House-selling

This is a great market, some say it is a seller’s market. People are buying again, even building. In my case I am having a lot of bargain hunters look at my house. I am becoming slightly crabby over this.

Don’t get me wrong, this house is in a wonderful neighborhood, it is much in demand especially with young people, new parents, couples. But I do not like to think I lived in a starter home, much as I did not want to know I was a starter wife, which it turned out, I was. Bummer, well, could have been bummer if my ex-husband and I had really been what I thought- inseparably made for each other, which after a year or two I realized we clearly were not.

But this house. Ok, so since my ownership in 2009 I did give it a new 30-year architectural-style roof, tore out the (original-from 1992!) carpet and put in all hardwood -red oak- floors except the 2 guest beds which I replaced with carpet, new water heater, air conditioner compressor, new insulated, low-e (whatever that is) windows, tiled floors in baths, replaced the garbage disposer and garage door motor, crawl space waterproofing and more. All of which was done within the past 4-5 years. The snag appears to be the kitchen. I did not follow this rage going on and redo my kitchen. Why should I? Everything still works fine! And the countertops, though original are still pristine. I somewhat do regret not replacing these and realize if I had at least replaced those countertops the kitchen would appear newer but I do not like to deceive. And what if I chose something nobody but me liked?

The issue with passing on offers is the unknown– will there be any more? If there are will they be better than the last? No house wants to be the last one standing at the dance. The listing has only been live for 15 days and the agency/agent is very good- Sotheby’s, so the exposure this house is getting is local, national and international and it is beautifully (and accurately) portrayed. And I have told my agent that I need for her to let me know if she thinks I am being unreasonable. She has said she thinks I am not being unreasonable.

So far that is.

So even though I have no sentimental or emotional attachment to this house I do want its sales price to be worthy of it while at the same time being fair.

Fair to one I have found is a steal, or highway robbery, to another.

Romans 12:12, Galatians 5:22

Reward

Some people believe that when they have achieved a goal or accomplished a thing it is important to pat self on the head with a reward of some kind… a tasty dinner at a nice(r) restaurant, a new item of clothing, purse, some small extravagance that normally one would pass by.

In light of having unpacked, stored and/or disposed of 63-odd packing boxes of assorted sizes and probably around 7 miles of unrolled bubble wrap; cleared, disbursed or thrown out piles of clutter and I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-it things; hanging as many pictures as told me where they might prefer to be displayed (with many left to go), I treated my beloved Lily and myself to a pink and gold glow of a sunrise at the beach this morning. It was the coldest morning (so far) this year, and as we were on the return lap having gone as far up the beach as we would I noticed someone’s bare footprints in the sand, a child’s. It took maybe 10 more yards of walking before my frozen brain determined I too, should be enjoying the sugar-soft sand between my toes. The tide was coming in and Lily does not like those waves coming up to meet her so I zig-zagged along, being dragged away whenever a rogue wave threatened to lick her paws. The cold air gripped my ankles as I pulled off my thick woolen socks, but the sand truly felt like cool silk under my rough winter foot soles. Suddenly the ocean waves crashed louder, like summer waves. Not a distant thundering but clearly beckoning me into the surf as on an August afternoon. The water felt like ice shards running over my feet but I rejoiced. The ocean! Bare feet was all it took.

I still have to find places to put these wayward things away. As my brilliant and ever-practical godmother says, “A place for everything and everything in its place.”

I believe her. And another goal to reach for another gift of a sunrise.

Anxiety, and a few questions

So this is probably not a word anyone wants assaulting their new year’s peace, promise and hope of new beginnings, fresh starts and better lives.

But what is it about the human mind. I know it isn’t about being undisciplined (or is it?) because some of the most orderly, organized and straight-forward individuals I have ever known worried about something. Small worries or not, it altered their equilibrium to greater or lesser degrees.

We wake in the night, still in a groggy fog, and gradually that thought that woke us crystallizes: did I lock the front door? did I put the quarterly tax payments in the mail last week? the doctor’s appointment, the strange noise under the car hood, the child(ren), still out and it is after 2 a.m.

Is this just our humanness, the nagging worry that shoulders out all other thoughts, the inferno that rages, hissing every dousing attempt at calmness we throw at it? I do not necessarily mean those nay-sayers either, individuals who cannot see anything good but brood on what’s wrong with everything, convinced that they are doing everyone else a favor.

It takes a great deal of strength to rein in these inner harbingers. Some have this ability innately. Wonderful! Others have to work a bit harder at it. Others with friends struggling with psychoses worry about their own worrying.

