Change.  We all do it, we all live with it every day.  Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it reaches out and whomps you on the face.

My husband and I were driving, and decided to go a different way than I normally would have.  And I passed it.  A very pretty colonial farmhouse with a for sale sign and what looked to be a substantial outbuilding in the back.

I’ve been peering at for sale houses for a while now, but not seriously because there’s a lot of work to be done on the house we have now in order to get a good price for it.  And I don’t have the energy, unfortunately, to get a lot of the work done.  This summer’s continual heat waves are NOT helping.  But I figured what the heck, I’d see what the price was and if it was still for sale.

Then we went over for a tour.  No harm, right?  I was in love.  That outbuilding has a fantastic space for a craft studio for me.  Needs work, but do-able.  The rest of the house is in fine shape, won’t need any projects anytime soon.  On the back is the screen porch I have been dreaming to have on a house for pretty much my entire adult life, with a massive back yard that will be filled with fireflies in the summer.

Then I brought my dad around to see it.  Yes, I’m over 40, but I wanted his opinion.

Still, I have this house that I’m living in, and the market here is so bad that chances were we wouldn’t be able to sell it in order to make an offer.  And without money from selling our current house, we wouldn’t be able to get a loan, right?  And nobody would give us an offer on our current house, right?

One month later, I got an offer on our current house.  One that we could live with, while we weren’t walking away with any extra.  I figured that colonial was probably sold, it had been a month, right?  But it wasn’t!  No acceptable offers had come in.

And then we got a loan.  And the buyers accepted our offer.  And the home inspection went well.  And we have an offer on this house.  If the VA says the new house is worth what we’re paying (which I assume they will), we close in the beginning of September.

It’s a miracle.  It’s several miracles piled on top of each other.  Covered in chocolate.

And this is all awesome, and wonderful, and incredibly stressful because

WE HAVE 15 YEARS OF CRAP IN THIS HOUSE THAT HAS TO BE GONE THROUGH, PACKED, AND MOVED.  IN 5 WEEKS.

* twitch *

This is the point in time where I REALLY realize that I should have done more about that whole simplifying and decluttering thing.  And NOTHING.  I mean NOTHING is coming into the new house unless it has a home already.  Except if it’s a book, because we’ll need to build bookshelves.  lots and lots of bookshelves.

But, I’m going to take a deep breath.  Realize I’m not superwoman, and even though I have to work very hard to get this done I’m not going to be able to do it as perfectly as I’d like.  I’ll toss as much stuff as I possibly can.  I’ll be as ruthless as possible and say screw it if I need it later I’ll just have to get another one.  If I don’t love it, if I don’t need it, I’m not keeping it.

I’ll have to remember to make the effort to keep breathing.  And tossing.  This is going to be very hard, but very worth it, starting a whole new chapter in our lives.

I’m off to pack…