Fries with Gravy

We're selling our house.  Well...we have our house up for sale.  There's really no active *selling* going on at all.  If you know anyone who is in the market for a poorly designed split foyer (you can only see half the backyard from the kitchen window! And you can only see that if you're standing on tip-toes...just, ugh), circa 1973...with yellow aluminum siding, even...well, gimme a call.  I mentioned that we're in a seriously inflated real estate market, right? 

Well, anyway - I have a point here.  The point is that having your house on the market just SUCKS.  There is no eloquent way to describe the process.  You de-clutter.  And you clean.  Then you clean some more because it can't be too clean.  You employ your husband to shampoo carpets after the kids are in bed and can't traipse across them.  You spend Friday afternoon frantically scrubbing the bathroom to a sparkling shine only to come home from work exhausted at midnight to discover that someone has apparently bathed a litter of piglets in the tub.  The conversation went something like this:

"My GOD.  What was in the tub?"

"Huh?"

"Husband! Come and look at this tub that was formerly white.  And sparkling!  Tell me what has been in it. Swamp Thing, perhaps?"

"Uh, I gave the twins a bath." 

"Had they been playing in the coal mines?"

"Huh?"

"THE TUB IS BLACK.  I CLEANED IT TODAY. JUST WONDERING WHAT GIVES."

"I guess I forgot to wipe it out.  Sorry." 

"I guess I forgotten that we were raising young swine."

Who really knows what these children get into.  They disappear from vision (and it's easy to do, given the kitchen window situation) and reappear moments later covered in grime and filth.  They are the type of children who leave a wake of toys in their path, no matter how often I have head-spinning incidents explaining that someone could walk through the door at any moment and declare their want and financial qualification for our home, save the 4 beanie babies (in dresses) on the stairs, the Barbie on the toilet seat (?) and the heap of Pokemon cards on the kitchen counter.   You can argue that all children do these things...leave wayward pillows and blankets and markers and paper, livers and appendixes (appendi?) all about the house - it's simply the nature of children, you suggest.  Ha!  But these other children do not have a mother who really wants to get out of Maryland, do they?  Who really just has a yearn to sit in a chair at the kitchen table and gaze upon her children (out the window! that she can see them from!) stringing their beanie babies from the palmetto tree in the very lush, very Southern back yard.  My children must comply with the rules of house selling... They do not include:

*Dirty rings in the tub.  Stay clean, young ones.

* Not flushing the toilet. 'Nuff said.

* Beanie Babies or the like.  Anywhere other than the bins in your rooms.

* Putting your HANDS ON THE WALLS.  PLEEEEASE stop putting your hands on the walls. 

* Drawing pictures, asking for tape and making murals. 

So much more I can probably think of.  I just find myself walking room to room on this Saturday when we have signs posted all about the town - HOUSE FOR SALE!  OPEN HOUSE!  COME SEE HOW DIRTY THREE KIDS CAN MAKE A PLACE THEIR MOTHER HAS SPENT ALL WEEK TRYING TO SCRUB! - having minor breakdowns each time I stumble upon another little volcano. 

And the next line is:

"Can Maddie come in the house to play in my room?  We promise we won't make a big mess!"

I feel another gray hair making its' wiry way to fruition.