Well, I'm down in Ann Arbor, at the very tag-end of a grueling day that started with moving dressers in from the van to the Lansing house . . . to make room for all the crap I'm taking back from here tomorrow. I came down to clean, and to make coherent spaces out of the gaping holes left by the removal of furniture for Charlie's new digs, and to take back stuff we desperately need (like a vacuum cleaner). We have an open house tomorrow, so the place needs to look shipshape.

I'm utterly exhausted, and when I get tired, I get demoralized. It's hard to get enthused about cleaning and fixing the place up; the real estate market is so bad here that it seems like nothing we do will make any difference. I've started to think that we just don't have what it takes to sell a house in this town - there are over a hundred on the market in our price range, all probably cleaner than ours . . .

But negative thoughts don't make a whole lot of difference to my actions. I wish I had more time to get things ready; we could use a coat of paint in several places that I just haven't had time to get to.

Ah, well. Before I tuck in for the night, here are a few pictures from our moving adventure.

First we have a picture of Emma packing stuff from the closet at the top of the stairs:








And then there's a picture of Em's friend packing the kitchen:








Emma and her boyfriend David packing the living room:








A blurry picture of David chillin':








Some of the boxes these kids generated:








And the new living room, the way it looked three days ago:








All the boxes were OUT OF THERE (yay!!) when I left this morning . . . but boxes have a way of reshuffling themselves and appearing once again where you least expect them. I'm hoping the living room will still be box-free when I get home but I'm not holding my breath . . .