Baby, it's not my first rodeo

The Bunny and I have moved some ten times or more since the beginning of our relationship. We are about to start the selling process for the second home we've owned together, and it is much more difficult this time around. For one, we live in the historic part of the city, which, like many other towns, means the half-dangerous/half-brilliant neighborhoods where home buying can be like a real estate lottery. Will your property value soar or sink? Due to this bitch ass economy and several foreclosures in this area that are now inhabited by less-than-enthusiastic landscapers with unsavory and questionable social practices, we now own a home that is worth several bucks less than our investment. Dammit. Then again, we are also trying to break the lingering love affair we have with these walls. It isn't as easy as I thought I would be.

Still, we are asking what we feel is a fair price for the property--especially considering all of the upgrades and improvements we've completed to no monetary gain on our behalf--so we might get lucky. That is, if you can call spending countless hours of work/cash renovating a home only to resell it at the expense of your own account "lucky," then we are goddamn leprachauns. The reason for selling now is to bypass our fears that we might still own this home a year from now when we are actually leaving town. I can't even allow my already anxiety-ridden body to imagine the possibility.

With the Bunny's new late night work schedule, I find myself doing the most ridiculous and OCD tasks at close to midnight. I had the TV semi-muted on HGTV where some "Real Estate Expert" was telling a couple to stop thinking their house was better than everyone else's house if they truly wanted to sell it. Their townhouse in D.C. was on the market for $899,000. Granted, this is no D.C., but our house is a nice size with a lovely pool, and we are merely asking pennies compared to their pushing-a-million price. It seems so preposterous that this type of property chasm could exist only a few state lines apart. Sometimes I'm a naive little wifey.

Spurred on by the caustic remarks of said Real Estate Expert, I started to take an objective eye to my home. Yeah, there's probably a bit too much shit crowded on the hutch my mother gave me, which now sets in our beloved dining room. Remove the iconic photo of me kissing the Bunny's cheek--a B&W close-up I took early on in our marriage--and now there is no evidence of our existence in that room. Check. No one wants to see the affection that moved between you and your spouse in the home where they might possibly commit their own acts of affection/sex/love/fighting/making-up.

I toyed briefly with the idea that I might need to hide the vegetarian cookbooks, as the Real Estate Expert says, "It's hard to hear but true: Hide depictions of extreme personal preferences, including wedding photos that might betray a particular religion or spirituality or especially if you are living in a committed homosexual or bisexual relationship. No one needs to know your politics either, or if you have multiple degrees. It gives some people a negative impression of your home." Does a proclivity towards eating vegetables over flesh constitute an "extreme personal preference" in 2009??? Maybe in West Tennessee it does. Really, I pondered this a long time.

I took all of the lovely artifacts from loved ones that collaged our fridge and gently placed them in a box. That was maybe the hardest part: I don't now when I'll see them again. I can't have potential buyers reading our pro-gay marriage sentiments or understanding our position on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, or viewing the gratuitous vagina on a postcard from Key West courtesy of AY-D. No, that just wouldn't be appropriate.

It feels almost sacreligious to stuff old photographs of my grandmother when she was a raving beauty deep into the confines of a drawer. In order to better display our refinished and expansive hardwood floors, I had to gain the disdain of my dogs, who balked at my removal of their favorite living room rug. Believe me, this is no easy process. We've loved living here, but the time to move on is now. I can't delay the inevitable. Why keep living here for months on end knowing this place will, eventually, belong to someone else's refrigerator preachings, kissy face photographs, and old, creaky dog joints?