Friday, 11/1/2019 – We are officially DONE with the work on our house! Like, 100%, nothing left on the checklist, DONE! What a HUGE milestone for us to get checked off our list! And, in perfect timing, as we have the first showing of our house scheduled for Wednesday, 11/6/2019. You didn’t read it wrong…a showing scheduled and the house wasn’t put on the market yet. This is going to get INTERESTING!

Saturday, 11/2/2019 – Sunday, 11/3/2019 – We spent the weekend soaking up the last hours of spending time on the boat for the season and packing up everything that we could to bring home for safe storage for the winter. We’re having the boat hauled out for winter storage since we want to check some things below the waterline before spring and we’re going to be traveling a lot this winter. While it was an expense that we didn’t really plan on, the piece of mind knowing that she’s out of the water and being looked after all winter will pay for itself.

Wednesday, 11/6/2019 – We both left work early to come home for first showing at 2pm. The showing went really well.

Saturday, 11/9/2019 – We had a SECOND showing of our house, that’s not on the market. (We didn’t plan to list the house on the market until spring, so, while it’s a bit sooner than we anticipated, it works just fine for us. So, the more showings, the merrier!) The second showing went really well, too. This weekend was our first low key weekend at home since at least March of this year, and the first weekend since we moved in 7 years ago that we didn’t have some type of house project that we should be working on. It felt GREAT to be able to just relax!

Friday, 11/15/2019 – After struggling with T-Mobile’s cell phone service and dropping calls for some time, we made the decision to switch to Verizon. It was a bit of a clusterfuck as our service was discontinued, mid-day, with no warning, leaving both Josh and I with no way to communicate with each other – he on a construction job site and me, in the car, heading down the highway. But, we got everything worked out and anticipate getting some pretty hefty cash back as a result of switching. In other, way more exciting news, we signed an offer on our house and closing is scheduled for 1/8/2020! We’ve still got a long road ahead of us before closing full of inspections, appraisals and, of course, negotiating about money, but, we’re under contract! Thanks, universe, for aligning the stars for us!

Saturday, 11/16/2019 – Since we’re under contract to sell our house, we need to get moving with purging more stuff that had survived previous rounds of purging. Today, we purged 12 more bags of “stuff” and ran some long-overdue errands. We’ve been purging for YEARS now and it still feels like our house is full of stuff! How do two relatively young people get so much damn stuff?! We agreed today that we will absolutely need to have a dumpster set (AGAIN!) before closing. I think this will have been the third time (?) I’ve had a dumpster set at our house and a position I NEVER want to be in again. No matter what happens with the sale of our house, our “plan” or our lives in the future, we have agreed that we will NEVER again have this much stuff!

Sunday, 11/17/2019 – Since the boat hadn’t been pulled out of the water by the marina yet and the weather was supposed to be pretty decent today, we got up early and headed to the boat to take care of some winterization tasks. Despite the brisky and chilly wind, we successfully winterized the water system, HVAC system and generator. Hopefully the marina will pull the boat this week and then complete the work order to pump it out and winterize the main engine.

Wednesday, 11/20/2019 – Our prospective buyer had requested a home inspection, so, that was scheduled for today at 2pm. Josh and I were both at work during the inspection, but, from what we were told, it went “great.”

Thursday, 11/21/2019 – We headed to West Shore Scuba to pay the remaining balance of Bonaire trip. While we were there, Josh shared his intentions of completing the Instructor course with West Shore Scuba before we leave the area. Conveniently, the shop had the materials in stock, so, we picked up Josh’s Scuba Diver Instructor materials and paid for everything so he’s ready to go. His Instructor Exam is scheduled for 5/16 – 5/17/2020. We’re really happy that the timing will work perfectly for us! Josh is super excited, and I am super proud of him! He’s going to be an excellent instructor!

Saturday, 11/23/2019 – Josh headed to camp, hunting bears, while I stayed home with the dog and took care of some more “house stuff.” The guys didn’t find any bears, but, they had a great weekend at camp.

Sunday, 11/24/2019 – Today, shit started getting REAL about what we’re doing. Today, Josh sold our motorcycle. To a dude named Isaac, that he met on Facebook, who arrived with an envelope of banded $100 bills. The deal was quick and easy and we walked away from it with a little more in our cruising kitty, a little less “stuff” to get rid of and some great memories of places we’d been on our comfy bike.

Wednesday, 11/27/2019 – There’s nothing like celebrating Thanksgiving Eve with an 8am septic inspection! In happy news, the septic inspection went great and there were no issues reported. Another step in the right direction toward closing!

Thursday, 11/28/2019 – Happy Thanksgiving 2019! We woke up early with ambitions of making monkey bread for breakfast and finding a way to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade online, but that plan was quickly foiled when our power went out around 8am, thanks to a pretty significant wind storm. Since we needed showers and some power to make our cornflake potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner, we packed everything up and instituted another plan for getting things prepped. Even though we missed the parade and didn’t get power restored to our house until after 5:30pm, we spent a great day with both sides of our family.