August 1, 2021 – Moving On

If you don’t think 2.5 milligrams of steroids can make much of a difference in a person’s well being, think again! I certainly didn’t think that minute amount could have such a detrimental impact on my health, but it did. I went from completing a bunch of projects on the house and painting up a storm to laying around, practically brain-dead, and devoid of energy. And it all came about because I went in for my quarterly appointment with my kidney specialist and he suggested we reduce the quantity I was on by 2.5 milligrams (just a smidge). He felt it was a good idea because of the harmful effects higher doses of steroids have on the body over time. If I only had to be on them for a little while, a higher dose is not a big deal, but such is not the case. I am on them for the remainder of my life. Even though it’s rather a pain to have to remember to take them each day, I am grateful for them (and modern medicine). I owe my life and continue to thrive (in part) due to steroids, tacrolimus, and mycophenolate. Without them, my body would try to vaporize my ‘borrowed’ kidney and that would leave me in quite a quandary!

Fortunately, I have the good sense to recognize right away when something isn’t working and my doctor is open enough to trust my feedback, so when I told him that my low blood pressure symptoms had returned (headache, confusion, sensitivity to light, feeling ‘woozy’, lack of energy) once I reduced my dosage, and that I’d like to resume my previous dosage (with his blessing), he readily agreed. Three days have passed since then and I’m feeling much better, although I’m still suffering from a slight headache. Of course, there’s another good reason why my head probably hurts, the ‘impossible’ happened. Yes, to my utter surprise, we actually received an offer on our house and we accepted! Can you believe it?! I can’t! I was ‘this close’ to throwing in the towel, and then ‘fate’ intervened. I had begun to wonder whether the move was a good idea and if anyone would ever love our home as much as we do, and then destiny answered with ‘yes’ and ‘yes’! Needless to say, my head hurts. I’m happy and I’m also extremely overwhelmed.

This is the time when putting together a ‘list’ would be a great idea but I haven’t yet begun. I’m still processing the fact that our house is under contract and we’re actually moving. After extracting a pen and notebook out of a drawer in our office, I set them on the kitchen counter, and there they remain. They are both in the exact same location, unused and untouched. When I finally get around to creating a list, there’s a good chance that I’m going to use up several sheets of paper, if not the entire notebook. There is so much to be done! I keep getting fixated on what we’re going to do with our ginormous master bedroom set because I don’t want to bring it with us. It weighs a ton and each piece is super-sized. For this home, it works great because the bedroom we put it in is ginormous, too. However, I don’t want to have to worry about getting it down the stairs and loading it on a truck. Despite how much I love the furniture (honestly, it’s really lovely and well made), it’s far too heavy for my husband and I to move by ourselves and the chances that it would fit in our next home are slim to none.

After several moves, I have realized that it’s rare that any furniture I remove from one house and place in another actually ‘works’ or ‘fits’. We hauled so much crap out here seven years ago and wound up selling or getting rid of most of it because it either didn’t fit or work with the new room configurations. I hesitate to get rid of our couches because we actually bought them new and they’re super-comfy, but couches take up a lot of space on a truck and there’s no way to predict whether they’re going to work out well in our next house because our next house is only an idea at this point. We have no plans on house-hunting from afar so until we reach our destination, it’ll remain an idea. But, hey, enough about that! I want to return to where this whole thing started, with ‘the offer’ and the person who made it in the first place. If you’ve read any of my recent posts, you’re probably aware of a ‘potential buyer’ who I mentioned had asked some (what I found to be) rather peculiar questions. Each time a question was asked, we answered.

I began to develop serious doubts about whether the person asking the questions was ever going to come through, they’d been ‘courting us’ for over a month. While we anxiously awaited news, any news, they quietly waited in the wings. And once my husband and I became desperate and finally agreed to lower the price, when I contacted our realtor to advise her of our decision, she told us to wait because an offer was coming through. Huh? “Did she just mention an offer?” I thought to myself. I was sure I was hearing things. But, no, I heard right! A couple of hours later, our realtor texted and told us to check our email as the offer had just been sent. Wow! Modern technology. I’m so used to having to schedule an appointment and meet someone in an office and sign real made-from-wood paper with an actual pen (containing ink) but none of those items are required any longer. In order to review and sign a contract nowadays, all you literally need is a smart phone! There are no appointments or offices or even writing implements involved in the process. It is so strange!

