Thank heaven

With the way the economy, banking, housing markets, 401(k) balances, gas prices are right now, I'm glad we didn't get the house we were looking at a while back. Getting it would mean we would have to sell our own house and if it didn't sell in a timely manner (no more than a week) I would be depressed. Plus we would have had to sell my mother's house which is nice but could be a little tougher to sell only because it's getting a little dated. Don't tell her I said that.


So there is a house on our block that went on the market the week we bid on the other house. That was about seven weeks ago, and it still isn't sold. Our realtor told us that 45 days is the typical length of time on the market, so they're looking right at that. I'd still be depressed.


We've only sold one house in our lives. It was our first house, a small bungalow that was in pretty good shape but needed some updating. It sold in two days. My prior experience has not prepared me for any kind of difficulty in selling a house, so if I would encounter difficulty I would not handle it well.


Man I'm glad I don't have to sell my house right now. Dodged a bullet there! I will say though, when the housing market turns around, if that house we bid on was still available at the price we wanted to pay, I would consider it. I absolutely loved the floor plan.


Okay, what else. If you don't listen to Ira Glass' "This American Life" on NPR, you should. He often features David Sedaris who makes me snort with laughter, although the other stories can also be serious. Today they were talking about previous shows because of a pledge drive, and a story was mentioned called simply, "Squirrel Cop." I hadn't heard it, so I listened to it online, and it is hilarious. It is act two of the show, so you can jump ahead to listen to it. Here is the link:


http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=115


My son-in-law is a cop and I couldn't listen to this without thinking of him. I also thought of my husband, who owns his own business and has been known to offer what I call the "pretty girl discount." If he were in the same situation, he would have behaved the same way as the cop in the story.


We had the grandkids for part of the day today. If a person is rating workouts, I think the list would read something like this:


1. Cross-country skiing
2. Marathon running
3. Babysitting grandchildren


We feel we got our exercise today which is good because we weren't able to walk much this week due to rainy weather.


And now I'm going to rest.