exhausted

I thought it was hard work maintaining a home for sale. And then we came into true Hell Week, otherwise known as The Close.

I'm way too tired to even go into it right now.

Just wanted to tell you that I'm still here, barely clinging to the ability to communicate cohesively. But still here.

The house is supposed to close on Monday.

I hear this will all be over soon. And soon, we can all get back to a new normal. You know, where strangers aren't all up in my personal space, and business, and traipsing on my last nerve.

Yeah. That'll be nice.

The move happens next weekend. Our yard sale is tomorrow. And in between, lots more sorting and stressing and probably sobbing. It wouldn't be going out on a limb to guess that I'll be snorting and weeping in the not-too-distant future.

Someone remind me, strongly please, to not enter the real estate game again for a long, long while.

I'll smile and thank you for it when this is all over.

messy growth

It seems like only yesterday I was driving myself crazy wondering whether I was going to have a boy or a girl. Now, my beautiful big boy Felix is four months old and already taking on solid food.

Yeah. I'm heading for a metaphor.

Similarly, it surely had to be just yesterday that we were driving ourselves crazy wondering whether it was the right time to take on a move, buying and selling homes in this turbulent market, and doing it all with a newborn. Now, here we are on the verge of successfully relocating our happy family to a more suburban Utopia just 20 minutes south.

I have a hard time understanding how we did it all. More than a lot of it is a big blur.

As Felix begins to learn how to chew and take food from a spoon, pablum goes all akimbo. Thin gruel ends up in the least likely of places, and some of it even in his mouth. Sometimes there are tears. To the uninitiated, it might look like chaos.

Likewise with our home. As moving boxes and flying newspaper replace the known and gentle order I had created (and relied upon), turbulence seems to reign. But I know that just underneath the controlled violence, the tectonics are reshaping a better future for us all.

So I let the pablum fly, dig in and keep packing.

sick but well

Stacked, by Diana Crites

I have just enough time to share my latest drawing with you, which is to say no time at all. Between a rollicking phlegmy virus that has wiped out all joy and will to live this week, and packing our home between taking care of three sick kids...

I lost my train of thought. Serious sleep deprivation makes one very wacky.

The saying 'no rest for the wicked' keeps going through my head, but there's also no point to that at all.

Oh yes, I remembered. Between all of that, I managed to take sips of mental vacation in the form of drawing. I love drawing, especially in a pen and ink crosshatch style. It's very satisfying, especially in that it quiets the static-filled stimulus in my over-tired mind. Stimulus like replaying odd sayings that may or may not be pertinent, and trying to decipher whether I really think that I'm wicked or just really, really tired.

I should stop typing and lay down.

Please come see my newest drawing, Stacked. It's one of my very favorite subjects, Boston Terriers. I like it a lot and hate the thought of parting with it, but I told myself that everything I make right now I'm putting for sale in my shop. In that way I'll be motivated to keep creating.

Thanks for sharing with me. Be back after the virus has had its way and made room for sleep.

Glorious sleep.

the birthday march

If there's one thing I do extraordinarily well, it's beat myself up.

And so I've been luxuriating in feeling really guilty for publicly commemorating just one of our special days in March. Let me correct that and ease my heartburn, pretty please.

If your family is anything like mine, then March is the birthday-est month of the year.

Not only do we get to celebrate my beloved husband, but--

• my second and most rapscallion son, Edward (March 5)
• my gorgeous and incredibly bad-ass Mom (March 18)
• one of my very best friends, the beautious Miki (March 6)
• and twin wonders, best friends to my boys and Miki's own miracles, Annika and Aaron (March 4)

I think by the end of March, I could easily pass for the biggest and fluffiest of marshmallow treats. That's how much cake we consume. Well, me anyway.

I would have liked to have blogged about each date as we passed them. But I've been really bogged down with buying and selling and cleaning and staging homes. It's not that any birthday is more special than another, it's just that I've got enough gray hairs and stress wrinkles and comfort eating pounds from this particular March.

And so hopefully this tribute to March birthdays will suffice. Happy birthday and all my love to you all.

Happy Birthday, Mom and Edward!

I hope all your wishes come true, my handsome little devil

Happy birthday, Miki, Aaron (not shown here) and precious Annika! You guys light up my life.

Aside from the added pounds and the added stress, this March has been really incredible. Having special days to celebrate some of the great loves n my life just make it more so.

___

In between home stuff and baby world, I'm still finding some time to draw. It really helps keep the brittle nerves in check. Drawing cross-hatch for me almost fills the void that was left when I quit smoking. I love to have something to keep my hands busy and my mind from nibbling on itself.

This drawing is of a brave little monkey in a clown hat. On a high wire. If you're thinking that I tend to illustrate what I'm feeling at the time, you'd be correct. This is going to be a full-size pen and ink drawing, and it will be available as an unframed original in my shop very soon.

in thanks of the day

Although doubtless you would have called me every kind of fool at the time -- and you wouldn't not have been wrong -- the best thing I ever did was to marry my husband.