It’s been said that high intelligence is alarmingly close to insanity. It’s also been said that love and hate, in their extremes, are passion directed for or against someone or something, and that each is reflected in a deep love. I am not a psychiatrist. I do not pretend to understand all of this. I do know that when a pervasive thought, clear or vague begins to surface and is preceded with that aura of doom or gloom I turn to thoughts of grace. These fretful emergings have no true place in my mind. Not unless they are reminders of something I’ve needed to do, in which case they are duly noted, acted upon and subsequently disappear. There are so many persons and things over which I have no control. Just myself, for the most part. I can try to understand these others, and make my own needs and preferences known as well as there being empirical standards that are, regardless of what anyone else may or may not want or think. If they are not met or honored it is time to summon up my faith and move on. Or is it possible, by being part of it, to help it to change? And to what lesser or greater degree a part?

Maybe I’ll just take my Christmas decorations down, even if it isn’t yet 12th night.

Matthew 6:25; 6:33, 34; Luke 10:38-42

Dormancy

So the other day I was talking to someone about having brought some bulbs with me to the house I’ve moved to, the usual suspects– hyacinths, daylily, daffodils, and some not-so-usual– candy cane sorrell, star gazer lilies, orchid iris, and that they were just coming out of dormancy. They had small, pale green leaf buds sprouting from the tops of the bulbs which actually is helpful for me to determine the root from the flower end. Sometimes it’s not so easy. But since they’d begun to awaken I knew I needed to put them in the ground pretty quickly. “Why?” my friend asked. I said that with no soil around the bulb for the roots to grow in it would feed off of itself. Not many things more frustrating than opening a box of mixed bulbs late winter to find dessicated, shriveled pulpy masses with wilting greenish leaf blades.

Still, it made me think. Here we are (parts of the world anyway), mid-winter when most everything is asleep, or moving very, very slowly. And the new year is upon us. Harbinger of hope, new beginnings, an awakening, opportunity for change, new directions or a reinforcing of changes already begun. When everything is still for the most part sleeping.

In the silence, this grey-dark stillness transformation begins. Things are not as still as they seem. Cell mitosis happens, bacteria and fungi swarm over dead tree limbs creating new earth. Grubs lie silent under the earth’s surface waiting to emerge and begin their new life. Things are not teeming yet, but the anticipation is such that we nearly hear it before it arrives.

Nothing is ever truly still, nothing is ever completely wasted. Something happens. Some transformation, an order out of destruction.

Life resumes.

Irony

No matter what a person believes, s/he is inclined to be caught up in the festive fanfare of Hanukkah or Christmas, or Kwanzaa. The color, the music, the shopping, the electric excitement. The crisp, sharp cold that swirls with aromatic wood fires. People are happy, have something to look forward to and for a moment forget the horrors half a world away of Christians, Jews and innocents caught in the cruel grip of terrorism.

A Savior is why we celebrate Christmas at least or at the very most, Who came to bring us of all things, peace. This world, torn apart in war, barbaric hatred. He came to bring us love. He was born on this earth like each one of us. He told us Who He was, He taught us what we are meant to know to live in peace.

His undeserved, cruel, beyond description painful death because of His love for each of us, whether we believe in Him or not, whether we Love Him or love at all, He loved us in every way beyond anything we could ever imagine loving. His love is here always, for each one of us, whenever we come to ourselves or Himself or a sense of why or how or Who. Or when we cannot see at all.

Maybe because we are so wrapped up in our lives, in ourselves we can’t imagine a love that is completely emptied for another, for you, for me. He gave us Himself. Forever.

Merry Christmas.

John 3:16-21

Kindness

We have come to expect so much these days. It is as if we overcompensate for fear lest even our most basic of needs will not be met. So when we are gently met with grace we almost don’t know how to respond.

I learned long ago that others’ kindnesses towards me are as a result of who they are, not because I am deserving of it. That is what grace is, after all, isn’t it? Something that floats down to us, undemanded, often undeserving, but with something important for us to learn.

It comes to us in the oddest places– when we are toting a cumbersome load of shopping bags, fumbling for our keys struggling to open a door and often unseen the door opens for us because someone noticed.

We sit, waiting in the emergency lane or the on-ramp while others zip by us and a car slows so we can merge into traffic. Someone noticed.

During a heavy storm in the night we hear limbs crashing to the ground, next morning we awaken to find they have all been placed by the curb to be picked up. Someone noticed.

