This morning, two men showed up to fix my basement toilet.

A team of men, actually, were necessary to fix what seems to be a dire bathroom situation. In fact, they stayed for several hours and then left to go buy some more supplies as the ones they arrived with were not ample enough.

This is what happens when you get ready to put your house on the market. You think, “My house is awesome — look at our gorgeous wainscoting and white wrap-around porch! People will be running, racing to buy this puppy.”

But then you have a stager come in and tell you that pretty much every single thing in your house needs to go and be replaced with better (read: not quite so frat-house-esque) furniture and all-white bed linens. Windows need specific Vivan window coverings so you can’t see the street (everything is very strategic — house buying and selling requires a lot of math and science, I am learning) and that ugly not-quite-red door needs to be painted and good god get rid of those hideous light fixtures. “Any reason why you continue to use a queen-sized bed? You really need to upgrade to a king!” 

So, the last week has been a revolving door of painters and contractors and electricians and plumbers and trips to lighting stores and IKEA and Costco and Target. I should buy stock in goo gone, based on the sheer number of bottles of it I have used to attempt to remove the stickers that my youngest daughter had affixed to every affixable surface in her bedroom, including the ceiling.

I have been slowly packing up all of my worldly goods, which will likely sit in boxes in a storage locker somewhere until such time as we have a) bought a house and b) sold a house and c) moved into a new house (Note: not necessarily in this order) which likely means that I won’t be able to find anything for months and will be wearing the same fair isle sweater and jeans until the spring.

My door is now painted a lovely shade of grey (gray? grey? gray?) and the toilet in the basement is now usable, except it hasn’t been used since we moved in five years ago because my children are terrified to pee in the basement.

It’s all this elaborate game of smoke and mirrors to make you need to buy my house.

(Buy my house! Buy my house! It’s lovely and has a nice white wrap-around porch!)

But there’s a possibility that once this stager is done with our home *I’m* going to need to buy it. I mean, grey really is a nice color for a front door…