baby heading off to kindergarten.  Unfortunately for me, first-time mom never ever gave one thought to 'baby heading off to college.'  Being the apparent glutton for punishment that I seem to be, I never found one of those books for any of my subsequent children either because if I had, I certainly would have spaced those children better than I did.  You see, with my children being spaced as they are, I barely have time to come up for air before the next one walks out the door, too. Damn, I never learn.

Killing Me Softly

I used to think that my children would be the death of me particularly my youngest with his 6.5 year 'phase' of not sleeping through the night.  This summer was a game changer, however, and I now realize that I had been mistaken. My darling angels will not have a hand in my early demise, but selling this house is going to send me straight to a psych ward or six feet under. From the price reductions (yes, we just took another one today) to the frustrations with our realtor to the mayhem that precedes a showing, I am losing brain cells and my patience faster than my Suburban blows through gas. All I want is a little calm for the children.  I swear after the past five years they really have no concept what it is like to live in a home without wondering if they will be there the following year. The 'For Sale' sign is yet another lawn ornament to them, they have learned to play around it.

From the very bottom of my heart today, I am 100% fed up with this process. On the bright side (snarky sarcasm here), we will start the day tomorrow with a brand spanking new price and reworded copy in our listing, courtesy my suggestion.  I need to sell this house and turn the page on this extremely long chapter in our lives. When that moving truck finally pulls up for us, I truly don't know how I will contain myself!

Realty Lingo Must Go

This new real estate lexicon is driving me crazy.  No longer do people simply not like something about your home.  Now, they are 'offended' by it or 'turned off' by it.  It is driving me crazy.  I keep telling my wood floors not to say anything that can be misconstrued as mean to potential buyers but, time and again, the buyers are offended by my floors.  I suppose I should have had a conversation with our brick exterior to turn on its charm because, apparently, our most recent showing did not go well as the buyers were 'turned off' by my brick.  The shame.  While I am certainly not insinuating that everyone who enters my home need clamour to buy it--though that would be nice--I do fantasize about losing all the colorful language in feedback.  I am a big girl, really, I can handle someone hating the look of my inlaid floor.  Of course, it might be nice to hear the realtor tell me that she tried to explain how it is far less costly to buy a beautiful rug to cover said floors than it is to tear up and replace the creepy old wall to wall I have been seeing in our own home search.  As for the brick, that is a personal choice, but I would love to just hear the cold hard truth. With all this crazy descriptive language going on,  I am waiting to be told that our lawn caused buyers' 'heartache' or that seeing my ceiling fan 'ruined their lives.' 

My husband is always complaining that I live in a world that is totally black and white (his world, of course, is way more than 50 shades of gray...minds out of the gutter, please, I am talking about colors here and colors only). This fact drives him crazy but I am a straight shooter, painfully honest, and while I may not make lots of friends as a result, I tell it like it is.  So, please Mrs. Realtor, the next time a potential buyer does not like something about my house, just tell me the plain and simple truth and I will try not to be 'offended' or 'turned off' by what you have to say.

Four Wheeler Woes

Today's post will be a digression from my usual complaints (audible sigh). Please don't think that my daily problems have been solved as they are certainly still in full swing from the stall in the sale of my house, issues finding a part-time job (rejection letter, anyone?) and my general crankiness about the turn our life has taken. I did not want you to get the impression that things were on the upswing here as I know how much you all count on me for adding a little 'happiness' into your life with my blogs.  Remember what my friend told me about how when she is feeling down, she always finds solace in the fact that she is not me. Special, huh?

Okay, enough lead in. The crux of my trouble today is my son's four-wheeler. No, not the fact that my mom bought him this 'toy' that needs to be deemed the most obnoxiously loud and intrusive toy on the planet.  Despite that ( and perhaps because I am going a little deaf from hearing it all the time), he loves to ride this four-wheeler so much and it gives him so much pleasure, I could never complain about it. Which leads me to the problem at hand. At less than a year old, it has already needed its tires replaced twice, had an issue with stalling, needing new parts and an engineering degree to replace them and now the silly thing will not go in reverse!  I have called the manufacturer so many times that they greet me by name. My file is so long it never ceases to surprise the poor customer service rep who gets stuck with me on the phone. Today's call was no different except that now the expectation is that we bring this gigantic...and dirty...four-wheeler to a repair center as the rep cannot trouble shoot the issue over the phone. First, I am exasperated as it is less than a year old and has caused more trouble than my little guy himself plus, second, I have a 'thing' about my car and keeping it clean whereby it gets washed multiple times a week (perhaps once or twice it was even washed twice in one day) and now this toy needs to go in MY car?  This is a big problem.

Basically, I am wildly annoyed that this very expensive toy has had such a problematic few months and that my usually busy little guy is wondering around like he lost his best friend...which also happened a week ago when his best friend moved off our block. What an annoying afternoon.

Deck Chairs

It has been a solid four weeks without one showing for our house and to say that I am ticked and frustrated is truly a gross understatement of the facts. Honestly, I spent a lot of time researching which realtor with whom to sign, plus I have spent countless hours de-personalizing our house and making it buyer friendly, whatever the heck that means these days (to me it means trying to be all things to all people all at the same time, a seemingly impossible task). I have consulted with said realtor, touted as the best in the business and the top seller in our area, who seems to offer nothing more than the standard 'everyone is facing this now, the market has changed' answer. Perhaps realistic enough, however, I find it terribly hard to believe that there is absolutely no one, nary a soul, looking in our price range right now who could be cajoled into coming to see our house.  I mean four weeks is pretty long dry spell, no?  No one in a month looking for a nice house, a fenced yard and a cul de sac location?  While I don't have the answers, I am certainly trying to find a way to drive traffic into our home so I am looking for more than a pat answer.

