So, Being Good Sellers,

we amscray around 5:15 because one of the local agents is bringing a potential buyer by at 5:30 p.m. We decide to go to the largest local indie bookstore/coffeehouse. A the H Resists Temptation, so he can Set an Example, but I buy a few things because I want them. (Not the Goldberg book, however: I can't quite justify that, and the paperbacks tend to come out on these types of works in a reasonably timely fashion.)

We come back around 6:30 p.m. and try to figure out whether the potential buyers are still there. So it's a rousing game of "try to spot the agent's car." A the H insists that the blue Toyota Matrix must be in.

"No way," I tell him, but enter carefully and yell, "hello?" No answer.

Of course, if the househunters are still here, they could be in the yard. AH goes off to some sort of athletic hoohah event, and I stay. I pour a glass of wine, sit down, and open my laptop. I haven't yet turned off the extra interior lights, or locked the back door—because what if the agent is just starting out? What if that really is his or her Matrix?

After about three minutes, I realize that what I really need—more than I ever have, and more than anything else—is to take a really huge crap. It's worth noting here that none of our bathrooms have locks on the doors.

So I take care of business in one of the upstairs bathrooms, and come out again. No sign of anyone in the yard. The Matrix is still parked in front. No one in this area drives anything like that—it's too nice to be a housekeeper's car, but not nice enough to be one of the local homeowners'. I figure it belongs to the tenant who's renting out the guesthouse next door, and remind myself to ask not to trample our plants next time he hikes up to his car. I don't mind him taking the shortcut, but he should go easy on the landscaping if he's going to go through our yard.

Contra my husband's opinion, a Matrix isn't the kind of car a real estate agent would be ferrying clients around in. Not in this town.

I lock the back doors, and turn out the lights in the rooms I'm not using. I hope we get an offer on this place before the electricity bill shows up; I daren't even think about what that's going to look like.

And, you know—Mother Earth is weeping. And stuff.