What a strange day! I did some errands in the morning - like putting together our new weed whacker, and getting gasoline (two different cans - one for the 4-stoke lawnmower engine, and one for the 2-stroke weed whacker). I tried to do some minor repairs around the house, but only managed a small repair of a towel rack. Last night, I don't know what came over me, but I volunteered to be responsible for laundry. Since I'm at home, and my wife is working full time, I figured: how hard could it be?

Well, it's not rocket science, but the loads had already been sorted by my wife, and I didn't look too carefully to see whether she had made any mistakes. She had. There was one cotton item mixed in with a cotton/polyester load. I washed it, and threw the whole thing, en masse, into the dryer. I noticed the cotton item only when I was removing the contents of the dryer. Hopefully, my wife won't notice that her bra may have been shrunk.

There's only the two of us left at home, so I don't think there will be more than four or five loads to do weekly. I think I can handle that. And, by the look on my wife's face, it'll be worth lots of husband points.

Let's see, what else happened... Oh yeah. The real estate consultant came over and dropped off the open house signs, and a bunch of handouts for prospective buyers. Our first open house is this weekend. Meanwhile, this afternoon, my wife came home early (as she normally does on Wednesdays), and we decided to do some drive-bys. There were a couple of houses that looked promising, so we called for appointments, and made arrangements to see two properties this evening, two tomorrow, and one on Friday.

Just before leaving the house to go to the first appointment, the phone rang. It was one of the companies that has been talking to me about employment... the company that's located clear across the country. Two minutes before the phone rang, we were prepared to go see houses, and probably put an offer on one of them. Now, it's all up in the air again. I may have to move out of town for work. This did not sit well with my wife. Despite the phone call, we kept our appointments.

The first house was somewhat older (about 50 years old). Despite it's age, it was in remarkable condition, and had so many nooks and crannies, we actually could see ourselves living there and (remarkably) having room for all our stuff. It's major drawbacks were:

• lack of a garage (not for a car, but for storage)


• lack of central air conditioning (for my comfort and sanity - it gets very hot and muggy here during the summer)


• lack of a complete fence around the property (essential for keeping dogs in the yard)

The second house was one we had been through before. We had really liked it, and until we saw the aforementioned home, we figured it would be "the one". Now, we weren't sure. When we went through again, we noticed some good things that hadn't caught our eye the first time:

• there was air conditioning (we thought there wasn't)


• the bedrooms were bigger than we had originally remembered

We left that second home without placing an offer; not because we didn't want the house, but because we're now back up in the air about the out-of-town job opportunity. If I don't get this job, we will take this house (assuming it's still available - they're having their first open house this weekend).

A short while after arriving back home, and with my wife in tears (disappointment, stress, and PMS induced), the phone rang. It was someone who had seen our ad on the real estate website. He was in a hurry to come see the house ("can I come over right now"). We asked whether he could wait for the open house, and he said he wanted to see it immediately. He asked if we would take $160,000 (it's listed for $165,900), and I didn't answer because such a verbal offer is not one I would be able to enforce anyway. He was persistent about wanting to see the house, so we finally made an appointment for him to come tomorrow night. We'll just have to reschedule our own viewing.

Who knows? If this person is serious, maybe we'll have our home sold before the scheduled open house on Sunday!