Yesterday and today, we’ve had painters here working on the house. This company was recommended to me by our realtor, and they did a great job. Our foyer, stairwell, and upstairs hallway are all freshly painted. Also, the ceilings in both the dining room and kitchen have been re-painted. (Both of them had some messy places from various other painting projects that Dave and I had done ourselves.)

On the one hand, I’m a little irritated that I spent so much money (don’t ask) for these guys to do what amounted to about four or five hours’ worth of work for them. But at the same time, I can honestly say that it is such a huge relief that I didn’t have to do any painting myself, I almost would’ve been willing to pay them even more. So, whatever. The job is done, I didn’t have to do it, life is good.

I’m trying to talk Dave into going appliance-shopping with me this weekend. Our microwave is missing a handle and is generally sort of god-awful looking, so we need to get a new one. And our stove/range also looks pretty ragged, so I’d like to get a new one. The main problem with the stove is that it’s gas, and one of the burners always hesitates to ignite, then it suddenly goes FWOOOM!! And almost sets you on fire. I’m terrified to have Cate anywhere in the kitchen when I have to turn on the stove. And it turns out that ranges are a lot cheaper than I thought they were. So hopefully we can replace our old, busted, originally-white-now-stained-to-hell appliances with some pretty, shiny, stainless steel ones, and start making the kitchen look a little jazzed up. Kitchens and bathrooms are supposed to be the two rooms that really help sell houses, right?

It feels good that we’re starting to gain some momentum with the home improvements. Our realtor friend and her husband volunteered to help us out with a few of the other projects, so hopefully that’ll save us some money and keep things moving along. Yay!

Yesterday, our realtor friend came over to give us the report that she’d done on our house – market analysis, comparing our house to others nearby that have sold, and a whole slew of other information. And oh hey, did you know that we’re currently in a housing market slump? Did you know that it’s mentioned on like every frigging news report? Yeah. Well, the upshot is that with the price she thinks we could get for our house, we’d have enough money left over (after closing costs, realtor fees, etc.) to pay for our move, but that’s about it. We won’t have squat to use as a down payment on a new house.

I’m trying to look at this from a glass half-full perspective. I could easily turn into the Witchy Wife and blame Dave for this, because if he had let me sell the house when I wanted to, before the market crapped out, we probably would’ve gotten a lot more money for this place. But if we had done that, we would’ve ended up buying a house in a different part of Seattle, because that was before we knew about the option to move to North Carolina. And honestly, even if we do have to finance 100% of the mortgage on our next place, it’ll still be a heck of a lot cheaper than what we’re paying for our house right now. So, you know, que sera sera. I’m putting my faith in the idea that we’ll end up where we’re supposed to be, when we’re supposed to be there.

The part that I’m freaking about is that Dave casually mentioned to Renee (our realtor friend) that he wants to get our house on the market “by the end of February.” What-what-WHAT??? So now I’m bouncing back and forth between:
a. “Yay! He’s on board with moving! Let’s strike while the iron is hot and get the H-E-double-hockey-sticks outta here!”
and
b. “Wait, does he have any idea how much work we have to do before we can sell this place? February is a short month, there’s no way it’ll be ready in time! PANIC!!!”

My brain sort of went into hyper-spin trying to think of all the dozens of little things that we have to do before we can move, and I started to seriously wig out. I ended up creating a Word document where I listed out all of my to-do tasks, and I saved it as “Feb08 Freak Out.” It helped to have it all written down so I could relax, go to sleep, and know that I wouldn’t magically forget anything important overnight. (Hey, it’s happened before.) And if it’s saved on my computer, it’s safer than being written on a sheet of paper which could disappear to lord-knows-where at any time.

So far, I’ve left messages for three different contractors for three different projects, and I have four people scheduled to come here to give me estimates on various other home improvement-y and/or move-y things. So it’s definitely coming along, which is good.

But if at some point in the next month or so, you hear a faraway-sounding high-pitched squeal followed by a popping noise, that very well might be my head exploding. Just so you know.