I don’t know if anyone reads this type of post, but I’m just rambling about what’s going on in our lives lately…

Last weekend we spent a few days at our old house in SC to get it ready to put on the market. We hadn’t put it on the market yet because the market was so sluggish we felt we’d lose money on it and because about half a dozen houses were up for sale on our street (which might make a potential buyer wonder what’s wrong with the area). Jim’s company has been helping with the old house payments as part of his relocation package, but that’s coming to an end before long, so we need to get the ball rolling. If we can’t sell it in a reasonable time frame, we’ll look into renting it. Jim already looked into a leasing company, which would help since we’re in another state, but I’d really rather be out from under the responsibility completely.

Jim took off a few days and went down on Thursday; Jesse and I went after school got out on Friday. I don’t think I had been back to the house since Jeremy moved a year ago. Jason and Mittu did some work on it while they lived there, and Jim and Jesse took a few excursions over the summer to paint and do minor repairs. So it was good to see those.I certainly don’t miss those stairs, though.

My main order of business was cleaning: mopping all the rooms that didn’t have carpet, wiping out cabinets, dusting windowsills, vacuuming, cleaning up the stove and counters, making runs to W-Mart, etc. It looks a lot better, but it’s discouraging, because the more you do the more you see needs to be done, but at some point you just run out of time and energy. But we got it to the place where the realtor could take decent pictures.

We also took everything we had left in the attic (Jim and Jesse, actually, did that) and a heap of things Jason and Mittu had left and sorted through what to keep, trash, or donate. I finally let go of a number of toys I had held on to for grandkids some day. Funny how I had more of a hard time letting go of some of the toys than the kids did. But I tried to look at it realistically. When mine were little, my mother-in-law kept a box of toys for the kids to play with at her house, and they were all old, faded, labels torn off, etc., and the kids just weren’t motivated to play with them even though they “worked.” So I tried to look at things through that lens, and it wasn’t necessarily easier to let them go emotionally, but it did help me to be more practical.

I also had one box of the kids’ work from our four years of home schooling and a couple from elementary school years. It was fun to sort through those. Though there is a part of me that wants to hang on to all of that, I decided not to keep rote stuff like spelling tests and math exercises and workbook sheets, but rather just the things that showed some of their personality and creativity. I’m looking forward to going through the papers I kept more carefully.

Jesse got to go for a few hours to a youth activity our old church was having. He tries to touch base with friends whenever we’re there, and he missed a couple he really wanted to see, but I’m glad he got to do that, at least.

While Jim was there alone he just slept at the house — we have one couch and love seat still there. But when Jesse and I came down we all stayed at a hotel. Jim went back to the house early Sat. morning to get started, while Jesse and I finished getting ready and packed up. I had two dresses on hangers in the closet and laid them on the end of the bed so I’d be sure to see them — and somehow I missed them, even though I took another pass through the room to make sure we had everything. 🙄 I drive myself crazy with double and triple checking things, and still miss or forget things. Sigh. Thankfully the hotel found them and sent them to us, though it cost about the price of one of the dresses to do so!

We ended up getting back here about 11 p.m. Saturday night, exhausted. I had thought we might stay for the Sunday morning service at our old church, but Jim wanted to get back. I was dragging through Sunday, and though I don’t usually like to get meals out for Sunday dinner, I asked if we could this time. We brought home Papa Murphy’s pizza. I did get a good nap in the afternoon.

Our Labor Day was just a low key day. Jim and Jesse unloaded some of the stuff we brought back, cleaned out the cars, I did laundry and such, Jim and I took a nap in the afternoon. We had some much needed rain — no thunderstorms or heavy pouring, just gentle steady rain that was very pleasant to fall asleep to.

I’m still working on the best way to schedule my time since school started back, mainly struggling with where to fit the exercise in. I like to do it before showering, but during the school year I usually shower first thing. So I’ve been trying different things — still haven’t found an ideal situation, but I’m still keeping up with it. I don’t want to lose what ability I’ve worked up to, even though some days I exercise through gritted teeth because I don’t want to do it. But usually by the time I’m done I’m glad I did.

That’s probably way more than enough rambling for one day!