Whirlwind of insanity and poo. That’s been my life for the past few weeks. Prepping the house to move, potty-training my 2 year-old and trying to finish some of those little projects that just drove me crazy for the last eighteent months.

You may recall this post, with my list of crazy things to finish. Well, we actually got a good bit of it done. Just a few straggling projects are hanging around. As it turns out, it is possible to potty-train, paint, work with fabric, shuttle kids to school, cook dinner just about every night and not run out of clean undies at the same time. Well, sort of anyway. There was the day Regan sprayed an entire bottle of glass cleaner into a Barbie bathtub because I said no to water (luckily I only use non-toxic cleaners). And the day Regan found Emma’s Barbie lipstick and wrote all over the Barbie house and herself. Oh and the day Regan tried to hide the fact she pooped in her panties and threw her poo under her bed and the dining room table to hide it. (Do you see a pattern here? I love my little imp!!)

Then there is my personal favorite, the day the “Home Is Where The Army Sends You” plaque fell off the wall of my staircase and hit me on the head. Let me explain this thing. It was a plaque with little cup hooks to attach a painted heart for each place I’ve lived. We only had two painted hearts out of eight (?) different places we’ve lived…not counting multiple visits to the same place. And all I can say is thank goodness I never got it together since I was hit with each heart, then the plaque. So I just sat on the stairs to cry. Tom came running and our conversation went something like this:

Tom runs around the corner and asks “Are you OK?”

I throw a heart and scream say “No! Home is not where the Army sends you! This is the stupidest saying ever!!!! I’m done!”

Tom calmly slips an arm around my shoulder, “What do you mean you’re done?”

I sob, stand up and stomp up the stairs, “I mean I’m inches away from not going to Spain! Let’s stay here. Inches!!” And I throw up a hand, measuring how close I am to following through on my threat. This is all paraphrased, of course.

Yes, I know. Stay here?  Turn my nose up to Spain just because I don’t want to see my stuff disappear into a box again? Just because I don’t want to make new friends? Just because I’m done reinventing my home every year? Yep. That’s exactly how I felt. I cannot begin to explain the pain of moving all the time. We’ve been here eighteen months (a pretty long stretch of time for us) and I am in no way ready to leave.

But it is Spain. Spain! And a great opportunity for my family. And we will have three glorious years together with no deployments and no moving. So Spain definitely wins over New York, but just barely.

So I dried my tears, finished getting the house ready (we had a realtor come through later that day), and made myself some tea while I took in the majesty:

Phase 1, cleaning out the extra junk, is basically complete. We took eleven bags and one box of clothes to the Salvation Army.

We also rented a dumpster. I know, I know.  I preach recycling and reusing to all my friends, but the truth is that we have stuff that is really difficult to recycle…broken, rotten door, old, chemical-laden lattice, building scraps, twenty-eight paint cans we inherited from the previous owners, and a bunch of other stuff. While we are recycling or selling all we can, a small dumpster is necessary. We are also having a yard sale, a neighborhood yard sale. Hopefully the weekend after Easter, I will pin that down for sure this weekend, but I hope to get rid of knick-knacks, extra furniture, a bunch of tile left in our basement, and who knows what else. I won’t be selling clothes. As you can see from above, we had quite a few clothes (I saved everything of Emma’s for Regan and finally had enough of the yucky hand-me-downs and cleaned out my own closet). I decided it would take up too much prime real estate on yard sale day!

As for part two of phase one of moving (getting my house ready to sell), it’s pretty much done. However, after meeting with a realtor with plenty of knowledge about our specific neighborhood, we are better off renting our home. So we are going to finish our deck, replace the water heater and find a property manager.

We did so much work getting to this point, I can best share it in a series of posts. I made curtains (with no thread and from unexpected fabric sources), painted (windows, doors, walls, trim, picture mats, stairs, a cabinet, and a mirror), cleaned, sorted, organized and did all I could to support my husband’s DIY magic. What did he do? Refaced our garage, painted (yes HE painted), sorted, cleaned, organized, built shelves and will soon finish a deck railing and install a hot water heater (or pay to have it done…counts in my book!). We are exhausted and ready to move to phase two or twenty-two or whatever.

Phase two commences tomorrow. Check out tomorrow’s post about phase two and stay tuned to see projects that are light on time and budget demands…perfect for getting ready to move or making a new (but maybe temporary) home, well, home.