Mean Mama and Messy Meltdowns

Being a mom is hard… not just a little hard, really hard! Add in a few extra headaches like selling a house from 1,100 miles away while homeschooling and you have a recipe for a Mean Mama and Messy Meltdowns! So how can you recreate this perfect recipe? Let me tell you…

1. List your house for sale.

“Sell your house,” they said… “It will make your life so much easier.” LIES, ALL LIES! 
Let me tell you selling a house is never easy. We have tried to sell our North Carolina home twice before listing it again on October 1st. In between trying to sell we have rented the house out and have had a zillion problems. Everything from busted walls, missing doors, and moldy ducting! Don’t even get me started on this… Anyways, I had very low expectations of getting an offer, but amazingly we got an offer within the first 24 hours! (However, maybe it is not amazing because we listed it super low and figured we would have to come to the table with some cash at closing.)

2. Have a hurricane sweep through the area.

Thankfully our house was not directly hit by Hurricane Florence, but it did make for a hard to mow yard… which it turn means an almost impossible job to find a landscaper to clean up your hot mess of a yard! Finally find a shady landscaper and have the realtor (who has nagged you endlessly about the yard) leave the back gate open, so said landscaper can do his job.

3. Have someone break into your back door. (The one they wouldn’t have been able to get to if the privacy fence was not left open.)

Just so they can steal a 15 year old garage door opener… They did try to take the oven as well, but for some reason decided against it.

I hope it was worth it asshats- Oh, and I hope it stopped working and is useless now! 

4. Try to continue your homeschool lessons while handling 10,000 phone calls from your realtor, who is a dual agent, and come up with a resolution so you can still close on time.

This is the really tricky part… As a homeschool mom of 3 I have a lot to do during our homeschool days. I spend at least an hour reading aloud to my children a day, but when you have someone calling you endlessly it is hard to even get a few paragraphs read. After many interruptions, we finally made it through our reading and tried to move onto math. For my older children this was no problem, but my youngest still requires quite a bit of help. For days he has been asking to skip his math lessons, and this day his whining and pouting pushed me over the end.

Let’s just say mean words were said both ways, and now I have a little boy who is spending the weekend with no video games (and whining, crying, and being a handful). I also have books with bent pages and a scuff on the wall when this mama completely lost it. I may or may not have sent everything on the work table flying (hangs head in shame).

5. Get sassy and stop being classy…

Perhaps I already did this in the step above… However, apparently I didn’t do it well enough so I had to take another shot at being a hot mess! After many long winded (on my realtor’s part) conversations I was finally able to come up with a resolution to repair the house and not delay closing–at the tune of $875 out of my pocket. Only to get an email from the lawyer handling the closing to inform me that they cannot accept my personal check even though the assistant told me they could. I get the instructions to send the money in a different way, and surprise surprise there is another fee!

My realtor calls me again to discuss the whole situation, and after a few complaints on his end I completely lost it (again). I put it all out there- how I am being hosed left and right… How I don’t care if the yard is mowed or not and neither do the buyers. (Who I would like to add bought the house “As Is”.) And end the conversation with, “Just take it.. Take it all.. Want me to send you my Michael Kors bag too?“. I know… Super classy, right?

6. Send out more money and go to bed, and remain there for an entire day.

Yup… an entire day! Jack got his way- no math lessons or any lessons for that matter! No cooking, no cleaning, and no phone calls because you tell everyone you are unavailable to answer and just text if it is important. 

7. Finally close on the house that has been the bane of your existence for four years.

My advice to you is to never enter into a dual agent contract. Through this whole process I felt my realtor only cared about the buyers, and made this so much harder for me. 

So there you have it- House selling, B&E, homeschool tears, and needy people lead to a Mean Mama and Messy Meltdowns…

I am emotionally drained, probably gained 5 pounds, and have nothing left to give. As for today I am going to drink my pumpkin spice latte, listen to Christmas music (don’t you judge me), and snuggle up with a good book. Needless to say, I NEVER want to sell a house again. 

And if you are feeling hard on yourself- don’t! Just remember we all have hot mess moments. I think most people, outside my family and a few close friends, would never picture me this way. My life is not picture perfect… that is just the social media facade. I can be mean, cranky, and a little crusty too. And no, you can’t have my Michael Kors. 

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