Staging

So 3 strangers are in my house, touching my stuff, moving my stuff around, talking about my stuff.  I just worked my butt off for the past week, boxing extra stuff up, cleaning out closets, reducing clutter, making it look like "a model home."  I felt like Dori in Finding Nemo...just keep cleaning...just keep cleaning...But no matter how much you think you're done, real estage agents have a different eye for what will "show well."  So I know it's their jobs to make the place look good in pictures.  But damn, don't touch my stuff.  The picture of my dad on the piano...the note from a first grader on my fridge (You are the gratest prinibull evr...so grat and prfct"...books on the coffeetable.  ach. 

Enzo was a prfct little puppy through it all, even though I could tell it bothered him too. 

And now we have a lock box on the front door and plans for an open house next Sunday.  With any luck I'll be on my way home from Orono, having seen my mom and left one little puppy with her for the time being.  ahhhh, i know I'm gonna miss his fuzzy little face and his affection.  But I think that mom and he will have a good time together, enjoying the fall Maine weather, spending lots of time all day rather than being in a crate all day (Enzo, not mom).

I'm meeting Laurie for Bikram yoga later today in Hartford, maybe go to Firebox for a bite afterwards.  Looked up yoga studios in Boulder...there are a number of them (as expected).  I can finally nurture a consistent yoga practice...I'm really looking forward to that.

This is a weird sort of limbo time for me...packing up my life here but still very engaged in life here...feeling my heart out in Colorado with Mark, but missing him every day here...wishing I was already there, but not ready to not be here...I want to be present through all these feelings...it's very, very easy for me to put my head down and just try to push through the feelings, to push them down, mask them with work or wine...but this is an opportunity, a chance to be present, authentic and whole.  Let me not squander what life is offering me right now.

This is from a hike that Mark did in the Flatirons yesterday...looking east toward the great plains...and me.