Write On

Having a house for sale is quite a pain in the butt. Actually, keeping the house clean for potential buyers is the difficult part of the ordeal. All day long, and especially every time I go out, I have to find hiding places for all of the clutter that has made itself at home on my tabletops. (I can't begin to tell you how many things I have misplaced in this process!) I am constantly emptying wastebaskets, wiping out sinks, and tidying up bathrooms. I basically have to make sure that the house is "show ready" at all times in case an agent wants to bring through a client. Yesterday, I got a call from our realtor at 10:40 a.m. asking if someone could come see our house at 11 o'clock. Yikes! I raced from room to room concealing things that had gathered on desks and counters. In a frenzy, I tossed a stack of mail, bills, markers, and pencils into the dryer. When I returned home later, I fished everything out of the dryer so as not to lose track of it.

Fast forward to this afternoon. I was doing a load of laundry. After the wash, I placed a pair of Adam's khaki pants into the dryer. Twenty minutes later, I removed the pants from the machine to hang them up, but was dismayed to find that an errant pencil had been tumbling in the dryer with the khakis. Adam's pants were covered from top to bottom with graphite. Luckily, though, there is nothing that I enjoy more than scrubbing stubborn pencil marks from light-colored pairs of pants.