It's a great feeling when one clears a bottleneck that had been tying up general life progress. I did that today. I couldn't sort out the proper order to do things to make them slide through the bottleneck, but with a little help from friends and coworkers who had no idea they were doing such a great service for me, I took a couple giant steps closer to the finish line. It wasn't that the things we did were so earth-shattering. But a few inches of slip along a fault line can have a noticeable effect.
I've been wrapped around the axle about the next closing date I have coming up. My buyers find themselves unable to be present on the date we chose (I consulted with the husband--and specifically asked for approval of the closing date), and we've been trying to determine whether we could close early, late, sign papers but close on time, or sign remotely somehow. Most of the options involve pushing the bank and title agency to do a load of extra work, which could potentially cause problems. Today I made progress with the listing agent to push the closing one day later, which would be the easiest of all possible outcomes. This small conversation solved the worst block in the bottleneck.
I've also been avoiding for months writing a blurb about myself for the company website. No, make that a year and a half that I've dragged my feet on this. But it's only been since February that we had a different website that emphasized how much we needed a bio. I had intended on condensing the speech I made for Rotary when I had to talk about myself to get my blue badge (the sign of a full member, not a newbie), but it seemed to sound awkward whenever I thought about using most of that language. I didn't want to write about myself, which is purely weird, considering that's what I do every single night, and have for four years now. Today while I sat in the sales meeting, I finally was able to translate the key points from the speech into a single paragraph. I had written it longhand in my notebook, and once I finished posting my open house notices on Craigslist, I typed it up and offered it to our web manager. I'm done! I don't have to think about it pretty much ever again!
And then tonight, I made a purchase that I've been thinking about for a year. Last spring, we talked to our neighbor (Barley's human) about his electric lawn mower. He loves the one he has, and I borrowed it long enough to mow a single strip across my yard, to see what it felt like. It didn't vibrate as much, but it was still comparable in weight and resistance to pushing as a standard mower. I decided to wait on buying one last year, because so many other things were stressing me out and the idea of spending that money was too much to handle at that moment. I admitted to myself this year that I am no longer capable of handling a gas mower (while I could push one for a while, the process of pull-starting one is more than I am physically capable of doing without pain and injury). When the Man mowed the first time this year, after pouring a brand-new bottle of oil into it and filling it with fresh gasoline, the mower we bought just four or five years ago in Charleston was toast. It smoked and chugged, and once he was done, Mr X left it for two days at the edge of the sidewalk, hoping it would grow legs. If he hadn't left it directly under the streetlight, it might have. I rolled it into the back yard, and eventually we'll put it in the alley by the trash, in the universal symbol for "I don't want this anymore; someone take this off my hands." I bought a new electric mower, the same brand as my neighbor's, but a few generations more advanced. I'm actually looking forward to trying it out, to see whether I can recapture a little self-sufficiency that I thought was lost forever.
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