painting and rearranging and cleaning and hysteria

"A change will do you good!"
"A little change never hurt anyone."
"Hey lady, spare some change?"

I do not handle change well. The first two kinds, that is, not the third kind. The third kind I roll up into neatly labeled paper envelopes and SPEND. Or, as we're doing right now, save.

As we move swiftly towards having a home I consider photo-worthy and open-house-worthy, I have begun inexplicably dragging my feet. Rob, on the other hand, is energized and wondering what happened to his go-getter of a wife?

I am deep in self-protective mode. This involves hemming and hawing on big decisions because the worst that could happen is that I will end up making a terrible mistake. I am being nit-picky and precise about what must be where in order to invite a realtor with a camera over. I am grumpy and not sleeping well, and my back is all knotted and crackly with the stress.

In short, I am freaking out. Thankfully, as I told a friend, I keep the screaming in my head and not out loud (you are welcome, Rob and Blake!), and I am married to someone who knows how to manage my crazy. As I fretted last night about my inability to move decisively towards something, ANYTHING in "get this home sold" terms, Rob nodded and said he understood:

"Your worry makes perfect sense, based on your personality. There's very little about this stuff, buying and selling a house, that you can control. No wonder you're panicking."

Yes! YES! That is it! I love me some control. More precisely, I love me some ILLUSION of control, because as anyone can tell you, we wee little munchkins can control very little here on planet earth. I keep commanding my hair to stop its ends from splitting, and it keeps not working. I instruct the floors to stay nice and clean for a good long while, and before you know it, they are gross and dirty again.

Even recognizing all this has been helpful to me. I have moved towards finding small chairs to go in our small spaces and finished two new pillows for our bed (didn't care for the old ones as they were). We all got up early today to go check out used furniture stores for a console table suitable for the living room, and Rob and I got set up on Mint.com so that we can take down my desktop (with its budgeting software) and still manage our finances without a computer in the dining area. Every one of those things seems huge, and our home seems bare, and it hits me that I still have a lot of cleaning to do and that no matter what else happens, this is our HOME.

Of course it will be hard! And with time and love, a new house will grow into a home for us too, but that will require change first.

I am so screwed.

Chairs and throw pillows in the freshly empty spot where our enormous black buffet used to be.