Final stretch

To say we are stressed would be a pretty big understatement right now.  Mark and I have been in the mad rush to get this house finished so we can list it May 1.  We only have a couple things to do yet and really one thing to do (baseboards) before I can take pictures of it for the listing.  We have one week to get it done, but looking around it seems like an almost impossible task.  I don’t know how I’m going to declutter this house enough to make it look decent in pictures, or where I’m going to find the time to shuffle everything from one room to the other while I take pictures without swings, and pack and plays, and high chairs and car seats and billions of toys, etc in them.  Just shuffling stuff to take pictures is going to take a solid day, especially if I have the “help” of the kids.  I’ve been paying a sitter to come 1-3 times a week to keep the babies entertained for a few hours a day so I can pack and clean and declutter.  We’ve already taken 3 trailers over to the storage shed, but it doesn’t even look like I’ve made a dent.  This is exhausting.  We were supposed to go to Disneyland this week but we decided to postpone that until after we have the house sold and more time on our hands.

So we’ve decided that once we sell the house we’re going to try to live in our 29’ travel trailer at the famcamp on base between when we close and when we move in early November.  I am already rather nervous about this because this 2700 sq ft house seems too small for all of us sometimes.  I’m not sure how we’re going to cram us with 4 kids into a tiny trailer for MONTHS.  I am not a minimalist and I like my space away from the kids.  When we are in the trailer we tiptoe to the bathroom in the middle of the night and we are confined to our “bedroom”, which is pretty much our bed with a foot on either side of it after we get them in their beds.  It’s going to be an adventure for sure.  And adding to my stress, my parents absolutely refuse to take our weina dogs for a few months while we live in the trailer.  They will take the huge 105lb Golden, but they “don’t like little dogs” and the weinas “won’t fit into their lifestyle”, so they are pretty much screwing us over big time.  I can’t stand their asshole dog either, but if they were having to live in a tiny travel trailer for a few months, we would suck it up and keep him if they asked.  And I would do that for any of my friends as well if I had the space for dogs.  I mean, when we lived in PHX I would watch friends dogs all the time.  It wasn’t for months, no, but I would have if they’d needed it.  My friend in Italy who had a 3 year old and no pets watched my dogs for a month while we were back in the US and I didn’t have to beg her.  It frustrates me that my parents think they’ve already “done their time” as they put it and it’s just way too much to ask them to keep my little dogs for a few months.  They would rather me send them to my friend in IA that has 2 dogs, 3 horses, a 3 year old and twin 5 month olds than keep them.  Apparently she hasn’t “done her time” yet and it would be much more of an inconvenience on my retired parents.  <Insert eye roll here>

And adding to my stress is that I will most likely home school Abbie and Ben for half of the year this coming school year.  I am not a “home schooler” by any stretch of the imagination.  Again, I like my time and space and if I can get my kids out of my hair for a few hours a day, I will.  But I don’t think it’s fair to them to put them in a new school on base in August, home school them Nov-Dec and then put them both into ANOTHER new school in January.  Its too much for one school year.

On top of it all I think I’m getting carpal tunnel or something.  My left wrist on the inside has been hurting or aching quite a bit.  I usually hold my phone with that hand when I’m feeding Josie, so I’m sure that doesn’t help.  Both of my arms/hands have been tingling and numb sometimes, and I think that’s because I have pinched nerves somewhere.  My knees ache every time I try to get up.  My arms and hands usually only fall asleep or tingle when I’m sitting in one place in for a while.  Hopefully it’s just pinched nerves and overuse and not something more serious.

I hope to God life calms down quite a bit after we get this house listed and sold, but when that happens we also get to move all of this into storage ourselves too because the military is fun like that….  So maybe not.