And sometimes life just decides to spew white ash all over your formal living room...

My husband and I are currently preparing for a cross-country move to the West Coast. We were given four and a half weeks from the time he was hired for his new job until we need to have the moving truck on the road. In these four and a half weeks, we need to pack up our house, sell our house, sell various personal items, say goodbye to ten years of relationships, and also continue with the day-to-day life of raising a 9-month-old. Can we say stress?
 
Our house that we want to sell lies parallel to a private college that has acquired the majority of the residential buildings surrounding the campus as student housing. We are one of just a few houses on our street that is not currently owned by the school or owned by landlords who rent to college students. This makes for some interesting weekends when our street becomes gridlocked and we can't park in front of our own house. And we have a fair share of smashed beer bottles that decorate a couple of our favorite paths for family walks. It's really fun to go out each morning and see what garbage the drunk college students have dumped in our yard. We get an especially wide variety of fast food bags and snack wrappers near the perimeter. I really wouldn't mind so much if they'd just leave a few bites for me. Selfish...

Aside from the parties, the trash, and the occasional stolen porch furniture for fraternity initiations - which for some reason then ends up randomly placed on the far side of our double lot - it's really not been bad. Plus, each year we get three months of Apocalyptic, end-of-the-world desolation once summer break hits. I could dance outside stark naked and start yodeling German folk music while roasting a pork on a spit, and only the squirrels and a few pesky campus security would see. But alas, the move has been announced for before the next summer break, so I have missed my chance to check that one off the Bucket List. Darnit!
 
Another plus to the location of our home is that now, even though the housing market is a dismal place for any seller, we have a definite buyer in the college. We are on one of the primary streets where they want more homes, and they have told us they will buy it for appraised value. [Insert excited, wide-eyed, relieved, giddy-with-glee face here.]

The only problem is that in order to sell before we leave the city, we had to ready the house for appraisal within a week of finding out we were moving. Everything rides on the appraised value. Which prompted a whirlwind of small home repairs and finishing touches, as well as your basic cleaning and tidying over the last several days. Our weekend was pretty ridiculous, and we accomplished more than I ever knew we could. Seems a shame now that we didn't have the same fire under our butts over the last several years, or we could have lived in a pretty awesome piece of real estate. But at least we get to truly enjoy it for a good week before we start putting everything into boxes.

I was, indeed, amazed at how much we got done in such a short amount of time. We were so grateful, and we appreciated the help of a really good friend who pitched in to get things done. Despite how smoothly things were going, by the last day before the appraisal (yesterday), I was admittedly worn out. But the end was in sight; it was down to just the final finishing touches. Everything major had been accomplished, and I was worrying mostly about decor and ambiance. I was feeling good and glad that I would soon be able to sit back and relax.

And that's right about when things started going downhill.

I had decided, per my friend's suggestion, to play up the fireplace in our living room. All these years we have always meant to use it, but the only times we seemed to light a fire were to burn some bio-degradable trash. Apparently the last time we did so, we forgot to clean it out, because there was a good 3 inches of ash in the bottom of the fireplace. I thought about getting the Shop-Vac, but I didn't feel like bringing the grimy Shop-Vac from my husband's work area in the basement into my beautifully clean living room. And I already had my vacuum out. So I proceeded to remove the vacuum head and suction out the ash.

I'd gotten a good quarter of it up when I thought I better re-check the vacuum bag - which had been close to full when I started working on the fireplace. I turned around to open the canister, only to discover that my living room and adjoining kitchen were filling with a hazy cloud of ash that my vacuum was quickly blowing all around me.

I started screaming and hurriedly turned it off. My husband heard my panic and a few moments later came into the doorway to see what the commotion was about. I, meanwhile, was standing in shock, whimpering, "Oh, no. Oh, no."

Now, my husband being the male that he is, does not always know how to best respond to my female meltdowns. We came to an understanding after the fact that his response in the moment was not the most helpful. But, not being quite able to overcome his natural urge, I could see he was doing his best not to laugh. This was not the response I wanted.

I started scolding him and telling him that he better stop laughing - that this was NOT something to laugh at. He still couldn't quite muzzle the smirk. After some back-and-forth marital "conversation," and me about ready to lose it, he went down to the basement to retrieve his Shop-Vac as I continued in stunned horror to assess the damage.

He came back upstairs with the Shop-Vac, and I asked very shortly whether or not he was sure he knew what he was doing and wasn't going to have the same thing happen with his vacuum that happened with mine. He responded back matter-of-factly that he has vacuumed ash up many times, and YES, he knew what he was doing.

He turned it on and started on the fireplace, while I stood back skeptically to make sure things didn't go awry once again. Seeing that no ash was blowing, I left him to his work and stared around the room wondering how long it would be before the haze settled and I would be able to start damage clean-up. I sat down on the carpet, to calm down and think of a plan. A couple moments later, I glanced back over at my husband to see what progress he was making.

It was almost immediately after glancing over that something caught in the vacuum air flow, and, lo and behold, HIS vacuum started spitting out ash, only much faster and with more power!

I screamed with the performance that would win me any role in a horror movie and shrieked, "TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!" He turned around to see what was happening and quickly pulled the plug.

It was at this point in time that the week of pushing myself to get everything done, the physical drain of the days of hard labor, the emotional pressure of getting ready for a move, the loss of saying goodbye to old friends, and having to perfect my house that I love only for the enjoyment of someone else that I finally lost it.

I fell to my knees on the floor in my living room, now coated in a thin film of ash, where only moments before had been a nearly immaculate room of beauty, and I started wailing. I wailed and I wailed and I wailed. And when I was done wailing, I fell forward and began sobbing.

It was quite some time before I composed myself. And even after that, it took at least an hour for me to recover from the horror. My husband and I also managed to get into a pretty hearty marital "conversation" that led to our confused son's own personal meltdown.

However, by the end of the evening, I had overcome the trauma of the Rain of Fire-place, and my husband even got me to unwillingly crack a smile when he explained that his initial inability to stifle his laugh was because of the uncanny resemblance between my own situation and that of an episode of "I Love Lucy."

We also managed to bring the room back to show-worthy state (even though I know that out there lurks unseen ash hiding in the weave of various pieces of furniture and tapestry). And by the appraisal this morning, I could say with confidence that the house has not looked this good since the previous owner showed it when we decided to buy. The appraiser seemed to really like the place, and I think we did the best job we could. Now we will just have to hope for a good fair market value.

I don't anticipate this being my last meltdown before the move is complete, and I fully expect more catastrophes to follow over the next several weeks. But I will sincerely try to keep things in perspective and remember what is sure to become my new life mantra - at least until we get settled in our new home: "Do the best you can, but just know that despite your best efforts, sometimes life just decides to spew white ash all over your formal living room."