House For Sale

I've never kept my house so clean as I do now: now when I decide that I don't want it anymore. Strange that a person should polish, clean, and fuss over something that she does not love, does not care for. That is just what selling your house makes you do. You suddenly become so self-conscious about what other people see, and what your family was content to live in is no longer the acceptable standard. The standard becomes the model home down the street, the impeccable not-lived-in show home that you compete against and now suddenly I am keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, and the Joneses have a corporate marketing budget and a professional decorator and suddenly, frequently I feel small and harried and overwrought that I cannot seem to set a table properly, and the stains on my carpet that reminded me of a sweet memory of my child are again just stains that cannot be cleaned away. The poor dog is weary of his crate, and I am weary of being tossed out of my house by the strangers I eagerly long to hear from with mixed emotions; excitement, trepidation, irritation, dull realization that this one too will say that the back yard is too small after all...