Moving And Glass Houses

I saw an article early in April titled "I'm not a liar, but Facebook sure is." If you haven't read it, you should click on it and do so immediately. It gave me a lot perspective and insight specifically related to the fact that we often compare someone's best moments to our worst moments. I vowed then to be more real in my presence on social media.

Lately I've been gushing about our new house. There are many reasons we have been thrilled. Who wouldn't be? We are doubling our square footage, adding a two car garage, moving to a better location in town, quadrupling our yard size, and buying something together to make ours.

The thing is, it's not all roses and smooth sailing. It's not easy. The process of applying for/qualifying for/closing a mortgage is outrageous. AND we have excellent credit! There were no disputes to file, no reporting to contest, no accounts to clear up, the mortgage officer said it would be her easiest close of the year! AND STILL it took hours, and papers...lots and lots of papers.

Also, we have SIX MONTHS of construction ahead us of. My pictures on your tour were strategic, but trust me, the place needs some serious TLC. We knew that, we went in eyes wide open. Basically we are only unpacking belongings in the basement because it will be the last sight for construction while the upstairs will be one of the first. It means we actually are living in a SMALLER living space that we were before. Boxes. Everywhere.

You know what else? MOVING SUCKS.  There were three things I could not help load that The Hubs had to call for help on. They were: washer, dryer, deep freeze.  The thing is though, he only got help loading them at the old house into the trailer. When it came time to unload and place at the new house, it was all yours truly.

Aside from that 20 minutes of help loading at the old house, we loaded everything else on our own. We rushed to get things out of the old place thinking it had sold (it hadn't, but that's a story for another day) and unloaded into the garage of the new house only. We had some help with one of the 7,846,395,385 loads we made, but not the kind of help that relieved much of the heavy lifting.  The point is, I'm not the best lifting partner, and while he would likely deny it, my husband would have rather died than lift another thing with me.

As for me, I have never been so sore in my life. My hips popped out of place. I am covered in bruises. I look like someone beat me, and if I have to inhale the smell of soft scrub with bleach one more time I might burn my lungs completely off.

The truth is that despite the rainbow at the end of this tunnel, the process of getting here has totally sucked. The work ahead of us to turn this house around and make it a home will also totally suck. Worth it? Absolutely, but we're living in glass houses over here so lets call a spade a spade and admit that it hasn't been roses the whole time.

We're keeping it real by putting our first hole in the walls trying to manhandle a couch that four grown men should have actually been lifting.

We're keeping it real with pizza picnics on the floor and popping sparkling juice on the deck to celebrate though.

We're keeping it real climbing the crumbling siding to catch the view from the roof.

We're really, really, really excited, but we're keeping it real.