Ever since my kids were born, I have been dreading the prospect of one day selling a house and moving with young kids under foot. Since the interest rates are lower and our kids are a little older, we recently decided that this was great time to put our house up for sale so we could move closer to town. Shortly after 2 pm on Sunday, I found myself seriously contemplating ripping the For Sale Sign from my yard and living in the same house for the rest of my life. Or at least until the kids were away at college.

My vacuum had just mysteriously stopped working while I was in the middle of cleaning the living room and potential buyers were going to be arriving to look at our house in approximately 23 minutes. In desperation, I picked up all the visible dirt from the carpet and used a broom to evenly spread the carpet fresh that I had already sprinkled on the carpet so that there was no visible white powder.

I then realized that Laurel had somehow decided that this was a perfect time to do a science experiment that involved water, food coloring, Dixie cups and brown sugar. While I was disposing of the Dixie Cups filled with “scientific evidence”, I noticed that Trevor had set up a very elaborate game of Monopoly on the freshly cleaned glass coffee. I somewhat calmly asked him to clean up the game before “passing go.”

With 12 minutes to spare, I breathed a sigh of relief as I buckled the kids in the car and then went to load up the dogs. Since none of my friends or family was going to be happy to see me arrive at their house with two kids and three dogs, our plan was to “drive around” for an hour while the realtor showed our house.

After I put our two dachshunds in the car, I realized that our third dog was nowhere to be found. Since he is completely deaf and cannot hear me call for him, I spent the next few minutes running through the yard and house looking for him. When I found my dog hiding in the closet, he told me in no uncertain terms that he was not going outside in the heat. My kids thought it was hilarious to watch Mommy carry the 73 pound dog to the car.

With everyone loaded in the car and the house reasonably presentable, I decided to grab three cold drinks for my two legged family members to enjoy during the hour-long car ride to nowhere. As I opened the fridge I knocked over a strawberry wine cooler and watched helplessly as it shattered all over the garage floor. I picked up the pieces as quickly as I could and tried to ignore the fact that with the 100 degree heat that my garage was quickly going to smell like a frat house on a Sunday morning no matter what I did.

As we pulled out of the driveway a few minutes later, a voice from the backseat said “Do you think that the people will like the My Little Ponies that I put on the kitchen table for them to play with while they at the house?” I took a deep breath, laughed and hoped that the potential buyers had a sense of humor. Or that they at least had kids of their own.