Dogs Live Forever and Our House Will Sell Quickly, Right?

I am having a yen for spa/salon/personal-grooming things. I want to get a pedicure and a facial and a new tattoo and my hair colored and my eyebrows threaded. Low maintenance I am not.

We are having a couple of realtors over to our house this week so we can decide who we want to use to sell our house. It feels weird to contemplate putting our house on the market before Rob has a definite job somewhere, but we think it is the wisest move. We aren't really looking at jobs here in town at all so we almost certainly will be moving somewhere when he finishes his fellowship this summer. Also, the federal housing tax credit could very well apply to whoever buys our house, so we want to get in on the right timeframe for that. We will probably have our house on the market within the next month. When it comes down to it, Rob and I would rather risk selling our house too early than risk sitting on the house for ages. If we are so lucky, we will put all our stuff in storage and live somewhere furnished for a while; after all, we have done it before. Actually, this whole process is making me have serious flashbacks to selling our house in Connecticut. You sort of forget how stressful the whole process is.

And oh, how I am filled with dread about this whole ordeal! There is the stress of whether we will sell the house, if we will come out in the black or red on the transaction, and so forth. But then there is the stress of just having the house on the market, having to keep the house impeccably clean at all times and being ready for a showing at an hour's notice. I see this as a Sisyphean task if ever there was one, what with the dog who constantly sheds hair and the two small children who constantly shed Legos and crumbs and stickers. I had a bit of a taste of it when I was getting ready for the first realtor to come over Monday evening; I seriously felt like I would NOT MAKE IT as I scrambled to clean and straighten while Grace and Violet milled around undoing what I had just done. It is going to suck; it is going to suck a lot.

Speaking of our sweet source of dog hair Abbey, I am starting to worry more about our her. She keeps having these ear and eye problems that she can't seem to kick, despite our multiple bank-account-emptying visits to the vet. It's so hard to tell how much pain a dog is really in because they are so stoic, but she is crying out when we accidentally touch that side of her head and walking around with her eyes squinted shut-- so sad. She doesn't come to the door anymore when we come home and takes SUCH CAJOLING to get her to eat her food and spends so much of her days sleeping on her bed. I am starting to worry about her quality of life, and wondering if there is something else wrong with her. Dear sweet Abbey, how I want her to live forever and be happy and healthy for all time...