Open House

cellar door

Today's the Open House.

Did I clean the house because I want it to sell or just because I can't bear the thought of strangers coming in and thinking, "Christ, what kind of woman allows a house to look like this?"  Which is a corollary of why I always clean the house before going on a trip.  I think to myself, "If the plane crashes and people have to come over to comfort Ken and the boys, I need the house to look nice because I don't want it to reflect badly on the dead, namely, me."

It's also certainly possible that it will not sell.  All this agita for nada?  I can see friends nodding their heads and thinking, "Nina, this is different because...?"

Looking through my digital photo albums for this post and I realize that I don't have many pics of the house since my photographs went primarily digital.  And also since those little boys became young men.  I have numerous actual photo albums filled with fading photos of boys with underwear on their heads, boys covered head to toe in mud, boys with friends at birthday parties at museums, McDonald's, bowling alleys.  Photos of boys dressed as bats, stinky cheese head, CATS characters, in drag.  Every holiday, every hamster, every snake.  Boys snowboarding, boys on beaches, boys in cars and on planes.  First days of school and graduations.

Going cold turkey today on searching NY Times real estate, streeteasy.com and Craigslist.  Absent while nameless faces stroll through the rooms that hold thirty years of the lives of four people, two cats and three dogs.

I'd like LCD Soundsystem to take me out the door.  With help from the Muppets.