#13, #14, and Reinforcements

House Showing #13 was on Tuesday. It was the usual frenzy of cleaning, herding cats, loading dogs, and so on.

I jumped in my van with all the dogs, who were certain that this time we really were going somewhere SO FUN — and was stopped on my driveway by a turtle 🐢

I have never seen a giant turtle at my house before but there he was — right in the driveway. I had to get out, assess whether said turtle was a snapping turtle, and then safely herd the turtle off the driveway. I wish I had taken a photo but I was so frantic to be gone that I only thought of that later.

I have decided the turtle was a messenger — house selling might be slow.

But the lupines were quite pretty during Showing #13.

And the dogs remained optimistic that something amazing was going to happen.

It didn’t but that was okay.

It was nice to have a two day break from showings — but we were back at it today for Showing #14.

This time I was ready with my reinforcements.

I read up on the correct way to utilize St. Joseph to sell a house — there are entire websites with instructions! The gist of it is that you wrap St. Joseph in a cloth, put him in a plastic bag, and bury him upside down and facing the house while you say a prayer.

One website noted this about the prayer part of all that: “Some prayers “threaten” St. Joseph, essentially stating that he should sell your home for you if he wants to get out of the ground. These prayers somewhat undermine the value of asking for intercession, however, so they are generally not preferred” (wikiHow).

There is so much wrong with threatening a small plastic statue with permanent burial 😂😂😂

It turns out that once you sell the house, you dig up St. Joseph, dust him off, and then give him a place of honor in your new house. This temporary burial strategy changed things for me. Since I would be recovering everything in the plastic bag, I decided to give St. Joseph some help.

St. Joseph went into the Lucky Sock and that went in the bag, along with the Lucky Happy Hippie Heart.

We took all that to the hole we dug.

The various instructions mentioned burial next to the for sale sign and so that is what we did 🤷🏼‍♀️

With St. Joseph safely buried upside down, we turned our attention to the House Selling Gnome. The guidelines on how exactly to utilize the gnome were a little vague, and so I improvised.