Riding with the devil

As I was making my drive from Knoxville to Nashville on Saturday morning, I had a bitchy blog posting all planned out in my head -- if only I could have typed while driving, oh the rage you would have experienced vicariously through my writing, THE RAGE! Alas, the emotion has passed and I'm not much in the mood to bitch so I'll share instead in popular bulletized form details of my weekend, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

• I still had to finish cleaning/prepping my house to be put on the market. I left the Modern Beau's house at 8:30 a.m. It took four hours to complete the usual 2:40 drive because ...
• It began raining cats and dogs. Then, my winshield wiper BROKE, clinging tenuously to it's holder. Miles down the road THE OTHER ONE BROKE. I don't know if you've ever tried driving in a hard, pounding rain without using your wipers, but let me just say you're no worse off if you close your eyes.
• Three stops, a crap ton of duct tape and a good samaritan later (not necessarily in that order), the wipers were sorta reattached and, of course, it stopped raining.
• I looked down at my odometer during the latter half of the drive. It read 66,666. Seriously. The power of Elvis compels you!
• I got the house adequately staged thanks to two trips to Old Time Pottery. I used to make fun of that store as a sorta Pottery Barn for rednecks, but seriously? IT'S AWESOME. You do have to reserve about three hours to comb through the shelves and shelves of awesomeness.
• I cleaned the windows inside and out and scrubbed the screens, front door and trim with soap and water. I got down on my hands and knees and washed the laminate wood floor by hand.
• I installed a programmable thermostat BY MYSELF. It was very empowering. You should all try it, but only if you have a teeny-tiny screwdriver and an electric drill -- which you all should have anyway.
• On the way back to Knoxville late last night, I got trapped in roadwork which involved I-40 being closed. Not that well-publicized by Dolly Parton I-40 closure, for all you local people, but a more spur-of-the-moment, not-publicized-at-all closure. I got to bed really, really late.

The good news is the house is ready for sale, and I'm just waiting on the real estate agent to get back from her son's wedding so she can take some pictures and plant the sign. As a result, I get my weekends back just in time for the Modern Beau to gradjumatate from law school. Party on.

Tonight, in between a dinner of Chicken Enchiladas Verde/me figuring out how to ship my mom's Mother's Day gift/me figuring out what to give the MB for graduation, I'll be drawing the winners of Pay it Forward. You still have about three hours to enter.