Push Thru It! Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures – Selling a Home

My dog, Emmet, spent the day in my car yesterday with an unexpected showing of my house. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the need to “declutter” has made my already well-lived in car the source of an array of items – my jewelry box, a food processor, a scarecrow from Halloween and spices from more ambitious cooking days that I aspire to use in new digs, yet extend beyond spice and spacesaving basics of salt and pepper to season food, now served on paper plates.

I made a night-before, sweet-potato juice crusted baking sheet “stash” in my laundry basket before I did the daycare “dash” of my girl, wiping her face and the sink of blue toothpaste. I covered a hole from my dryer hook-up with a dustpan, still well-placed in the laundry room and, now, a sturdy, plastic barrier to any gusts of wind as potential buyers breeze through my mud room, more like “sludge” room, following a recent clean of my furnace. Luckily, I had Clorox wipes on hand, and I was able to put the laundry basket in front of the smeared black soot until I could get home for a more detailed bleach job. Thank you, PBS, for the 5 p.m. Sesame Street! I picked up the final dust balls which roll around the house like the twister havoc of Dorothy and Kansas.

Driving, oh so gently, so as not to spill Emmet’s water on Helen Catherine’s mounting artwork - we are not the paperless poster family - I stayed calm, cool and collected, giving away only a bit of my frenzy in a co-worker’s quiet tip that I had buttoned my shirt wrong. Teaching my girl the meaning of “sacrifice” over recent weeks, she and I rocked to Sherry Lewis and Lambchop, when Ms. Lewis must have been aspiring to the disco circuit and contemplating a change from puppeteer to party girl. I kissed my girl goodbye and frantically searched for my work cell phone, buried under dirty gym clothes in the passenger seat as I aspire to up my serotonin levels and keep my composure.

Emmet was well-hydrated and enjoyed the company of co-workers, who busted out from cubicles to accompany us on walks. He likely prompted smiles from workers buried in blackberries making the daily trudge or calls to Animal Cruelty from those who saw only a black, cute snapshot of my life looking at them with big brown eyes, wet nose peering from a cracked window. Like any best friend, he will welcome me at the end of the day. I take flexibility and forgiveness where I can get it.

As I heated my soup, I noticed a black hair on the back of my lidless Tupperware, which likely made its way from my house to my car to my lunch. I graciously removed it as I made small talk with my old boss, with whom I keep a polished and professional appearance. She once told me I needed to ditch open toed shoes and wear pantyhose so I am cautious, using a napkin to remove likely parsley from my teeth. She follows a boss who told me I dressed like Laura on “Little House on the Prairie” – perhaps my own Sherry Lewis metamorphosis.

At the end of the day, I click my mouse and my heels and, do I really want to go home? Yes - need to get my girl and my dog and my tarragon for a chicken dinner I will cook tonight. Realtor, post showing, said my house also needs a good cleaning and dusting.