Step One

Well, my life is moving in a different direction as of late......forward.
I love my kids dearly, and am not certain that I'm done procreating just yet. But for now I am! And for me at least, my world has just about stood still for the past 4 or so years. Yeah yeah....I've done a few things, parties, birthdays, gone to school at night one summer, bought a "new" car, baked a little ;), and made some new people to add to the craziness around here! But in my mind's eye, I've been........stagnant. That word sounds as gross as I feel about putting my dream chasing on hold. But it really was all for a good reason! Man...these little people are awesome!
Today, I sent out the invitations for my baby's 1st Birthday. Just like my other 2, he'll be walking at his big party!(He started all out walking last week) I'm beaming. And at the same time, it's the reality check that I'm no longer holding a brand new mini all the time nor am I incubating one. So time to shake off the dust and get my arse in gear.
First things first. Sell this house. We've been trying to get the hell outta Dodge for a long time now...(see above paragraphs for excuses) Once we started having the minis, we swore we wouldn't have them go to school here. Our town is not....great.....for school or anything else. What did we know when we bought here?! NADA. We were young and stupid. And of course bought at the peak of the market. So now we're going to loss a shitton of money. Oh well. Can't take it with you right?! And all along we thought we had all this time to prepare for this. But we blinked and Child 1 is four years old already. Almost old enough to start public school! Holy Crap! It's time....it's PAST the time we should have done this.
Whew.
An associate from my broker's office comes by the house tomorrow. She'll be offering up advice for us to spruce up the place and what to hide/get rid of so that potential buyers have a clean slate to look at when picturing themselves living here. Hmmmmmmmm I wonder if she'll advise us to hide all the chunky primary colored loud toys laying all over the house? And the 2 giant smelly beasts we call PETS?
You wanna hear something funny? We have to throw away a piece of furniture in our living room prior to showing the house. We live frugally here. Nothing fancy. The one "nice" piece of furniture that wasn't bought at a garage sale or Ikea or handed down to us from a relative or friend is my chair and a half. I LOVED this thing when I bought it. I bought it when I lived in God's Country(to be announced in a future post). I bought it with my own money from Pottery Barn itself. As I'm typing this, there is a hillbilly sounding voice reading it in my head. LOL It was large, and cushy, and perfect. And one day in the future, I'll buy another one. Although maybe not from Pottery Barn this time. We'll see what the budget's like. THIS is the furniture that will be sitting on our curb in a couple of weeks. Any guesses as to why? Yep........Fat Bastard got to it. We've been calling it "Chauncey's Chair" for years now. It's where you can ALWAYS find him. He really is gross. And not all his fault, but gross none the less. I believe I've mentioned his seizure disorder before? And being that he spends all his time in this chair, inevitably he's had a couple of seizures in it. We'll just leave it at this........bodily fluids tend to be spilled during a grand mal. Ew. And yeah, I wash the upholstery. And aired out the cushions. But it'll just never be the same. And lets not forget the atomic flatulence leaking out of him 24 hours a day.
It'll never be that comfy CLEAN chair that me and the Hubbs curled up in and passed out while watching a movie before I could legally call him The Hubbs. It'll never be the place guests would crash....even our really tall friend who's feet hung over the ottoman, but he was snug as a bug. It will never be the nice chair it once was. And while I know I'm sounding all sentimental right now, I am very aware that we can and SHOULD buy new furniture down the road. I'm really just laughing inside at the poor soul that drives by and decides "that's a pretty nice chair...let's garbage pick tonight!". Because it probably won't smell that bad in the crisp NJ winter air. But a short while after they get it through their front door, the stank of Fat Bastard is going to lovingly fill every crevice of their home, just like it has in ours. And trust me, Glade doesn't make anything strong enough to kill that stank!
But that's my first step in 2011......sell this house. All the good memories we've made will come with us! And there will be TONS more to add to them made elsewhere.
Stay tuned. :)

THE CHAIR-notice how Kayles got to it first, so Fat Bastard sat ON him to establish that it was indeed...HIS chair