I know perfectly well our chances are slim, but it is a beautiful place and the asking price is well within our range, and so tomorrow after work we'll go to our realtor's office and write out an offer for as much money as we have. They hear offers on Wednesday, so we'll know pretty quickly. I want it so much I won't even let myself think about it. My hopes have been dashed too many times already.

If our offer isn't accepted I won't go into complete despair, even though it is the house of my truncated dreams. There's another little place coming on the market Wednesday or Thursday which we drove past today, and it's completely acceptable. Better yet, our realtor is representing the seller, so we have an "in" which is, as you can imagine, rather important. It's also in Redwood City.

We looked at another house which was undoubtedly fabulous back in the thirties when it was built, but which is now more or less surrounded by urban blight. Then we drove up to see a townhouse which our realtor assured us had a backyard and was quite nice. I don't know what she was thinking of. It was absolutely horrible. The entry way led to a large cinderblock room with no windows. The narrow, open stairway was so frightening I wouldn't even go upstairs. John checked it out, but I knew the minute I walked up to it it wouldn't work. It was 70's townhouse architecture at its worst. And it certainly didn't have a yard.

Looking for a house that will work for pet owners is not as bad as looking for rental housing that takes pets (nothing could be, that's like looking for a needle in a haystack), but it's not a breeze, either. We've seen numerous houses that claim to have a yard but they mean a tiny, cemented over conjunction of various neighbors' fences. A yard that overlooks a very busy street isn't really a great place to keep a dog, either, even if there's some kind of fence. All the exhaust from cars will eventually cause health problems. And of course, my cats wouldn't be allowed out of the house unless we had a backyard for them to claim as their territory.

So we'll see. I'm alternately jittery with anxiety, and calm, knowing how unlikely it is that we'll get the first house.

Keiko gives me the hairy eyeball for disturbing her sleep, and my poor cabbage is eaten by bugs.

It's been raining all weekend, so I haven't done any gardening. The cats have been a bit restless, and so have I. I finished the last Lord Meren mystery this afternoon, and I am determined to find Lynda Robinson's email address so I can ask her to please, please, please finish the series. There ought to be one more book which would cover the main arc underlying all the other murders. Meanwhile, I bought all of the Moomintroll books last night, and have finished one of them as well.

I read very fast, I guess. At one point I was timed for number of words per minute, but I don't recall the figure after all these years. I read a normal sized paperback a day if I don't work on the computer in the evening. I can't buy enough books to read at that rate without bankrupting myself, so I tend to reread everything I own. Currently, I'm going through some of my old Regencies and wincing at how dreadful some of them are. But I also rediscovered Sheila Simonson, who is brilliant and hilarious. If anyone reading this is a Regency fan, try to find her books. She wrote in the mid-80's, check used bookstores.

This is me, not thinking about that house.

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