Paint me blue!

Back home after a few days in Florida. It's warm-ish here, but it looks disgusting. Foggy, wet and muddy. Wet leaves everywhere. Dogs bringing it everywhere inside. I'm having a big time, full-on, bring on the blues, meltdown-kind-of-day. I'll list here my excuses and maybe they'll go away...

I hate rain. I hate it with a passion. I hate it 100 times more than cold weather and I am no fan of cold weather.

Lula is with her dad today, so Marcos is here bored, which means he's asking me every 10 minutes to play with him. I really don't want to play trains or come up with play ideas. I have no patience today for it.

Holidays are over. I'm not that much into it, but it has been nice to be away from work and see the family and we did have an awesome time in Florida and that high seems to send us crashing down harder into the reality that is "Monday" and "back to normal".

We are full. There's not a spot in this house that is not covered with clothes or toys or furniture or simply trash that needs to be hauled away somehow. The great secret of suburban life in America is that there is no simple way to get rid of things. All you see on TV is commercials for getting things into your house or how to get more space or bigger houses so that you can bring more stuff into your house, but no one tells you how hard it is to get rid of the things that you don't want anymore. There are so many rules and limits that it seems that if you want to get rid of all this stuff, it's going to be almost as expensive as getting it all in the first place. It's almost not worth it when people give you something for free or getting a great deal off craigslist or something, since it's going to cost you a lot more to get rid of it. I guess that's why people give away stuff or post it for free on craigslist to start with!! HA! That's another big secret exposed! Anyway, I think we are at the point that we need to pay to get one of those big dumpsters in here and throw everything that we want to get rid of and hope that there are no restrictions on what we can dump in there (or that we are not throwing out anything on the restricted list) and then bury the rest underground or in the furthest corner of the attic so that not even a home inspector can find it.

Which brings me to the next item on the Blues list: Moving.

We have come up with the big idea of selling this house and buying a different one. It needs to be bigger, it needs to be in a nice, kid friendly neighborhood, it can't be too far from where we are right now and it can't be more expensive than our current house. Sounds like a super easy job for a realtor, isn't it? Houses fitting that description do exist, but there are not that many to choose from and they obviously are going to need something. It's a matter of how much of that something you are willing to deal with. What are we willing to give up?

I have a lot of questions about this, especially the part about selling our current house. Questions about the current market in the middle of this recession. Questions that need to be posed to a professional. Questions that I seem to be unable to even to voice out loud because every time I open my mouth to try to discuss this with K, some kid or dog will make interrupting noises to the point that I just give up. Maybe that's a sign...

Thinking about selling the house means making a list of all kinds of things that need to be done before you even attempt to sell the house. Even making the list makes me feel like going to the dentist. I know that we can do an awesome job of tiling the bathrooms and make it look like a pro job for pennies on the dollar, but the only part I enjoy is looking at it after it's completely done. I don't think that joy is worth all the work to me. I know the amount of money saved is worth it, but I wish I could simply afford to pay someone. The same goes for most of the items on the list, even those that K will be doing, instead of me. At the same time, I know she enjoys doing this and seeing the result of our hard work and it's my top job in life to make her happy, so it will be done. It's just that the mental list overwhelms me, especially on a day like today.

What stresses me the most about the whole "selling the house" thing is the time between getting that sign stuck into the front yard and closing. Last time we did this, it took like 6 months. I remember not being a happy camper during that whole time. The house has to be clean all the time. You don't want to spend any money at all because you want everything to be perfect for when you go for the loan for the next house, plus you know moving in itself is expensive. Even the wait for any showings, etc. is stressful to me. Plus, when we think about selling the house, it's because we want to buy a new house, so we start looking at houses, find some that we like, but can't do anything about it until ours sells, so then there's the stress of thinking that other "perfect house" will sell before ours sells and we won't be able to get it and have to start all over...

I go through this mental root canal every other day. I'll stress about things, talk about it with K and in doing so, calm myself down, organize myself and conclude that we'll manage it and it'll be fine, only to get back on the roller coaster in a couple of days and do it all over again.

As I type here, I realize how silly this whole thing is. I'm just but a tooth in the cog of life. I need to work harder at not stressing so much about things that are beyond my control. I've always had a tough time with that. Some of the things on this list, I can control, but maybe trying to control them is part of the problem. I blame the rain anyway. I still hate it and it needs to go.

On a good note, I got a super awesome Christmas present from K. She got me 5 pounds of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. As I type all this and try to melt the blues away, I'm enjoying a warm cup of awesome coffee. Marcos is "camping" in the living room, with his tent, roasting marshmallows on the fireplace, telling us how this is the "best camp ever in the whole world". So really, how bad can it be for me? Yeah, I'll shut up now. I need to finish my coffee and get to that list.