"Daniel-san! Sell House!"

Todd and I have just put our house on the market. I have spent the last week painting every room in the house, and Todd has packed up all of our extra stuff and moved it into storage. It’s been a lot of work, and we’re finally to the point where we’re ready for the masses to come look at our house. The house is now so devoid of stuff that there is a slight echo in most of the rooms.

Last week I was almost done painting the house, and Todd was almost done packing up our stuff. We were exhausted so we stopped one night and watched The Karate Kid on TV. We were joking about how psyched Mr. Miyagi must have been to have all his chores done by some kid all in the name of teaching him karate.

Then Todd had a brilliant idea, “Hey, let’s put a sign out in front of the house that says ‘Free karate lessons inside.’ Then we can put on a phony Japanese accent and say things like ‘Pack box! Breathe in nose, breathe out mouth! Paint wall! Up! Down! Breathe in nose, breathe out mouth!’ We could totally get this house packed up in no time!”

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House hunting has been an adventure. We found a house that we like and we’re still ironing out the deal with the sellers. But going into houses and looking at them has been a lot of fun. It’s always fun to see the way other people decorate their homes, and to say “Oh good God what where they thinking?” when we see something particularly awful in a home. There was a log cabin that we looked at that was very nice. The seller removed the stove from the kitchen along with the woodstove from the living room. When we asked the agent where the stoves were he explained that the seller was afraid of the stoves getting stolen so he took them out of the house. In the kitchen there was a space where the stove clearly belongs, and the seller put a stool in that spot. Todd sat down on the stool, rested his elbow on the counter and said “So, is this where we sit and wait for the pizza to come?”

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On another mission in Operation Sell House, I have removed our patio doors to get the glass replaced. The seals on the edges of the glass were blown and the windows got cloudy. They were like that when we moved in and we never bothered to do anything about it. Now that we’re trying to sell, we decided to finally do something about it. This morning we took the doors out and I took them to a window factory right around the corner from our house. They called at noon and said that they were ready, and they are still sitting in the truck because I cannot lift them by myself. As a result I’ve had a gaping hole in my house all day long. Bees, flies and other flying vermin have since decided to make my house their new home. I am hoping that Todd will be home from work soon so bats won’t come in when it gets dark.

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This weekend summer officially ended. We put the hard top on the Jeep. Another summer has passed.