Ugh, ugh, and more ugh

I can not adequately express my distaste for selling a home. We've had three open houses, several showings, and the sum result has been sheer exhaustion on my part. It's the constant cleaning. The constant hiding/putting away. The wrangling of the dogs, cat, and kid, while we open our home to a bunch of trudging strangers. The emotional toll as we hear, "Adorable home!" "So cute!" "Wish it had another bathroom/bedroom."

We live in a cute, little city, built after WWII for returning soldiers. These are not super large houses, though they can be expanded. We have three bedrooms, though admittedly one does serve better as an office. We have one-and-a-half baths. These are our limitations. But we have updated EVERYTHING, (granite! new appliances! refinished hardwoods! new carpet! new paint!), have the sweetest screened-in porch, great flow, and a large kitchen (for this neighborhood).

I'm not made for this. It's very hard for me to wrench open my door, invite strangers in to gawk, judge, and haggle. We fell in love with this house almost six years ago and made an offer within 20 minutes of seeing it. That was such a drastically different market! Now, the market is filled with, as one real estate agent put it, "a lot of bottom feeders keen on getting something for next to nothing."

Is it so much to ask that someone fall in love with this home? That someone would want to make it their starter home, to begin a new life in, to start a family in? It's been such a great home for us, and being who I am, I can't take the emotion out of this process (as I've been urged to do).

The summer months are already filling up with demands and responsibilities, and hanging like an albatross around my neck is this home that I adore. I'm beginning to feel frayed around the edges.

A $20-Grand Ouch

We got an offer on the house this week--some $20 grand below our asking price. Ugh. The Banker has looked at comps for houses in the neighborhood and our price was aggressive from the get-go. Several realtors who toured implied that they thought our price was too low. Still the interested party won't pony up even $10 grand more, which is needed to make our numbers work.

I hate to walk away from an offer. It leaves this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. But it's really too low. Still the market sucks, and I'm worried that we're looking a gift horse in the mouth. Selling a home really, really stinks. Ugh...I can feel the weight of my breakfast at the back of my throat...

In over my head

I know I've been lax about updates here, mostly because there's so much happening that I'm not quite sure what to write about. My life right now feels like one very major to-do list, from which I'm desperately trying to check things off.

Santa Fe was fun, though low-key. I spent the better part of the time running to stores and waiting for deliveries and cleaning. My parents' home is incredible, and I"m so proud of them. This is something they've clearly earned, and it's beautiful. The Banker came up for a long weekend and we ate at some great restaurants and saw some amazing (read: expensive) art. And Becca was pretty well behaved for the entire ordeal.

We actually succumbed a bit to the Santa Fe mentality...and we bought the tiniest oil painting. It was cheap by art standards but not by ours. Still, it's so lovely--a single cotton blossom in full bloom. The painter is Simon Winegar, and our piece is called Spring Manifest. I also fell head-over-heels for a Dan Ostermiller, but since we don't have an odd $5 grand lying around I will have to content myself with the hope that maybe someday...if I sell a kidney.

Still reeling from our Santa Fe expenditures, we're now in total house-selling mode. We had two showings this week and will have an open house this Sunday. Many kind comments about how darling the house is, but at only one-and-a-half baths, I know it's not for everyone. Still the sooner we sell this house, the better off we'll be, even if that means moving into my parents' house until we can move into the new home come July 1st. So please cross your fingers and say a few prayers, because we could use the perfect home buyer!

And then there's the aforementioned to-do list: a handful of freelance articles, Becca's Mother's Day Out group, four weddings (come on people!! Can't you postpone your love until after we sell our house?!?!), three birthdays, a graduation, a new baby in the family, and countless things to do around the house. Eeeek.

Overload

Let's see, in the past two days, this is what happened:
Made a bid on house
Counter offer
Counter-counter offer
Cat escapes
Cat returns
Counter-counter offer accepted. Holy shit--just bought a house. Will now own TWO houses.
Must sell current home. ASAP!
Cat falls off roof
Cat catches self on gutter, scrambles back inside
Cat cut off from any open crevice
Prepping home for open house
Clean, clean, put away, hide
Pack for Santa Fe

So, the last few days have been a WHIRLWIND. I think I'm allowed to use all caps given the circumstances. I'd like to go on and on about how stressful this has been, how The Banker can't sleep due to it all, how I'm in denial mode, how we need to sell this house SOON or we'll be responsible for two mortgages and I'll have to sell my dispensable internal organs on the black market, and how all the smug neighborhood kids I grew up with are probably having a pretty god laugh at my expense about all this. But there's simply no time. I have to get the house ready for an open house tomorrow and Becca and I packed to fly to Santa Fe at 8 a.m. The laid-back atmosphere of Santa Fe sounds pretty good right now...so more later. But until then, this is (apparently) where I'll call home, come July 1st:

Wondering...

So The Banker has fallen in love with an in-between house (since our dream of a home with land is at this point too expensive), and by all accounts it's move-in ready. The yard is non-existent, so this would be a house we settle for until we can afford more. Oh, and there's one more problem: It's catty-corner to my parents' house. Anyone want to weigh in on the insanity of this idea?