I got home from Em's end-of-year school awards ceremony this morning (she is pleased; she got a certificate because she has maintained a 4.0 GPA) to find a whole group of various inspector-type people gathered at our house. Someone to check for termite infestation. Someone to check the pool. Someone to check the roof. Someone to check the electrics. Someone to check the septic system (lucky chap that one). And someone to look at the solar heating system. Plus the prospective buyer and his realtor.

I found having all these people trooping round the house, doing things like climbing into the crawl space in the roof, or switching my dishwasher on, or bashing various bits of wood with a stick to see if they "sound right", quite unpleasant. Even though I doubt that there is anything too hideous wrong with the house, considering that we had the house inspected just nine months ago, I found myself feeling very defensive and anxious. Particularly when they kept conferring in hushed whispers and trading mysterious bits of paper with one another. I think that the protocol is that now they take any issues they have to our realtor, and then we haggle over who fixes what. Unless they found something absolutely horrendous and decide that they don't want the house after all. Ugh.

This whole selling process is really not much fun. I can't wait for it to be over.

I did catch myself thinking, as I sat by the pool and watched the kids swim, and pretended not to hear all the murmurings behind me from assorted fault-finders, that really, this is a very nice house in a very pleasant town, and would it be so bad if we were to give up this whole moving idea altogether?

But I suppose it would be awkward having to tell everyone, oh, actually we changed our minds, we're not going after all. And then there is the issue of Bobby's mental health. And my parents would be disappointed. But still. Staying put requires so much less effort than moving does. I suppose that is why so many people get more-or-less permanently stuck in jobs or places or marriages that they don't like - they let inertia prevail. One of my brothers -in-law is a case in point. He's just hanging in there watiing for retirement; hasn't much enjoyed work for the last decade. Pretty sad.