The Move, day 1

Funnydad and I are sitting and reading on the floor of the bathroom of a Hampton Inn in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. It's not a big bathroom, and the floor is cold. But this room has the only light we can safely turn on while our kids fall asleep.

Today is the first day of our cross-country move. We're driving from Boulder, Colorado to our new home in Laguna Beach, California. The time between that last post about staging and this moment has been a roller coaster. Actually, lately it's felt more like being sucked into a downward spiral. Too much to recount in a single blog post, so if you haven't spent time with me in person or on the phone in the last few months, I'll just have to mete out the story to you in pieces as I post about our relocation experience. Again. That's "relo" (RE-low) to those of us who have done this so many times that we know the lingo.

Quick summary: We're going for Funnydad's new job, which he landed after being laid off last June. Which happened six months to the day after I was laid off in December. We sold our Boulder home, and we're both heartbroken to leave, but we both agree that it was the least bad of the bad options staring at us. We're wary of the expense and traffic waiting for us in Orange County. Southern California is going to have a few upsides, for sure. But, no matter how lovely the weather is, it's not going to be Boulder. It's not going to be that town where we fit in and thrived so completely. We're leaving good friends behind. It took years to build those relationships, and I'm not excited about the work and time it will take to recreate that in California — if it's even possible.

So. Holding back tears, we're headed west. We'll stop in a couple of National Parks and (I'm sure) several unplanned places. We just have to be at Funnydad's father's house in LA by Thanksgiving. Along the way, the four of us will spend the next ten days sleeping in the same room. Good thing I don't mind reading on a bathroom floor.

Living on Stage

The towels in our bathroom belong to someone else. The stager we hired put them there. After we de-cluttered our house, the stager swooped in and made it look fancy, the way a house has to look these days to sell. We put our mis-matched dressers and garage-sale book shelves in storage. We got rid of our half-broken Ikea stuff. We packed away our photographs and books. The stager, Heidi, came with loads of comfy chairs and large vases of artificial flowers, lots of lamps and throw pillows. There are now 26 throw pillows in our house; two weeks ago there were three. She put nice towels in our bathrooms, gave us an acceptable credenza for our TV, and put red martini glasses in our living room. Because, if you buy our house, you'll just loll around drinking cosmos in that living room every night.

So, the towels in our bathroom belong to the stager, and I can't use them. MY towel is stuffed under the sink, which means whenever I need it I have to scoop it out of the vanity. The toaster oven now lives in the garage, and our kitchen radio spends most of its time in a cabinet. The only books left here are the ones I am actively using for work and a selection for the girls (which are tucked in a drawer in their dresser). There's also a coffee table book of Andrew Wyeth landscapes, but that belongs to the stager.

Every night before bed I pick up and put away absolutely everything, and every morning after breakfast I clean. I wipe and sweep and dust and even mop if necessary (note: Mop n' Glo may be the most magical substance on Earth). My house has never been this consistently clean and uncluttered, and it's so much no fun work to keep it this way. But, the reports from Realtors tell us that the house is "showing well," and if that means we have a better chance of selling it quickly and for a decent price, it'll be worth it. Here are some photos of what the place looks like all sparkly clean decorated with Heidi's stager's touch.

Testing

This is a test. This is a test of the blog, but this phase of my life is also a test of my sanity. More to come.