Since the house is pared down to the bare minimum, and the ceilings are vacuumed (Thank God! How could I have lived in a house with such dusty ceilings!), I've found some strange sort-of serenity. Oh, the anxiety remains, don't get me wrong, but it has been tempered somewhat by these un-cluttered, "straight-from-Pottery Barn and Ikea" surroundings.
I've reached the stage of house-selling where we have a "system" in place for keeping every nook and cranny clean. Doing laundry often and having fewer clothes around; less clutter means less dust and more open space to vacuum quickly.
My favorite new habit, though, is following behind every male in the household - and I mean every male, thankyouverymuch - and wiping pee droplets off the commodes. Under the seat, under the lid, on top of the lid (?!), on the floor.
And I'm actually thankful when it's just around the toilets; this is soooo the best time for our 2-yr old to become interested in potty-training and "naked running!" (this can only be said out loud if you actually yell it enthusiastically). Yesterday naked running (!) led to naked peeing on the basement carpet. Really?! I thought I only had to worry about that with the damn dogs.
BUT we have, in fact, come up with a decent system for the (damn) dogs [I really do curse them in my head just about every time I think/speak/write about them].
Our genius system for our 2 gi-normous barking, smelly, peeing dogs includes a 10 ft by 10 ft chainlink pen in our garage. It's 6 ft high. It looks like we have wrestling cage matches out there on weekend nights. I can see it now: swarthy, rough guys taking bets in the corner of the smoke-filled garage, watching ... I don't know... drunk rednecks? biker chicks? circling each other in the cage, hunched over as they size up the competition.
In any case, it looks utterly ridiculous, but it seems to be doing the trick. And it's better than their hair getting into those sparkling nooks and crannies in the rest of the house.
Speaking of hair, well... aside from the simple fact of having kids and dogs living here, it's our other challenge to being always "show-ready". HAIR. And I'm not just talking about the obvious grown-up gross kind. Not being a person who is easily grossed-out by much, I've put myself in the mind of my friends who are. My darling friends who can't stand icky (and to me rather innocent) things like "feet" and "bugs" and "dirty diapers" and "your kids' used tissues". I have to assume that every potential buyer who comes into my house wants to feel like they are walking through the sterile pages of a catalog. We have the standard catalog decor - now we just need to shave every hair off of our dogs, our children, and ourselves. I think even the stuffed animals are shedding, just to spite us.
So, that's pretty much our update thus far: it's turned me into a semi-relaxed, pee-obsessed, dog-resenting, hairless clean freak.
Overall, I'm a joy to be around.
And I won't even get started on my husband... until next entry, maybe.
