Good morning. As usual during the “fall back” time change, I’m up even earlier than I would be on a normal morning. On the one day a year where there’s an extra hour to sleep, I always wake up several hours earlier than normal, as if my body is trying to prepare me for the next four months of jet lag. (I don’t like “standard” time, can you tell? I’ll “spring forward” any day to get back to where there’s actually light in the evenings again!)

My thoughts are scattered on this extra-early morning. Yesterday, we worked on finishing up a lot of the major projects in the house. One of the big ones involved clearing the garage out of any donations, returns, and large-item trash, and making room for the dozens of boxes I’ve packed in the last week. The house has begun to echo as all the walls grow bare. Unfortunately, after we packed my car with all the things we needed to return to Lowes, my car wouldn’t start. So that’s a new project/expense on our plates. Sigh. Anyway, beyond the car issue, things went fairly smoothly yesterday. Our house is a cross between a disaster zone and an obstacle course at the moment, but progress is being made.

We had the inspection on the other house this week, and have entered the next phase of contract negotiations. Still hoping all goes well, and we’ll close in about a month. That’s the reason we’ve been pushing so hard on this house, though – the sooner we have it on the market, the quicker it can sell and the less mortgage overlap we’ll have. It’s a weird position to be in, though. We’ve bought/sold a lot of houses over the last five years as we’ve moved around the country, but this is the first time since 2014 that we’ll be living in the house as we’re selling it. Part of what we’re doing right now isn’t just packing to move, but staging the house for photos and showings. It’s all a bit surreal, as if we only partially live here. A stage-set family, appropriate for generic Walmart picture frames.

On top of that, we don’t know when Morrigan will be returning home, or how long he’ll be staying. We’ll only get notice of his return one week beforehand. Jason took over Morrigan’s room when he left last month. He and I can’t sleep in the same room anymore – we both sleep so poorly that we keep each other up all night. After a few years of trying to make the situation better, we finally accepted the inevitable and sleep separately for all our sakes. But we’ll have to reconfigure again when Morrigan is home. And of course, Morrigan had packed up all his belongings in a way that could be shipped off or stored longterm when he left, so all that will have to be rearranged. (His normal clothes are packed, for instance, as they provide all his clothes at boot camp.)

It’s a scrambled mess, but I’m starting to see the final product emerge from the chaos. It really helped to get all the boxes out of rooms and into the garage yesterday. And today will be a bit of a break. On Sundays, Ambrose’s friend Tyler comes over and everyone in the house (except me) plays D&D for a few hours, and then football occupies quite a few of us for the rest of the day. Perhaps I’ll take a nap to deal with the extra early morning. Or just go to bed super early tonight. I look forward to that already!