October 16th
At any moment I will be interrupted by our realtor coming to take pictures of the house. We're officially putting it on the market as a rental, and that is just a little bit stressful. I surely hope she doesn't want to take pictures of the closets because she will be confronted with towering, head height piles of sheer crap.
My husband is officially back at work. Yesterday they had PT twice. He came home for lunch in PTs, but needed his ACUs just in case. However he left without his boots and got a few miles down the road before he remembered. So I, the dutiful Army Wife stood out on the curb with his pair of stinky boots in hand, in order to pass them off speedily so he would not be late to work. I got a few drive by kisses in return, not a bad exchange.
October 17th
I am madly decluttering. The kitchen has been denuded of every appliance but the Kitchen Aid and even the dish rack is empty and hidden in a cupboard. The whiskey is in the plastics drawer, the bar has been dissembled and packed away in a footlocker, ready for resurrection at our new house.
The realtor was very impressed. "This is like a show house!" she said, which was richly rewarding for all my hard work. However, now I must keep it up to that standard as at any moment she might bring people in to show.
This means no dish must rest, no shoes on the floor, no jacket on the chair. We must live as though we are not really living here, no mean feat.
Further, we have no idea what house we are moving into; the two primary candidates have been disqualified. One, which looked remarkably like a trailer actually turned out to be a trailer, (surprise) and the VA does not approve loans for trailers. Too bad. It was completely renovated and on a cinder block foundation and would have done perfectly well.
The other, a five bedroom with pole barn on over one acre (and within our budget) doesn't, it turns out, accept VA loans. I thought that was too good to be true anyway.
So now we are free floating. Wheee! I wake in the night gripped by extreme anxiety regarding the state of my geranium. I remember, too late, that I have left it outside and am convinced that it will freeze to death and I will be solely responsible.
It's clear to me that the anxiety over moving is being displaced unto my houseplants, since worrying about their state is so much more manageable than worrying about where we will be living, how we will be paying for it, who will rent our house, what we will do if we don't get any renter, if we have enough money saved, if the rent will cover the mortgage and rental agent fee and last but not least, what the hell we will do for Thanksgiving.
So much easier to worry about the geranium.
I roasted a chicken last night. I took it out too soon and didn't let it rest long enough after I took it out, so instead of carving it, I merely mangled it. That aside, it was tender, moist and flavorful; I stuffed it with chopped sweet onion, thyme and basil and rubbed basil, thyme, garlic and lemon juice on skin.
Mainly I wanted roasted chicken remains for chicken pot pie and that I most certainly have. I picked the carcase as clean as I could possibly stand and since that wasn't very clean, I decided to make chicken stock with it. That turned out very well, but of course there was still the perfectly good chicken remaining.
I threw it away; I felt shades of Great Depression housewives rolling in their graves; I'm sure I could have made a pound of chicken salad. I was damned, however, if I was going to pry any more greasy chicken from the bones with my bare hands.
But I didn't do two badly, with about six (eight?) cups of stock, one meal for three and another for who knows how many out of a six dollar chicken.
We have a mandatory picnic to attend this afternoon; I hate those things.