Fortunately, the offer was pretty cut and dry and it was more than fair. It was less than our asking price but we didn’t feel like dickering over a few thousand dollars. We could have counter-offered but I didn’t think it was worth the risk. Apart from the closing date, we were happy with the terms, so after our realtor adjusted the date, we e-signed away. Afterward, I sent a text to our realtor and asked if there was anything more we needed to do but she didn’t get back to me until this morning; however, when she did, it was good news. “Mutually accepted!” she happily proclaimed via e-mail. It was followed by a text which informed us that the next step involved a house inspection. “Will let you know the date,” the message stated. Oh my gosh, I have to tell you, I am so relieved that I don’t have to go through the open house or house showing ‘shuffle’ any longer. It involved waiting for phone calls from our realtor and then running around like a madman and madwoman, wiping dog snot off windows and vacuuming up canister-loads of dog hair (along with numerous other chores), before making a mad dash out the door. I dreaded those phone calls!

Thank goodness there’ll be no more of ‘that’, but we’re not in the clear, not by any means. We are now in the pre-inspection phase of selling our home, which means crossing every possible appendage and body part (eyes, fingers, toes, arms, legs, etc.), in hopes that once that ‘make or break’ day I’m-really-not-looking-forward-to arrives, the building inspector finds absolutely nothing wrong and gives us the ‘green light’. With the green light, we’ll be able to breathe a sigh of relief because short of a national disaster or something significant, there shouldn’t be any other reason(s) for the buyer to pull out of or terminate the contract. If they do choose to terminate the contract once the building inspection is approved, it won’t make me happy but we will at least get to keep their earnest money (which will make it sting a little less). Let’s hope that’s not the case and everything post-inspection goes smoothly. Once we reach the post-inspection phase, life is going to get nutty! I am holding off on purging furniture and a lot of the larger items we intend to get rid of, but once that inspection takes place (if everything goes well), I’ll be bombarding Craigslist with ads.

Holy crap! We have so much ‘stuff’! I looked in our laundry room today and came across a sizable quantity of ‘party lights’. When I turned 50, my husband threw me a huge surprise party. He had our sunken living room (aka ‘the Chapel’) all decked out like a disco. In addition to a disco ball, there were lights galore! Not only were there colored lights that blinked to the beat of the music, there were strobe lights and black lights to boot. I felt like I had gone back in time, to the days when I spent most of my waking hours (in my late teens) at one of the local nightclubs. I loved the effect of the lights, they made my birthday party extra special; but once the party was over, they were all returned to their original boxes and stacked on a shelf in the laundry room. Will we ever use this substantial quantity of lights again? Not likely. I can tell you this much, I’m not going to waste my time loading them into a box and hauling them all the way across the country. We have so many things in our home that we used once and now they no longer have a function other than taking up space.

I suspect that a majority of the time I spend post-inspection will involve posting ads on Craigslist and trying to recover some of the money we initially invested in these less-than-practical-but-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time items. Yes, the lights need to go, and so does the inflatable flamingo costume I purchased to wear at my mother’s 90th birthday party (but didn’t). There are also a fair amount of ceramic dolls (I bought during a ‘phase’ years ago) that need a new home. I don’t know why I was so enamored with them for as long as I was, they don’t do a thing for me any more. My husband has been through his share of phases, too. One of his ‘phases’ involved buying a whole bunch of motorcycle helmets. The last time I counted, I think he was up to nine. Seven or eight of those helmets are getting posted on Craigslist (and will hopefully find a new head to rest upon). Of course, that’s after I remove the 1/2 inch ‘protective’ layer of dust from each and every one of them. For now, my focus is on clearing out all of the ‘no longer need’ paper and paperwork that contentedly resides in nearly every room in our home.

Geesh. I just realized I’ve said a whole lot about nothing in particular. I started out on the subject of steroids and then ‘the move’, and from there I touched on ‘the offer’ and ‘the inspection’. The thing is, my initial intent was to discuss steroids and their effects exclusively. That clearly didn’t happen! Oh, well. I guess today’s blog is a good representation of my current brain activity, it’s all over the place! You can probably understand now why a ‘list’ has yet to come together. At least I was able to come up with a title for today’s blog after much trial and error. I started out with ‘Steroids’ which eventually became ‘Modern Medicine and Modern Technology’ which eventually became ‘Moving On’ (as it seemed the most relevant). And speaking of ‘moving on’, I need to get a move on because I’m heading back to ‘the big city’ tomorrow to help my brother get some of my mother’s affairs in order. The day after I left, the people in charge of the facility where she’s staying decided that she needed greater care than they were able to provide, so now he has to find a caregiver to stay with her until he can move her into a memory care facility. Oh, how I love it when people throw a wrench into the works! Ugh.

Alright, I’m signing off. Much to do! Have a fantastic weekend and thanks for stopping by!

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