Thursday, April 16, 2009

Nothing yet

There have been 13 showings, and another open house is scheduled for Saturday. No one has put in an offer yet, but that's OK - it's only been two weeks. Could be any minute.

My income tax is ready - the part that I can get ready that is to say. The bookkeeper is working on the rest.

This leaves me in a weird, unfamiliar zone - it's the transitional zone. After so much hard physical work and planning and executive decision making and lugging and tossing, I live carefully in a pristine apartment in which I am careful to mop up my own traces every day. No sock is left on the floor, no toothbrush allowed to sit on the sink.


What this means is that I feel like I can't start any new projects, which in turn feels like I'm living in a mental waiting room. I am so ready to move forward geographically speaking, but am still stuck in Vancouver. At least the weather doesn't suck much right now.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Ready for the next lap



I'm a big fan of built-ins. They add enormous square footage, especially in bedrooms. Plus, the bed does not have to be perfectly made - one can just push the bed up out of sight and get rid of more visual clutter.

I had a cat once upon a time. Getting wall beds installed neatly solved the problem of cat hair/hair balls on the bed. The cat received her own cozy cat bed to snooze in.

I have two of these. They are very well-behaved beds. They stay at any angle I put them at. I can lift them with a single finger.











I hope whoever buys this place will want to keep these - they are "attached," so technically they have to be offered as part of the condo, as do all the built-ins.

This afternoon there will be a private "showing." It seems a bit strange, the idea that people I do not know will be examining my private living space in detail.. but I realize that's just an inner introvert adjusting herself to reality. The reality is, I've got to move and leave this whole part of the world, including my part, behind. Unfortunately, I can't just unzip my condo and take it with me to a brighter part of the country the way I'd like to.

Last night I had a brief talk with a woman who provided me with a little list of the sort of documentation I will need and must prepare in advance of selling my practice. It's tax time right about now, so no time to breathe - it's time to move my attention away from my personal space and figure out how to extract myself from the public one I built. Meanwhile, by pure fluke, suddenly my treatment list has swollen back up to full. I do not know where the energy to treat all these people is going to come from, as I am sleeping rather restlessly, but I am certainly glad that the awful winter work slump seems over along with the arrival of warm spring weather. A lively bustling practice should be easier to sell than a half dead one, especially with Adrienne close at hand.

Thursday, April 02, 2009

The first lap

Wednesday last week represented a milestone in my race to live under brighter skies. Finally, I had chucked out enough books and furniture and clothes and small household items to see the back of every closet, the bottom of every drawer, the surface of every shelf. Finally, I had cleaned out enough cupboards, vacuumed up enough dust, washed enough surfaces and painted enough walls, windowsills and baseboards. Finally, all the blinds were repaired/cleaned, and new Roman blinds covered the venetian ones (something I had never quite gotten around to before). It was time to list.

And list I did. My place is now officially for sale. Hurray. Now, all I have to do is be a fastidious Zen housekeeper and keep things well-enough organized that the place can be shown anytime (once I squirrel the twenty-year-old stained coffee-maker out of sight, hide the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, put the toothbrush in the drawer, and generally remove my own "living" traces from the place).

The place looked nice yesterday for its first Open House - I even added flowers. It's not a showcase, but it's attractive, fresh, clean, shiny, all the things that attract buyers, hopefully some buyers are enough attracted by the lowish price to want to bite. The realtor said that 8 parties, including three agents with buyers, had visited in under 2 hours. After he left two more groups of people, residents in the building, came by to look. One group was a young couple with a baby about 2 years old, who at the moment have a one-bedroom.

I think this bodes well - already 10 groups of traffic through a place that's been listed for only four days.