Yes, it is me...I am back. Oh my goodness I love this space."So why aren't you here more regularly?" I hear you ask!.. A good and valid question... and one with which I have been struggling for some time.
Sometimes I am just too tired to write. Sometimes the overwhelming sadness of my current situation renders me inarticulate. No one wants to hear my whinging.
But here I am. It's late, there is champagne involved, but my visceral need is to reach out into this place where I have found solace and wisdom in the past.
Oh and let's face it...no one else is listening :-)
So when I left you I was wallowing in my 'crap Christmas' and moving forward towards the sale of my house and the start of my post huband life. Guess what?
STILL THERE!!!!!!
The agony of Open Inspections is with us every weekend. We find out the time around Thursday each week and we plan the weekend around housework, garden tidy up and hiding away the day to day paraphernalia of life. Sound system, TV, telephone and even the kettle, get swept off the kitchen benches and secreted in the pantry. Put away the sewing machine, the computer and the watering can. Buckets, mops, laundry baskets and cat food get moved up to the shed and the cats have to be tracked down and locked into The Pit for the duration of the inspection. Outside, Himself arrives, geared up for sailing, but he mows the lawn, vacuums up bark and leaves and makes a half hearted stab at sweeping the patio.
We are all over it.
For the first few inspections we filled vases with flowers, lit candles and set up glasses of wine. We removed every trace of our day to day life and presented a well manicured garden, teeming with life. Now, we sweep everything away with a lick and a promise, wave a hose over the browning lawn and pray for someone to come. We've had to reduce the price and we still had only one looker last Sunday.
We had a perfect offer back at the end of January. On the first day back at school I had the phone call saying someone had offered exactly the amount we wanted, and I cried with relief. That weekend I took Prof J and her engineer husband out to see the house I was keen on, and I made an offer.
OK it had a pool (not what I wanted) but it was so right in every other aspect. I made the offer subject to settlement and held my breath.On the Tuesday of the following week the agent called to say the buyers had changed their minds. The reason? The wife didn't want to live on a slope. Hello, why was she looking in our area? ALL the houses are on slopes :-D
The house I had offered on accepted my offer, but once they learned I had no sale at my end, they insisted on the right to continue advertising.
As a result, the following weekend they received a better offer.
So we are back at the drawing board. The stress of having to work around the inspections is telling, although I must say The BA has been a great support and practical assistant. She is currently waiting for Uni to start up again. Having dabbled somewhat unsuccessfully last year, on her return from overseas, she has changed courses and hopefully will be more confident, resilient and successful this year. She applied for a full time job this week, thinking that she might defer her course and work first, but it didn't pan out. Oh well, she has other options. She's lucky in that respect!
Meanwhile Himself is living in rental accommodation, somewhat closer to our 'village' centre. In further confirmation of the reason why I cannot continue to hitch my (financial at least) star to his, he claimed to have been unable to have considered selling the house whilst living in it. Huh. Nice for some........
I have heard nothing from the boys. When I spoke to No 2 Son to advise of some urgent mail he asked me quite guilelessly where I was living. Despite having had Christmas Dinner together, the family had not discussed the marital situation at all. They were unaware of the plans for the house or the stage we were up to with respect to its sale. I briefly wondered whether they had noticed my absence at the dinner table.
This was so not the outcome I had expected when I made my vows 9 years ago.
Wish us luck in our wait folks!!
