What's worse than showing a house for sale?

OK, you've all read my whiny posts about how tough it's been keeping the house tidy and having to vacate the premises for each showing while we've been trying to sell. Now that we've accepted an offer, I was thinking at least that was behind us...but I was wrong.

Our prospective buyers scheduled an inspection of our house for 3:00 yesterday so I was once again tidying and hurrying kids and dogs out the door. By 2:30, our 2 big dogs and 3 of the kids were all in the van, wandering the streets of Salem in a pouring rain. We went to the Post Office, the Family Dollar store, the grocery, the YMCA. I was so proud of my foresight in planning all these errands to keep us occupied. At 4:00, we picked up the other 2 kids from school and went to Wendy's for a snack. We went to the library and poked around town until about 5:00 when we drove by the house to see if the inspection was complete. Nooo....and when I called the realtor, she said they didn't expect to be finished until around 6:30. Swell! And here we were parked in front of the house.

I looked at my 5 starving kids who all had homework...and the bags of groceries that contained the ingredients for our dinner...and the greyhounds who were hungry and desperately in need of a potty break. I closed my eyes and thought about waiting another hour and half in the very crowded van. Uhh, no, not a good option. I told the realtor that we needed to drop off the groceries and Kate and I scurried through the rain with our parcels. We put away the food and scurried back out the door.

OK, no pasta casserole but we still needed to eat...we headed to Kelly's Famous Roast Beef and Seafood. Two fast food restaurants in one day...sigh...I'm such a great Mom. Is ketchup still considered a vegetable? I hope so because the kids had plenty of it with their hot dogs and fries. I called Craig and told him to meet us for dinner, then I tried to walk our dogs in the downpour. They refused to tinkle in the rain so I got soaked with no results...and when I went back into the restaurant, the kids were running a bit wild. Aniyar was playing with the ketchup dispenser, Madiyar and Max were trying their best to be rude and crude in order to get a rise out of the girls, and the girls were yelling at them to stop being immature. Okey dokey, time to wait for Dad in the van before we were permanently banned from the place. By the time Craig arrived, I was really totally over adolescent boy bodily humor, adolescent girl shrieking, and the smell of wet dog. We headed home since it was almost 6:30, praying the inspection would be complete. Fortunately, when we pulled in the driveway at 6:45, everyone was gone. Craig warmed up some leftovers, we fed the dogs, and homework commenced. We survived...and some day I'll look back on the day and laugh...perhaps after therapy for my Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

So far, so good with the inspection. The buyers want to do a lead test and a Radon test, then we'll get a report about the findings. I met the wife last night and it's clear she loves the house so we're feeling pretty positive this deal will go through. If all goes well, we'll be closing on April 8th....don't wanna think about all those boxes to be packed and then unpacked just yet. As my blogger friend Anne said, "Oy!".