My new best friends the painting crew are here. I am in the only room of the house that is not being painted while they go through a thousand rolls of blue masking tape in all the other rooms.

This is the 10th stage of the process of revolutionizing our lives out of 12 stages total. I made a list.

One: The Wild Romantic Imagination Stage. I think it was cold. I think it was even snowing. Or maybe it was just another bleak winter day when Jonathan and I hatched our plan. I don't remember exactly how it came about other than that it started as an inchoate longing to go somewhere new together.

Two: The Doing Things Online Stage. This is an easy and fun stage. It is easy and fun to surf the net looking at rental properties on hillsides in Tuscany, for example. Or to search for the menus of restaurants that would be near you and decide what you would eat if you were actually there at the moment. Or to drive around on Google Street View ogling the produce outside the "Frutte e Verdure" or the bread in the window of the "Galleria del Pane". It is so easy and fun that, in an excited dither, suddenly (over the course of one full month) we had rented a rustic farmhouse with trusted gardener on an actual hillside in Tuscany.

Three: The Sorting Through Decades of Our Stuff With a Hard and Critical Eye Stage. Visit 1 out of 99 to the ARC donation station.

Four: The Precious Relics Stage -- Part One (also Crying Stage -- Part One). The tiny baby shoes! The homemade birthday cards! The little bag of extracted wisdom teeth! (Well, maybe not the teeth...)

Five: The Making Friends With Skilled Craftspeople Stage. Oh, the parade of people who actually know what they are doing (aka, not us)! Plumbers, electricians, landscapers, contractors, floor refinishers -- we have come to know and love you, been through challenges together (trucks that wouldn't start, damp, spiders, kidney stones, attack dogs) and learned each others' secrets. Our time together has been ... special.

Six: The Standing Together in the Epoxy Aisle of Home Depot Trying Very Hard to Concentrate On How Much We Actually Love Each Other Stage. Nuff said.

Seven: The Finally Packing It All Up Into Storage Stage. Followed very quickly (and inevitably) by the Oops! I Need That Again One More Time substage.

Eight: The Farewell Tour Stage. Coffee and crying with dear friends. Mostly crying. My friends are understanding and tolerant. And also -- fortunately -- waterproof.

Nine: The Precious Relics Stage -- Part Two. Is it possible to pack up and carry away with me enough objects so that I can hold on forever to those years when the boys were growing up here and I had them with me every day? No. (More crying.)

Ten: The Everything Gets Painted Beige Stage. And our life here is erased.

So that is where we are now. There are still two stages and 21 days left to go.

Eleven: The Having Strangers Sit In Judgement Of The Place That Has Been Our Eden Stage. We will try to be out of the house whenever it is being shown by the real estate agent. Obviously.

Twelve: The Walking Away Stage. Actually, driving away in a rental car that we will return at the airport while, almost certainly, crying. And then it will be a whole new world -- the dreams of a bleak winter day made real.