The Hub is taking this week off from paying jobs to work on our kitchen, in an effort to get the house into more sale-able shape. He has begun to repair a crack in the ceiling - which, of course, didn't bother us, and had been there for 15 years before we moved in without getting any worse. He took down the ceiling fan which he always disliked, and will swap out the ceiling fan in the spare bedroom in it's place ( and install a new light fixture in the spare room) He's begun the process of putting up the crown molding, which he is making out of scrap wood, along the part of the walls which were so hopelessly over wallpapered. I'm so impressed by his ability to make such great looking stuff out of scrap wood! And when it's painted it's going to look a like a million bucks!

He's also going to install a dishwasher, and we're thinking of painting the bathroom.

But, the real news is, my parents have moved.
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Yes, I know, I didn't tell you they were thinking of moving. I didn't tell you they were moving. But, they did.

My parents are really private people, and they don't like to have their business mentioned all over the internet....which may lead you to ask why I am bringing it up at all.

Because we are moving in to their house. Soon. Like next week.

It's not as if it is a surprise to the winged creature...it's just that the whole reality of the situation has not exactly set in with me. You see, my parents had an addition built on to my brother's home. And, if I don't know anything else, I know that contractors are almost never done when they say they will be. So even though I kept hearing "mid-December, mid-December" I took it with a LARGE grain of salt.

The average contractor may be something of an imoveable object....but my father is something of an unstopable force. "Slow-Motion-Sam" (his name for the laconic carpenter on the job) was no match for my father's sheer will power. It's good to see Dad have this much energy, though it was a little discombobulating to have them moving right at Christmas time.

And now the reality of the whole Grand Plan has landed on me with both feet. I had hoped our house would have sold by now. If anything, I was worried that we'd wind up moving into my parents house on top of my parents, so to speak. That wouldn't have been terrible, except that my mother is allergic to the dog ( who loves her anyway).

Instead, we have the opposite problem. Mom and Dad are in their new place, and we need to sell our house - right now - or at least as close to it as possible. It has to be off the market for 30 days to get a new number when it lists again. That means January 21. And THAT means that I have 23 days to get all of the work that needs to be done on our house done, all the painting we want to do at my parents hosue - hereinafter called "the new house", decide what furniture we are keeping, what we will try to sell, figure out how to get all of The Hub's crap- er - equipment out of the basement and into the new basement and, biggest of all, overcome the weird feeling of moving into the house we moved into as a family when I was 10.

It's a feeling of being very familiar with the place yet feeling like I don't belong there at all. Every time I go over to the now empty new house, I stand there for 10 minutes looking at the place where my mothers china closet had been for 25 years. It isn't there anymore. Nor is the huge dining table that was meant for a much larger home, but wound up in the breezy 1950's rancher. I walk around and around the perimeter of the dining room like a confused dog.

We are very blessed that we have a place to go, and I am beyond grateful to my parents for renting it to us to help us get back on our feet. It's just that this is one of those occassions where, in carefully mentally preparing for one outcome, I have been completely surprised by the actual outcome - at least on the emmotional level. I don't know if this ever happens to anyone else, but it's what's happening with me.

More news later....