Lemondrop

Our relocation time line not only snuck up on me, it smacked me upside the head, stuck a foot out to trip me and then kicked me square in the ribs after I fell to the ground.

We'd invited our realtor over to our crib this week to have what we thought would be an innocent conversation to discuss putting our place up for sale in the "near future," which turned out to be the understatement of the year.

Seems our agent is slightly concerned about the fact that we're bumping up against the holidays, and he recommended we hold our first open house in two weeks. TWO. WEEKS. After the room stopped spinning and my nausea subsided, we signed the paperwork and started making a list of everything we had to do. We had to stop after the second page, because my teardrops were making the ink bleed.

But then something magical happened.

Click here to read what saved Eliza's listing ...

Our realtor handed me the business card of a stager he works with. A stager, for the uninitiated, hires a crack team of decorators and carpenters who whip your house into shape, like on HGTV. Oh, happy day!

Turns out, reality is a wee bit different than reality TV. For starters, they typically only tackle two or three rooms on TV for a stager's fee of $2,000, which seems like an okay price until you account for an army of movers and painters and the fact that most houses have more than three rooms.

I took a deep breath, sold one of my kidneys and gave the stager the go-ahead. I had a mild glimmer of hope during our first walk-through when the stager kept complimenting my sense of style. "Lovely duvet!" "Beautiful couches!" "You really know how to use throw pillows!"

At the end, I smiled and mentioned that it didn't seem like she would have to do much, to which she replied, "Oh, but it all still has to go." To top everything off, the stagers insisted that we vacate the house during the staging process because, as they put it, we "don't want to see sausage being made."

Two days later, they graciously allowed us to return to our own home. At least, it looked like our old home from the outside. The inside though, had been magically transformed by a crack team of decorators and carpenters! Daniel Craig and Christian Bale be damned, this was a fantasy!

Now, I just have to get my husband to sell one of his kidneys so we have the money to keep it this way.