Some people change residences frequently, not only renters but home buyers. A woman once told my mother she never lives in a house longer than three years “because then you have to clean it.”
Then there’s my wife, Jane, who hates moving. Early in our marriage she declared that the next people who moved her would be a local funeral home.
We are now in the middle of buying and selling a house for the third time in the 21 years we have been married.
When we moved to Richmond, Virginia, in 2001, the only thing about the house-hunting process that had changed since I first bought a house as a bachelor four years earlier was the advent of online listings.
When we moved to Lenoir in 2013, the one new wrinkle was the ability to digitally “sign” all the sales documents needed in Virginia while we were on a computer in Lenoir.
But now?
The process of buying and selling a house — each separately but especially both together — has been transformed into a nightmare of text messages, emails and automated phone calls, all of which seem to be added onto instead of replacing the regular calls and emails that previously went between a buyer/seller and the real estate agent.
The day our house went on the market, my phone “blew up.” I had heard other people use that phrase, but I had no firsthand experience. My phone had never done it before. But, boy howdy, now I have experience.
Each time someone wanted to schedule a showing, I received both a text and an email requesting confirmation.
If no one confirmed it quickly, I received a phone call asking about it.
Once the showing was confirmed, I received both a text and an email showing it had been confirmed.
When an agent rescheduled, the entire cycle repeated. If someone canceled, there was another round of texts and emails.
After each showing, we received texts and emails showing the “feedback” provided by the agent for the person who saw the house, which usually was an email mostly full of questions that had not been answered.
On the house-buying end, we both receive automated emails requesting various documents, and if a couple of days pass we get reminders that we have not provided particular documents.
Our agent uses a website that tracks all the tasks that must be completed by either her or us, and each time she writes in that a task has been completed we get emails telling us that she has updated the timeline. The timeline is a wonderful tool, and I applaud it, but it’s yet another series of notifications that trigger my phone to buzz or bong or hum.
All of this piles stress on top of the ordinary stresses of moving plus the added anxiety of a worldwide pandemic.
If Jane and I live to complete the move to High Point, I feel certain she will not declare this time that the next people who move her will be a funeral home.
Mine will be the body they will carry out because she will kill me if I ever want to move again.
Newsroom With A View 
Don’t negotiate with your back. Its like China. It will lie to your face and let you down when you need it most. Then, it will laugh at you and mock you as you lay there writhing in pain.