Do Not Let My Hideous Appearance Fool You.

I looked in the mirror this morning and laughed. I looked TERRIBLE. I had crusty gunk all over my eyes (I did you the favor and cleared that out before taking a picture) my hair looked insane and I had sheet-prints all over my red blotchy face. But I laughed, which indicates something because often I cry when I look at myself, I have to say. I’m 20lbs heavier than I was this time last year, I’m tired and still sick and exhausted and normally? Seeing myself looking so rough when I’m feeling so terrible? Would normally make me sob. But this morning I laughed because…y’all? It’s getting better.

I still have so much to do but I’m starting to see the end of the tunnel from here. That tunnel has led us to a destination where we only own about 40% of the crap we owned 2 years ago. It took three BIG purges. One when we FIRST put the house on the market and we had to get it “ready” to sell. One the second time when we moved everything from upstairs to downstairs to put in new carpet and add a 5th bedroom. And the 3rd and final purges has been this week as we pack up to squeeze everything we own into a 10×20 storage unit and a 900 square foot apartment.

There have been tons of little purges along the way, but most of the purge happened at those three times and I sat down and REALLY thought about it – furniture and closets etc – and I think we’re 60% less burdened by crap than we were 2 years ago. Two years ago we filled every corner and closet of this 4,000 square foot house along with the 20 ft tall, oversized, 2-car garage which could barely hold ONE car. And now that we’re 9 days away from selling the house I’m starting to finally feel the freedom associated with all of that purging. It’s been hard to really bask in the lighter load on our lives when we’ve had this giant house holding us down. But now that I have a lease on a 2-bedroom apartment and a storage unit and I’m seeing how condensed we’ve gotten everything and I’m starting to finally feel lighter after 2 years of work.

And it’s been a LOT of work. And I’ve done it all. Donnie does not have a lot of flexibility with work and he’s also been training for giant races over the last two years so it’s all fallen on my shoulders and I’m feeling really good about how much easier our lives are going to be at this point. I suddenly see the results of this long road of work and while there’s still going to be another big step (finding a house to move into so we don’t have to live in this too-tiny apartment forever) I just feel good about it. Like…YES…this is what I’ve been working for. To ease the burden of crap we’ve had on our souls for too long.

I expect one more moderate purge at the next step, when we decide what goes into the new house from storage. We put a lot of stuff in storage that we hope to have room for but we’re not sure we will in which case we’ll have to do a little bit more purging. But for the most part? We’re hopefully where we were at when Nikki was born and we moved into a 3-bedroom home. We’ve always said – that is the size of house we want. It was easy to manage in terms of upkeep and cleaning and even when we fill it up (which we did) we didn’t feel like the weight of our possessions was squashing our souls.

So I look terrible, but I feel better. I’ve gained 20lbs but I feel so much lighter. There’s still tons of work left to do and my back and shoulders may never feel good again, but I finally see/feel the purpose of it all.

There’s still several factors hanging in the balance – we still have to get a dishwasher repaired and a fireplace working but we have someone set to do everything else next week. Hopefully by Saturday night we’ll be living in a 2-bedroom apartment (WUT?) and we will spend the next week cleaning the old house for a closing on the 20th.

The end is in sight. At least the end to this leg of a VERY long journey. The next leg is not as challenging and will be WAY more fun. Looking for houses is fun…selling a house is terrible.

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OH! Something fun happened yesterday I have to tell you about. I got a call from the nurse at the kid’s school, it was your standard “Kid Hit His Head We Are Required To Call You” call…OR SO I THOUGHT. (I get those calls at least once a month.) Then she said, “He hit his nose on the other kid’s head and it’s a little swollen and…well…definitely disfigured.”

I know there’s not a lot you can do about a broken nose, BUT, I feel like in case he gets made about having a crooked nose later in life I need to at least have evidence that I got a professional opinion on the matter. Maybe later in life, he will look for a nose job in New Orleans or something similar to fix that crooked nose but it is up to him if he feels like doing it or not.

It’s always a party at the Zoot House.