House For Sale

As many of you already know, Kate and I are selling our house. I guess we technically aren't 'selling' it, but we are decorating our lawn with a big sign and cleaning more often than we usually do. There are a few positives that have come out of this whole house selling experience:

1. Our house always smells like chocolate chip cookies
2. I'm able to spend more time and money on my lawn and chalk it up as an investment in 'curb appeal'
3. Gilbert is getting more exercise. I have to walk him during showings, and for some reason people like to spend lots of time in our house. 45 minutes to see our house? Seriously...I don't think I spent that much time touring Graceland.

Anyway, if I've learned anything from HGTV and TLC, it's that selling a house is usually a sentimental time for the house sellers. For some reason it doesn't really feel like that for Kate and I. Maybe it's because we're not really sentimental people. We always mention that when we watch Wife Swap or The Biggest Loser and the reunited couples always freak out like the husband has been in Iraq for 12 months, as opposed to just being in Cleveland for the past 2 weeks or being at adult fat camp for 10 weeks. I think we'd just say "hey, how's it going" and then Kate would probably start telling me stories about what happened at her work while I was away in reality television land.

I also think that the non-sentimental move might be a result of our experience in our house. It has been a good house. Nothing has really gone wrong. I don't have any stories about when the pipes burst, or when the basement flooded. Also, we don't know our neighbors at all. I've met them a few times over the past four years, but still don't know their names. I've considered stealing the neighbor's mail just long enough to get his first name, but I hear that's a federal offense.

We also don't really have any of those coffee commercial memories in our house. No Christmas mornings or family Thanksgivings or anything like that. We do have a few lasting memories:

1. The time the church bus stopped at our house and asked Kate if her parents were home and if she would be interested in going to Jesus Camp for the summer. I think she was 25 at the time.

2. The two times that our rural Indiana, cookie-cutter neighborhood has been featured on the local news station. Once for a neighbor shooting her boyfriend and the other time for people breaking into cars and stealing purses and iPods. We were so proud. Since we don't really talk to our neighbors, we probably wouldn't have known about either of these occurrences if it wasn't for our 90 seconds of fame on the Indy news.

Thanks for stopping by for this trip down memory lane. Oh, and if you're looking for a new house, just let me know. You can help yourself to a cookie.