Remember when we recently discussed how time flies as we get older? After the past week, I have definitely settled on the “novel experience theory” to explain the phenomenon.

For months on end, especially during winter, my days are pretty much the same: work on the blog, play with the cat, get out for a walk, clean the house a bit, read a book, do some research, maybe try a cooking experiment.

Instead, for the past two weeks, my home has been filled with workmen who have made repairs, painted, fixed this and that. They finished on time early last Tuesday morning. Photos of the apartment were scheduled for Friday, so I spent the remainder of the week cleaning this place from top to bottom, winnowing out dirt from all the nooks and crannies, scrubbing, polishing, washing every window including 90 PANES - when you count both sides - of French door windows. (I'll bet French doors were invented by someone with servants!)

Through it all, I kept thinking, “Isn't Friday ever going to get here?” I haven't felt like that about an upcoming day since – oh, maybe high school years.

Before I decided to sell this apartment and move to Oregon, there had been a leak in my bedroom. Ned Merrick, founder and owner of Harraseeket Woodwrights, who is the talented young man who built the bookshelves throughout my home, tried just about everything to find the leak before we gave in and tore out the wall. It was painful to see.

The leak wasn't fixed until I had decided to sell, so rebuilding that wall took place while other, minor, repairs and painting were being done too. Here is one of Ned's colleagues, Ed, working on the new bedroom wall.

Other of Ned's colleagues painted the laundry room and living room. You can't improve anything in a house without making a horrible mess.

The two weeks of repairs, painting and cleaning felt like two months when at last, the apartment was ready. I finished the final spit-and-polish touch-up Friday morning without any power (so much for a final vacuuming) following an outage resulting from our Thursday night storm. Here's a shot I took myself just before the agent arrived Friday afternoon for the photo session.

I'll post an update with a link to the MLS page with more photos as soon as it goes live online. Listing is here.

A neighbor introduced me to a local second-hand bookseller. She will be here on Wednesday morning when we will begin going through the shelves to see what she wants to buy and what I can stand to sell without too much agony. I would like to leave with about half the books that are here now; that will save some moving costs.

One of the hardest parts of selling is the need to continue living day-to-day while keeping the apartment neat, clean and tidy for showings over a period of weeks or (god forbid) months. But there is nothing to do but work at it. No matter how much I try, I cannot convince Ollie the cat to put his toys away when he's done playing.

Speaking of Ollie, here he is on the day after the bedroom was finished, happy to reclaim a favorite snoozing place after camping out with me in the guest room during repairs.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Brenton “Sandy” Dickson: Anna