Where've I been?

It's like a drug, this personal blogging space. I've been without for what seems like forever and I didn't know how much I missed it. But there have been many times I've thought "I wish I could write about this" or "That is a great topic to ask my blogging peeps." So afresh, anew, I humbly return. Boy, is this fun.

I feel that for some of you who've wondered what became of me, I should share a bit of back story.

My old blog had to go away. I meant to revive it immediately but ran into a few stumbling blocks. Now I'm not sure it will ever be retrievable, and for that I am miserable.

But, onward and all that.

Since we last spoke, a lot has happened.

Like, we sold and bought a house. Which is big enough on its own, but our house selling and buying experience? EPIC.

Here's why. To begin at the beginning, I have to explain that the prospect of selling our house both thrilled and terrified me, much as it does most rational human beings. But me? More. Because we do not do well with being consistently clutter-and-dust-free. We try, we really do, but the world is too much and we have other things to do.

So I knew that listing our house and slogging through the showings and open houses would be utter torture for us. Beyond the usual level of torture. I foresaw screaming and rending of clothing. I wondered if our marriage could survive it. I mean it; I did.

Months before we intended to make anything official, we started working on the house. We had had our realtor come out last winter and look around and identify things she thought we should change before we started, and we took her words to heart. I bought a caulk gun.

We painted a room, touched up the cabinets, replaced some fixtures, and thought we were on our way. I organized a closet and cleaned out a piece of furniture and deposited a few cluttery things to storage thinking of all those SELL THIS HOUSE shows I'd invested in on HGTV. I was going to do this right. Those hours on Saturdays were NOT WASTED. SEE, HUSBAND? I TOLD YOU I NEEDED TO HAVE CONTROL OF THE TV SOMETIMES.

And we started looking. Our faithful realtor dragged us to two or three houses every weekend and suffered my manic questioning. She tolerated my frequent emails with lists of homes to see and my equally frequent changing of those lists. My priorities changed with the Kansas weather, and folks, it was spring. If you know what I mean.

We seemed to be doing okay, but every week she'd very patiently ask "Is your home ready to list?" and we'd sheepishly admit it was not. "But one more week!" we'd cry. "Next weekend, we'll be done!" And we meant it, we really really did. We needed to clean the garage. We needed to shampoo the carpets. Just a couple more things, and we'd be ready to roll.

But somehow, we were never ready. Our trusty realtor kept showing us houses, knowing we could never make an offer without at very *least* a listed house, but she humored us anyway, poor dear.

And we kept looking. It turned out, at the same time we were looking, one of my BFF's was completing her PhD in Iowa (can I hear you say Heeeaaay!) and she and her husband and ridiculously beautiful baby were looking to purchase a home in Lawrence, right smack dab in my price range.

The race was on.

Kidding. Sort of. We swore we wouldn't get mad at one another over the houses and if someone bought the other's dream home, so be it. May the fastest woman win. And get this.

First, my friend who lived OUT OF TOWN and was house shopping from afar BEAT ME. She bought hers first. How shamed I was.

Second, she found our house for us. That's right, she found it, sent me the listing, went with me to look at it, said "This is a great house but I don't want any part of that pool," and gave me her blessing.

Third, the house, (here I go, burying the lede)which we did end up purchasing after much chagrin and gnashing of teeth, was listed on Craigslist.

So this homebuying experience was unconventional from the git-go, and it only got weirder from there.