I was hoping, as foolish as it may be, that the house next door would remain empty at least till the spring, but I have a feeling it’s going to be sold soon, and there goes my peace at least on the left side of the house. I saw a woman with an eight-year-old boy as well as a toddler check the place out. She had a white SUV. The other woman I saw had “real estate agent” written all over her. First they went inside, then they came out, mom put her two-legged animals in the SUV, then she gazed into the backyard with the agent. Lastly, they checked out some papers together before they took off. I say it’ll be occupied by October, or November at the latest. I always did think Tom’s theory made no sense anyway. He thought an older person owned it who was in a nursing home with hopes of returning to it one day, but why would you remove all your furniture if you thought you may return? Tom said he’s seen people checking it out before, but he assumed it was just family checking up on it to make sure there’d been no damage or anything. I’m sure God’s busy right now picking out the biggest, loudest dog to move in there, and once again, I’ll be the one to have to deal with it, along with the screaming kids and whatever else they do back there.

The place has already gotten noisier as it is. Someone across the street has taken to blasting music from their house in the evenings, and although it doesn’t take much to drown out with my own music or a fan, it is a bit annoying. One shouldn’t have to hear someone else’s music, faintly or not.

Tom had to wear a special shirt today to work because they were doing a tour, I guess.

We walked to the bank he cashes his check at, then to the pizza place. After that, we hit Safeway for our biggest grocery shopping spree in months. It cost us nearly $100, though we did get a lot of non-edibles.

We got this really cool battery-operated thing that emits a puff of fragrance every few seconds from a small bottle of oil. The puff is hard to see. It’s almost like a faint mist. I’ve got it in the bathroom.

Tom fixed his bike when we got back and opened the gas heater. We never found any dead mice, but we vacuumed the droppings and dust and found that the blower wasn’t broken at all. It’s just not supposed to come on till it reaches a certain temperature.

Today was cool and windy, setting all the wind chimes on a frenzy. Tomorrow’s only supposed to be in the high 50s. I guess it’s going to rain. Still, it’s sad to know that summer ended nearly as fast as it began and that it won’t be warm again till June.