The Wizard of Oz, Martha Stewart and U-Haul

When it comes time to selling our house, I click my heels together three times and turn into Martha Stewart. I race around in my preppy shirt and apron organizing and labeling my closets, de-cluttering the house and Swiffering the floors within an inch of their lives. I plant wisteria along the front walk, fold the toilet paper into nifty points, create a fire hazard in the foyer with glade scented candles and cover the dust on the coffee table with coffee table books like my current novel “Slippery When Wet!”-shameless plug! In short, I would sum myself up at this point as: INSANE. When my sanity returns, I find every bath towel in our home is rolled up into logs, unused soaps adorn our sinks, tubs and shower and a lovely bottle of White Star Champagne sits beside two fluted glasses next to the soaking tub. In short, my home makes me look like a lush who doesn’t use soap! I have fake fruit in a bowls on the kitchen counter, fake plants on top of every available surface and my bed has disappeared under a pile of oversized pillows. When buyers come through to view our home, the glass tables sparkle, the linens are ironed and the Pillsbury Dough Boy is snoring peacefully on top of freshly baked rolls next to the oven. When my boys come home from school, Mark exclaims, “Mom, can we live here?” The house sells quickly and I begin packing. I call this “Operation Shock and Awe!” I wrap everything we own in newspaper and stack it into boxes. Soon, I have created a fantastic maze through our home. My boys, Mark and Chris, set about selling tickets to the maze to the neighbor children to pay for the pizzas we are now eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A week later, our U-Haul is loaded and we are rolling toward our new home. Another two weeks of pizzas later, we are beginning to feel at home in our new place. The towels are no longer rolled into logs and are where they belong-on the bathroom floor in a heap. The soaps are falling apart and I’m loopy on White Star champagne. It’s 10:00pm on a Friday night and I’m tracing into the dust on our coffee table: There’s no place like home.