So we’ve listed our house for sale.

Seasoned veterans of home-selling, feel free to poke fun at me now ‘cause I’m a complete newbie to this.  And y’know what?  It’s a seriously weird process.

Or it feels weird to me, anyway.  It’s like having a closeup video of your proctology appointment posted on YouTube:  There are some places you just never thought you’d expose to idle gawkers.

And idle gawkers they are.  I seriously doubt if the visitors at our open-houses have harboured even a passing interest in buying this house; they just enjoy poking their noses into other people’s homes.

Worse, the parade of disinterested traffic makes me feel as though the house we spent so much time and sweat renovating is being judged unworthy.  Or, if you will: Now that I’ve gathered the courage to bend over and submit to the public examination, nobody even cares enough to pat me on the back and say, “Nice ass; you can get dressed now.”

My confidence has been further eroded by the inevitable cleanout and disposal process.  That’s an exercise in perspective, if by ‘perspective’ you mean ‘utter humiliation’.

I’m generally a thrower-outer so there’s not much to purge, but I’m getting rid of some furniture and I’ll likely jettison some of the business clothes that went out of style in my closet several years ago.  Now, I realize I don’t have expensive tastes and I may not be a fashion maven…

Quit the hysterical laughter, you guys.

Okay, fine; so I’m a cheapskate and my idea of presentable attire is anything that’s clean, fits, and doesn’t have holes in it.

But there’s nothing quite so humiliating as realizing that even donation centres for the homeless wouldn’t want your castoffs.  In fact, there’s a guy who panhandles on a street corner not too far from here, and his clothes are newer and nicer than most of mine.

At least there’s a silver lining to all this discomfort:  Every time we have an open-house, I get four hours of writing time I wouldn’t have had if I was running around trying to do the bazillion other things on my to-do list.

It’s not a perfect solution, though.  We’ve studied the best practices for showing a home, and one of them is to have soft music playing.  Accordingly, we’ve found an easy-listening station that plays instrumental music.

I’ve never tried to write with music in the background before, and I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon.  Usually I’m connected with the characters and the action, writing feverishly with my heart pounding.  But, soothed by the strains of soft music, I find myself reclining comfortably and thinking, “Ah, it’s okay; she’ll get out of this latest scrape just fine.”  It’s not conducive to writing a thriller at all.

Hey, maybe that’s the problem with our open-house visitors, too – they need music with a bit more drive and urgency.  Or maybe a subliminal message.

D’you think the gawkers might like a little Aerosmith?

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New discussion over at the Virtual Backyard Book Club:  You Can’t Always Get What You Want… If a person can find happiness outside of society’s traditional expectations, should they change to fit society’s ‘norms’?  Click here to have your say!