A woman runs frantically into the library, her eyes laser-like scouring the area when a librarian, tearful child in tow, sticky lollipop in hand, smiles at the harried, beside-herself with apologies mom and hands her the child. Someone noticed.

Every day we are overwhelmed with receiving moments of grace, sometimes the benefactor, sometimes the beneficiary.

Either way, someone notices.

Psalm 97

No remorse

And thank You God for that. I have moved a few times where immediately I regretted the house I chose, West Palm and Miami being such places and the last house another but it kind of grew on me. I loved its long, sloping back yard and the nearby greenway.

This house I feel at home in, well I will as soon as I unpack all these boxes.

The previous owners were the original occupants and the Mr. was formerly with IBM. He kept meticulous, scrupulous records of everything. They maintained from underneath this house to its roof. There was not one grain of sand, no speck of dust when I had the final walk-through before closing.

It’s beautiful.

I am 10 minutes’ drive from the beach. The neighbors have been very kind in a non-invasive way. It seems like a gentle place to live. And there is a walking trail around the perimeter of the neighborhood, with a cool, clear creek running alongside for Lily to splash in.

The floor people and I did a massive cleaning of my former house, top to bottom. Hardwoods, carpet, tile, paint touch-up, scrubbing doors, bathrooms, appliances, windows. Pressure washing driveway, front porch and walkway. It gleamed!

It goes live this Wednesday and I hope sells quickly.

But for now I feel snug as a mug of hot cocoa.

Happy trails

So the movers arrive Monday to load all these cartons, crates and boxes I have been carefully packing and repacking for the past 2 years, and I will load my car with remaining orchids, tax records and assorted other stuff and drive 3 hours east. How is it that one person can have so much? I cleaned out everything the first time I packed 2 years ago, then again when I unpacked, then again when I repacked a few months ago. I don’t understand why it is so hard to let go of things I honestly have no use for and do not know I even have.

I will go through everything again when I unpack, again.

I do know where my computer is, am typing this on a laptop. No idea when I will next be at a keyboard. The canyons and caverns of boxes piled throughout my house and in the garage, the landscape of my house has changed to where I hope not to have to get up in the night for any reason because I can’t recall what I have put where. I have many new bruises, kneecaps down.

Lily is stalwart. She keeps her rawhide chews and a few select toys in a careful heap on one of her beds. She fastidiously guards any new chews I give her that she does not eat right away. Things she knew their whereabouts suddenly disappear. Things I knew suddenly disappear. I cannot remember moving or packing some very important things- the telephone, which is not on the counter where it always was, so if I mislay my cell phone I do not have a house phone to call it so I can find it. I do know where my tooth and hair brushes are, but I am very sorry for not wearing shoes against my better judgment rummaging in the garage and dropping a part of a cast iron hibachi on my foot.

Too bad it is raining today, and snow is predicted Monday.

Maybe the forecasters will be wrong.

I hope so.

Middle of the road

Lily, my lovely husky-mix rescue, loves to walk down the middle of the road on her walks. Maybe she likes to smell where the occasional flattened squirrel was. We have sidewalks. Only on 1 side of the road except the cul-de-sacs where there are no sidewalks. (Do you know that cul-de-sac is fancy French for “bottom of the bag”?? Probably people just don’t like “dead-end”). Good thing we do not have a lot of traffic in this subdivision and the speed limit is only 25, not that many people honor that. There are also some streets with speed bumps. And sidewalks. Someone I used to walk with before they moved once told me asphalt streets feel softer to dogs than concrete sidewalks. I guess so, maybe in the summer when they start to melt since they’re basically tar and gravel, but then they are also very hot, except I only walk Lily before sunrise and after dark in summer. She has a very thick coat and I think dogs that get shaved for summer look pretty funny.

Where we are moving has no sidewalks at all. The neighborhood is very small so maybe that’s why. And it is considered outer banks which surprises me since it’s almost near Southport, pretty far south. But I also have to carry special wind/hail insurance. They occasionally get hurricanes there. At least it isn’t in a flood zone.

There is a 12-acre nature trail in this new neighborhood. Lily loves the greenway where we are now, the toads in the summer and rabbits. She knows the toads can’t be caught because of their toxin, so she just chases them until they stop hopping. She loves chasing rabbits but they don’t often give her a good chase, they bounce away before she can get close enough to make it interesting.

Odd to me, moving to a place where I do not know anyone or for family, or a job, just for me and for no other reason than I would like to live there.

Pretty radical I guess, at my age.