How I spent the last 6 weeks

The reason I haven't written in 6 weeks is that I haven't been home much. Jerry moved out of the Kernersville house on September 15 and into his new townhome in Greensboro. Since he moved out, I've been traveling back and forth, getting the house ready to go on the market.

It's been hard work, but I've had good energy, so I can't complain too much. In 15 days (not consecutive), I worked 118.5 hours up at the house. When you consider that 15 8-hour days would be 120 hours, you can see that getting the house fixed up has been a full-time job for me.

The most difficult task that I've had to do was taking down wallpaper. Although there was nothing wrong with the wallpaper, our realtor says that wallpaper is "out" these days. She asked us to take down the wallpaper in the foyer, dining room, kitchen, and breakfast nook. Not realizing how hard it would be, I agreed. Since the painters refused to do the work, I did it myself.

Unfortunately the wallpaper in the foyer and kitchen was put up during construction of the house, which means it was put up over fresh drywall. If you know anything about wallpaper, you know that experts advise against taking down wallpaper that was put up over drywall. It's just too much effort. Although it took me days, I did manage to take down all the wallpaper, and now I'm an expert at wallpaper removal. Since we couldn't hire anyone to do the work, if worse comes to worst, perhaps I can get a job removing wallpaper, if nothing else.

While I'm on the subject of work, I have an update about the job at CMS. They called me back for an interview last Tuesday, and expected to make a decision by Friday (yesterday) and extend an offer sometime next week. I gave them my cell phone number, in case I'm out of town, should they call me.

A week from Monday, Mama will come for another visit. She is planning to stay until after Thanksgiving. My only regret is that I won't be done fixing up the house in Kernersville, so I will have to be away for part of her visit. But with any luck, I hope to finish up working inside the house this week, which will only leave yard work for me to do. I think the yard work can be done in 1 or 2 days, so I shouldn't have to be gone for much of Mama's visit.