Bells in My Batfry

I've been lousy at posting lately.  But it's not because I've abandoned toddlerspit.  Oh no.  It's because I've been ricocheting off the walls, like a bat with bells tied to her wings.  And a ricocheting bat finds it difficult to sit down at her laptop to type.  A ricocheting bat must do things like scrub toilets and drink more coffee and pick incessantly at her little bat children and chew lots of tums.

I'm ricocheting because (thank you for asking) our house officially goes on the market today, and we've already had two pretty nice offers, and got into a bidding war, and now we're up to full-price and may go higher by midnight tonight.  We also both have the sneaking suspicion that we identified our dream house today, and we're probably putting in an offer tomorrow.

Some people (Eric) are tired of hearing this story, but I just can't get over it, so I'm going to tell it again.  You know how a few weeks ago we found our dog Burley a good home right after I gave that donation to the animal shelter in honor of our friend's dog, Gatsby?  And I felt like that happened because I released a very specific intention to the universe?  Well, around that same time (February 24, to be exact), in the little notebook I carry around with me everywhere, I wrote these two things on a "wishlist to the universe:"

"a beautiful, spacious, zen house that is close to the 'outdoors' and that looks like it's in the mountains"  (The house we want to buy has cedar siding, is surrounded by old-growth trees, is close to the foothills, backs to open space, and has a real, live ficus tree growing up through the dining room floor.  No shit).

"a sale that is easy and joyous, selling at full price, with the buyer paying closing costs, and selling in less than sixty days"  (Yep.  'Cept if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't put a limit on the sale price.  Why not "selling at more than full price"?  Greedy?  Maybe.  But who am I to underestimate what is possible?)

[Update:  as I was reading over this, Eric called me on my cell to tell me we got another offer, for above our asking price.  Go figure.]

Well.  How about that.  The cynics among you are saying, "Well, duh.  You wanted a house that looked a certain way, and so you found it.  You wanted your house to sell, so you did the work you needed to do, and it sold.  It's not the universe, it's you, dummy."

Yes and no.  It was us, to the extent that we did what we needed to do to get the house ready for sale and looked for houses to buy.  And, since I am a divine part of the universe (stick that in you craw, daddio), I helped create this reality that is so exciting.  But I think also about the me of five years ago.  The me of five years ago was a sad little pessimist who always assumed the worst.  I explained every little rotten thing (not finding a job, Eric not asking me to marry him, our run-down little house, you name it) as part of a long pattern of loserness.  Anything good--meeting Eric, moving to Colorado, going to grad school--was considered an exception to my loserness rule.

I remember exactly the moment when I stood in the upstairs hall of our house, sobbing at Eric because my job as personal assistant to Mr. Asscrack of the universe sucked, or I didn't want to finish my dissertation, or thought I was really ugly, and I was yelling at him how I was worthless and he should leave me.  He looked at me and said, "You know what?  You're not allowed to talk like that.  Any.  More."

I could tell he was serious.  It straightened me out, was a grand epiphany for me, shining light on the fact that I had some control in how I looked at events, in how I would be permitted to look at events.  Then I got serious, and started to read some books on cognitive psychology (especially this one) and got dragged to unchurch by Nancy.  It's taken me a long time to go from total pessimist to someone who believes in positive intention.

And still, even given how great things have gone and how good life is, it's hard for me to believe it all.

Except, there is that full price offer, staring us in the face.  There is the house on Zang Street (no kidding) waiting for us to buy it.  So I'm beginning to think there is something to it.  Does this mean nothing bad will ever happen?  Maybe Zang Street is ridden with termites.  Maybe the buyer of our house will skip town.  The universe can be a trickster some time.

But I'm not too worried about it.  There are good things coming to me, and flowing through me, and that is good.  I'm believing, I'm believing.