Sure it looked terrible on paper. We'd only been dating for four months, had known each other for well less than a year, and eloped to a quiet cemetery-side ceremony presided over by our mutual friend. But that leap of faith, quite unbeknown to us at the time, fast-tracked us to the rest (and the best) of our lives.

One day I'll have to tell you the story of how we met. It's really funny. I'd been brainwashed to believe that he was an ultraviolent misogynistic monster. But when I came face-to-face with his downward slanting blue eyes, his deep dimples, and his devil-may-care sideburns it was all over, ridiculous reputation or not.

Don't even get me started on his crazy-sexy Popeye forearms.

He's always been my guardian angel, and for the last seven years I've been lucky enough to have him, too, as my best friend and faithful husband. Today is his birthday. and I just want to tell him (and the world) how goddamn much I love him.

I love you, Mike. Happy Birthday, baby.

ring of fire

Faith (detail) by Diana Crites

It hasn't been an easy two weeks.

I'm only being so coy because I hate to hit you in the face with vulgarity. I know you can be a little sensitive to that, sometimes. But, listen: honestly? It's been fucking awful.

I thought it would be really crazy to have our home listed for sale. Staging and maintaining a home with the potentially-buying public in mind is a really difficult standard to adhere. Particularly while in the home all day with your three children, aged 3, 2 and 3 months.

You clean and they naturally destroy. You become shrill and hysterical over the once-unimportant things, like a spilled drink or a spilled diaper. You hand out snacks and wipe away crumbs simultaneously, until even you make yourself nauseous. You wait for the phone to ring, tell yourself not to get anxious, wait for the phone to ring, wait for the phone to ring. Get anxious. Get sick anxious. Then when a realtor does call you talk their ear off in gratitude. Then you make yourself nauseous again.

You pack up the kids and dogs for day-long sessions out, trudging through rain, mall, logistical nightmare and meltdown. After meltdown. Sweatily pushing a double stroller with an infant bjorn'ed to your chest, you inadvertently invite all manner of jovial public comment, the most original being, "Well you've certainly got your hands full!" You want to go home, you know: the home where you can hide away from the rest of the world in comfy cotton pants with elastic. Not the home where suited realtors guide strangers through your corridors and former comfort zone.

Instead of relaxing, you clean. Instead of resting, you clean. Instead of taking a breather, you survey what you have to clean next. You take mental inventory, check off mental lists. Go mental.

You Windex the faucets just about every hour, until the faucets are begging you not to touch them anymore. Your nails are brittle from exposure to bleach.

Your nerves are brittle from exposure.

And then, out of nowhere, you get an offer.

I can't write about it yet; it's all new and surfacing. But in case you were wondering: yes, it's been bad. But YES! It's all been worth it.

Back soon with hopefully very great news.

P.S. I drew this lucky star pen and ink ACEO whilst (unbeknownst to me) an offer was being drafted on our house. I'm convinced that this little drawing is very, very lucky. Come get it if you need some good fortune to smile on you!

stages

My beautiful, sparkling son in my beautiful, sparkling living room

I'm sorry I haven't written in forever. Sorrier still that it will probably be a little while until I'm back on a regular basis. I do so enjoy our conversations.

I really don't mean for that to read condescendingly.

The truth is that there is sparse little to truly absolutely no "me" time to be had right now: no creating, no writing, and hardly any reality television.

I really don't meant for that to read self-pityingly.

We are full-out sprinting to get our home ready to list on this tempestuous real estate market. We're cleaning to the bone, staging and re-staging after our kids wreak havoc, have had never-ending sessions of throwing out, pondering worth and re-organizing.

It's enough to keep a mother of three in a perpetual hair-rending state of business!

Right now as I type, Mike and the older boys are at Home Depot for about the fourth time this week. Baby Felix is upstairs napping. And a contractor is in the bathroom, fixing a leaky faucet and making just enough noise to keep me on the edge of my seat as I expect to hear the aforementioned sleeping baby no longer sleeping sweetly. A hauler is coming shortly. The basement, the last bastion of our own Wild West, needs to be handled somewhere between further naps (not for me; I wish).

We list on Monday.

Our 1947 Cape Code, polished and ready for someone else to fall in love with it.

I feel really good about it. We absolutely love our home. But there are so many reasons why it's time for us to put our roots elsewhere. We bought our gorgeous 1947 Cape Cod when we were freshly married and didn't have to worry about things like trekking three flights with three boys three and under a gazillion times a day. Our new home (currently in escrow) is much closer to Mike's work, right around the corner from my mom, associated with incredible schools, in the middle of fresh suburbia, and best of all: a meandering dayranch style!

Please send us all the best wishes you can spare for a fast, painless sale! It's a tough market, but we're doing all we can to come out on top.

In the meantime, the boys and I are learning very useful skills in picking up after oneself, organization (at which I've always seriously sucked), and the value of routines. All of which will serve us well in our new home.

I'll keep you abreast of the latest developments and check in when I can. I exist in a perpetual state of bleach fumes, furniture polish, and low-level anxiety. But also with a strong sense of purpose and determination, which ain't such a bad thing at all.

Wish us luck!