Is that your conch or mine?

So. This is it. The movers are coming tomorrow, just in time for some snow flurries. Goodbye Mulletville.

As I was cleaning out closets in the house we're moving into—my childhood home—I found this basket of shells. They'd been sitting there since 1982.



My mother left the basket behind after my parents divorced and she moved out, and I hung on to it, like I did a lot of things (come swim in my pool!). My mother always wanted to live by the beach, but my father thought that was impractical.

This summer, she and my step-father moved to a house by the ocean, and yesterday I gave her back the shells.

I'm taking this as a sign that everyone is where they are supposed to be.

How do you make me blue? Let me count the ways

It’s official. After seven months of talking about moving from Mulletville to Mulletville Lite, we finally have a moving date. In two weeks we’ll be out of here.

Even though I’ve hated on this town for almost six years, I’m not eager to leave our house. I love our old house, so much so I was having second thoughts about moving.

Then my friend said that she mentioned to a realtor that our home was on the market, and the realtor laughed and called Mulletville a shithole.

The realtor is right. Mulletville is a shithole, and the damn town almost duped me into falling for it all over again. See, what I haven’t mentioned is that when Chuck and I first drove though Mulletville, we loved it. The old buildings were grand and majestic. There was no traffic, no hustle. Homes were affordable. The downtown was decorated with banners claiming that Mulletville was on the cusp of a revitalization. The newspapers said so too.

It seemed the perfect spot to settle down.

The first year we lived here, we joined the townspeople in their excitement over Mulletville’s impending rejuvenation. It was so close, we all said. Soon the drug dealers would be gone. The vacant downtown storefronts would be full of quaint stores and restaurants. Our friends would stop mocking our move away from civilization.

Rah, rah!

Months went by. The banners started to fade and fray. Years went by. The banners came down. The downtown buildings were still vacant except for smoke shops and pawn shops. Instead of fewer drug dealers, there were now child molesting drug dealers. A new mayor was voted in; instead of rallying the people at town meetings, he slept (in a stroke of genius the people voted in a man who works the night shift at another job).

A few Mulletville diehards continued to sing the fight song but watching them was like watching a small crowd cheer for a 90-year-old one-legged, dehydrated, blind marathon runner with gout who was running in the wrong direction.

You wanted to shake them and shout “It’s over, dipshits. It’s Michael Moore’s ‘Roger & Me’ all over again, except Mulletville’s heyday was in the 1800s. Go home.”

So yah, I had a serious case of beer goggles when we bought our home, and my love of the memories we've made in our home almost made me bed Mulletville all over again. Slutbag! And it’s funny, I was chipper and snarky when I started this post and now I’m just sad. Even though I hate Mulletville, sometimes you want the sickly 90-year-old one-legged, directionally challenged, blind marathon runner to win the race. Just to prove the naysayers wrong. Just so you could clink your beer mug to the underdog finally getting his day.

But nope. A shithole is just a shithole and soon this town will just be a memory.

(Except for when we need to go to the dentist, pediatrician, hospital, general physician, Walmart or pawn shops. Curses!)

You want staging? I'll show you ^%$&ing staging

We had a very nice Thanksgiving. I only had to make out with, like, 25 people to crumb together half a cookie. It was worth it, except that one of those people had a cold and I've been sniffling and hacking for the last three days.

The perils of sucking face for sweets.

My cold put a big damper on our weekend plan, which was to make some progress on Operation Move. Remember how I mentioned in August that we were moving to Mulletville Lite?

We haven't gotten very far. For one, we haven't sold our house. My darling brother Ted, who stopped by yesterday, wondered aloud if it might have something to do with the fact that our dining room looks like this



"You've heard of staging, right?" he asked. "You have to stage your home."

Staging? Have I effin' heard of staging? This, coming from a 28-year-old bachelor who still sleeps until 3 p.m. Who has no idea how few able-bodied hours there are in the day when you work full-time, raise a toddler and get winded opening the mailbox.

Even if I had spent precious time staging, the house we're moving into-my father's old house, aka my childhood home-has been fraught with problems. Because of black mold, Chuck had to demolish the basement and air scrub it.

And my wannabe Bob Vila father keeps taking a sledgehammer to anything that looks even slightly off kilter. No sooner do we think a room is ready than we get a call along the lines of, "I saw an air bubble in the paint so I got the axe and tore down the wall for you."

It's madness; we need to abscond his keys.

Diddlydoo's Mulletville Lite bedroom looks like this



The dining room looks like this



But don't worry! Staging will save us.

I swear, siblings can be such peckerheads. You're helplessly staring up at the friggen summit and all you can do is waddle around base camp, cramming almonds and reduced fat cheese sticks into your mouth, and they get all HGTV on your ass.

Anyway, after some discussion this morning, Chuck and I decided that Operation Move will now be called Operation Move Later. Diddlydoo will be born in Mulletville. We'll move in January. With a newborn. In the middle of winter. On limited sleep.

That's when I officially change the name of this blog to "Vodka in my Vodka."