Talking A Load Off My Mind... and switching it with another

Thank you for the well wishes. My son is doing a lot better today.

I haven't done much else this week-- just lots of watching my son breathe and researching childhood asthma. I've been educating myself on the terminology, treatments, and theories.

I even contacted our local asthma specialist and got her to come to OUR HOUSE and examine my son THAT day. (It pays to be pushy, people)

There's plenty of info out there, just not much in the way of a cure or prevention...

Since my son's asthma seems to be brought on by upper respiratory infections which are a permanent fixture of... you know, CHILDHOOD and completely unavoidable, there's apparently "nothing we can do about it".

The best we can do is "hope" he outgrows it and just accept it as "part of our lives" until then.

Well, I'm sorry, but I'm just too much of a control-freak mommy to buy that!

His doctor has put him on daily inhalers as a preventative. However, I'm not too keen on that either as they seem to come with some equally scary side-effects.

I've also read that something like one in FIVE kids suffers from asthma, so I guess that means at least one in five of you parents reading this post are dealing with this too.

Any insights or support you could provide would be really helpful to me right now... even if it's just to tell me to get over myself already.

I'm a big girl. I can take it.

In the meantime, I'm going to get started on designing that bubble for us to live in and resign myself to a life of only having online friends...

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Other things that have been overshadowed by the recent week's events, as if this post wasn't long enough...

OUR HOUSE IN TEXAS SOLD!!!! Yew-haw!

Oh yeah... did I forget to tell you? It was under contract for about a month, but seeing as the last "committed buyers" backed out a week before the closing, I wasn't about to hold my breath.

In talking with other American expats in London, we've learned that most opted to rent out instead of sell their homes in the States. We actually considered doing the same when a serious offer came in...

As much as we didn't like the idea of being absentee landlords, we hated paying that mortgage even more. Now, we don't have to do either one!!!

Now for the tacky details... We certainly didn't make a killing on the house, not that we expected that we would.

We got back about as much as we put into it-- the cost of two buckets of paint and some nifty Container Store shelves, which is just fine by me.

Cute Doesn't Cut It in Real Estate

When my son and I moved in with my folks a MONTH AND A HALF ago, we really didn't plan to still be hanging around here this long... and even longer still...

Of course, there were the setbacks with acquiring our visas (which has finally been resolved, by the way. Hoo-ray!), but a month and a half is a considerable amount of time to have one's entire life be "on hold"... indefinitely.

As much as I've enjoyed being with my parents (and the comforts of their home), I've felt like nothing has been accomplished since I've been here.

All of our things are in suitcases or boxes either here, in the UK, or somewhere in between. My husband and I continue to debate the merits of cribs versus "big boy beds", but it doesn't actually matter since we can't move into our new house yet, and our last house has yet to sell...

There was an offer made on it three weeks ago. Papers were drawn and signed. A closing date was scheduled. The couple even sent me the option fee and paid for a full inspection. Then, their banker or agent put down in writing what their mortgage payment would be and they just couldn't handle it...

As in, they didn't realize it would be "that much money". How did they NOT realize this before getting my hopes up?

As of this coming weekend, our house in Dallas will have been on the market for two months. While this may not seems that bad in light of recent events, it is when your neighborhood boasts an average of 24 days on the market and your town, 28 days...

I keep telling myself that "these are just AVERAGES, after all, and not the rule..." but it doesn't mean I don't succumb to multi-level "oh-my-goodness-we-have-no-more-money" freak outs on a daily basis...

...and there's nothing more I can really do about it either, which drives me NUTS!

I'm told it's a "cute house". It's sparkling clean, in excellent condition, and well situated... we just have to WAIT for the "right people" to show up.

Yeah, I'm not very good about "just waiting".

Elephants, Peanuts, and Buried Saints

Our house was a total wreck for the showings over the holiday weekend. It was our last weekend to pack and with so much of it left to do, we just kept at it, as agent after agent strolled through with buyers.

My in-laws were in town helping us as well, and my mother-in-law instituted a maddening, but effective system of emptying every drawer and cupboard onto the counters, then packing everything all at once. Previously, we were trying to be neat and just pack one little area at at time, which was NOT working...

So with everything we own not only OUT, but also covering every surface, each couple had to step over our boxes and piles of packing peanuts to "admire" the house. I say (air quotes) admire, because the feedback that was given to our agent and passed along to us was not good...

Until this weekend, we hardly got any feedback. Mostly that "the house was nice and showed well, but the buyers were still looking". This time, we got "the house is too small and dark", "hated the neighborhood", or "hated the built-ins and other decorative upgrades"...

I know I shouldn't obsess over the random comments of random strangers who lack imagination, but I've been bitter about it ever since. Obviously, circumstances were not ideal, but again, it's hard not to take this sort of stuff personally.

However, I'm not sure what is the "best circumstance" when it comes to selling a house, but you better believe that everyone has an opinion on the matter... and is dying to share it with me.

My mother-in-law insists that a properly staged home sells the quickest. On the other hand, I have friends who insist that an empty house allows buyers to better visualize their stuff in each room. More importantly, buyers avoid getting distracted by something you own and plan to take with you and has nothing to do with the house itself...

I tend to agree with that latter advice. When we were house hunting, we walked into a home where the owners were obsessed with elephants. Uhhhb-sessed! There were tables, chairs, and planters shaped like elephants. They had elephant throw pillows, elephant artwork, soap carved into teeny tiny elephants, and even two large plush elephants posed as if they were kissing...

Hubby and I (and even our real estate agent) got so caught up in making fun of them, that we totally didn't take the house seriously... AT ALL.

There was also the time when we walked into a house where the owners had just cooked bacon. I'm sure the house could have been aired out and been fine, but it just smelled (and thereby looked) entirely too greasy and gross to us that we never even looked at the house. The smell was so overpowering that we simply turned around and walked out immediately.

Our house does not smell like bacon.

One person who recently sold a house in one of the priciest and worst housing markets in the country told me that buyers really go for perfectly aligned vacuum tracks on carpet. I guess I know I'll be doing every other day until my son and I leave to London...

Of course, there is also the myth/urban legend about burying a saint in your front yard, which all of my Catholic friends swear by. Being a practicing Catholic myself, I did a little research on the matter (Google) and discovered that there's a whole spell-casting, candle-burning, dousing of magic oils aspect to it, as well...

I even found a "St. Joseph House Selling Kit" on Amazon for $19.95. Oh, baby! Yeah!