at a snails pace

We have been working at organizing for our move back to the USofA.

We’ve been packing those things that we’ve decided to take back, coincidently much of which are things we brought down.  We’ve been selling and giving away lots of other stuff.

We’ve stripped the house down to reveal its potential to prospective buyers.  We are trying to put off till the last moment those things that go with us but that we still use daily.

And we’ve been doing long overdue little maintenance projects.  Tom keeps up on any major maintenance, but the minor stuff we let slide.   Like the outlines around each painting left from cleaning the frames.  Deep cleaning grout lines, fresh caulk where needed etc.  So we removed all the paintings and artworks, patched holes, painted, and now live in a lifeless sterile environment.  The realtors love it, in fact some say clear out more stuff, but my gosh how can a person live like this?  We’ve removed furniture so there is more open space in which potential buyers can envision their own personal touches.

All these things take time, and sometimes it seems it will never get done.  Then a realtor wants to come, and we have to tidy up.  That is a full days event.  Removing whatever personal stuff we have sitting out, cleaning, mopping, geesh, can’t even chuck stuff in the closets because they may want to look in.

One of the little projects, was actually a fun one –

The bathroom mirror has been losing its backing and there have been marks, lines, and discoloration where the silvering has degraded.  We lived with it, no big deal.  But to make the house show better it needed to be replaced.  My goodness when you need to go shop, well for me, it’s like a torture.  I am not a shopper.  Anyway, we finally decided Tom would make a wood frame mirror, and I would decorate it with shells.

  So here is the mirror Tom made ready for me to do my thing. Tom painted the frame the color of the bathroom walls.

And a collection of shells.  Our bathroom has a shell theme going already.

Here you can see some of the shell decoration in these fotos.

When we were having the work done on the house, I had the albaniles show me how to mix the pegazulejo and I set the shells myself.  These are all shells that Tom and I have collected from the beaches around the Yucatan.

   and here is our new mirror, I think it looks great!

Moving is difficult, and so unsettling. Once the decision is made wouldn’t it be nice to just pack a bag and go.

This long drawn out process, it just seems to be moving at a snails pace.