Today I received a call from my realtor's assistant informing me that the new price sheets and new photo sheets were ready.  She wanted to drop them off so that I could replace the old ones in our very pricey marketing folders we had made up for prospective buyers to take with them once they view our house. Interestingly, I had just replaced these pages a couple of weeks ago when we took the first (first being the operative word here and denoting a subsequent change as well) price reduction.  She dropped them off to me and as I was replacing the pages in the same four folders that I had from a month ago, I could not help but remember a comment a friend made to me years ago regarding doing something that was simply 'busy work.'  She said that is was like 'rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.'  I loved the line and have used it often since hearing it as it is so true. All the price changing, pretty marketing packets and de-personalization are all for naught if no one is coming to see the house in the first place.  Color me cranky tonight. 

For Sale Sign

It seems we must have a lot of unrealized power in our city because the moment our For Sale sign went in the ground, we single-handedly shut down real estate sales in our neighborhood. Sales just dried up, nary a house was sold. I certainly hope whichever city is now experiencing a rise in home sales as a result will be grateful to us.  You are welcome.  Seriously, I find the entire selling process infuriating and frustrating. Not only do we have to open our homes to people we don't know (which is a bitter enough pill for me to swallow) but adding insult to injury, we need to deal with criticism, buyers not showing up after appointments were confirmed and price reductions.   I wish we could go back to the time when the owner and the potential buyer sat down together to negotiate a sale thus relegating the realtor, if one was even being used, to a secondary position in the process. My mom sold my childhood home for a good price and a mozzarella (the buyers owned an Italian deli), no realtor present to hamper or chime in on that interesting negotiation.

Today, even the process of scheduling a showing has become a nuisance because appointments are made via computer. Should be easier, right?  Not so much because if you cannot make an appointment, you need to check the box for 'denied.' It even sounds negative and foreboding.  Hey, wait a minute.  I am not denying any potential buyer entrance to my home but I might need to schedule the showing for a different time, no?  Then you need to call your realtor, who in turn needs to contact the potential buyer's realtor, who then submits yet another computerized request and the process starts all over again. Can't we just discuss a mutually acceptable time on the phone and eliminate all this back and forth?  It drives me crazy.

Now that I have already alienated myself from realtors in general, allow me to further dig my grave by adding that some realtors have permitted the buyers to totally dominate the entire process of selling a home. I am certainly not saying that a buyers's preferences in a new home be discounted, however, it would be nice to have your house sold to a buyer and not merely shown. Not every potential buyer has a rigid list of likes and dislikes, some can be persuaded to see homes that do not have everything they want in it or perhaps, with the right salesperson, a buyer might see potential in a home that he might have otherwise discounted.  Before the advent of the MLS system, realtors were the keeper of the keys, so to speak.  They had the photos, the prices and specs on the homes you needed to see.  Now, since we are all so computer-oriented and live in a 'more is more' society, we look over the photos online (sometimes as many as 32 photos) and then tell the realtor which homes we want to see.  In my opinion, this is the reason why some realtors have moved from a need to sell to a desire to show mode.  Oftentimes, a buyer has a preconceived idea about a house from all the photos and information he has seen online about it, but it takes a good salesperson to encourage him to see it and perhaps make the sale despite the initial reservations.

So it seems that I am again mired in something, not by unemployment any longer,  but by the state of the real estate market.  My friend, who is as opinionated as I am, often jokes that if we ruled the world, things would definitely run more smoothly. I would agree that her sentiment is quite ego maniacal and outrageous, but some days I certainly would like to give it a try.

With Age Comes Wisdom?

My mood today is as conflicted as our weather du jour, stormy with a minute or two of sun but then back to the dark, black clouds. The past five years (yup, we have been living here that long now) have been such a roller coaster ride but it seems that for the past three, we have been rolling down the track at breakneck speed, no new climb in the tracks ahead let alone any plateau at all.  We seem to be living in a time of our lives devoid of calm, consistency or stability. It frustrates me 24/7 and despite constantly trying to change our situation in countless ways, we seem to be stuck in the downward spiral with a Munch's 'The Scream' look plastered on my face. Pretty visual, no?

In the ever lengthening list of things that tend to annoy me of late, I have discovered that change is one of them which surprises me as I have always embraced it, often seeking change over staying put or sticking with the safer option.  I suppose I craved change because it often happened selectively so that I could manage it, even savor the feeling of the difference or newness of the change. Right now, there are too many things changing at once and none by choice, just necessity.  Aren't I all sugar and spice today?  Some days I feel as though I really could use a drink (nope, migraine trigger), a month long vacation (too expensive) or simply some calm (too elusive, but I think just what the doctor might order).

If only a doctor could write a prescription for calm, but I bet the pharmacy would probably be sold out already with the luck we have been having of late.   Hopefully soon, the winds of change will turn and blow some positive energy our way because all this negative energy is really draining. I saw this quote on FB and thought it really summed up my life right now.  I am, however, eagerly awaiting the day when it will not be so applicable.

"God never gives you more than you can handle.  Apparently, these days God thinks I am a bad-ass!"