I'm back and have a house for sale

I know Easter has come and gone, but it has only just recently begun to feel like spring. We have worked long hours getting the house ready to sell and then keeping it ready to sell. It feels as though the work will never end. When one thing (e.g., yard cleanup) seems to be completed, then something else pops up (e.g., needing to patch paint the deck where it has peeled or to spot seed the back yard where the squirrels have had a busy, tasty winter digging up acorns). The agency I hired to do a complete housecleaning put the insides of the double-paned windows back in while they were still damp, telling us that the moisture would evaporate on its own, but it did not, and we probably lost a potential sale because of that. It took them coming back and redrying the windows and our own taking out the windows and redrying once or twice to lick that problem completely. (We have fifteen windows in the sunroom alone!) That couple was the only one to have come in the month that it has been for sale aside from two at the open house. Our cheery realtor (endemic to the profession, we think) is still optimistic, but there's no doubt we are caught in market forces far larger than ourselves. Our most promising prospect is a new administrative hire at the college who has seen the house on the internet and feels it is the best of what is available that fits her criteria. She is coming to town two weeks from now for the new president's inauguration and wants to see it then. By then spring will have come in its full glory to our yard and city. Selling the house is the last piece of the move puzzle to fall into place. Chuck has been hired by Calvin as a full-time prof for next year and I have been accepted into a three-week summer Seminar on Christian Scholarship at Calvin on "Being Muslim in the U.S." complete with wonderful required reading list, a stipend and a chance to write a chapter of a book--all taught by Lamin Sanneh of Yale Divnity School. It feels as though the house sale ought to happen as well, but we wait for God's timing on all this.

Aside from the house, we have lots of end of semester activities. Our calendar is filling up with "must see these good folk before we go" dates and that will continue until we move, which we hope to do around Memorial Day weekend, whether or not we have sold the house. We are planning to bring Karen home for the last 10 days of our stay so that we can include her in several parties. Chuck is at the state math meetings today and tomorrow, and tomorrow I go to a Writing Center conference in Columbus (yes, there are such things) and give a talk on my Writing Center history, which is ready for our intern to publish as a little magazine. We've had worries with a niece who had unexpected gall bladder surgery and a daughter who thought a night-time thunderstorm that woke her up from a deep sleep was a fire alarm and so exited her group home and was locked out, cold and wet, for 5 hours until she was discovered by the early risers. So--lots on our plates here.

Before we leave, I want to make a blog-list of what we will miss about Wooster and what we are looking forward to in Grand Rapids. Until then....

Before we leave