I'm trying to tell myself that this isn't a good thing or a bad thing - it's just a thing. Another house on Main St. within walking distance of my house, went on the market. That makes practically a forest of for sale signs as you look down the hill on Main. It's not a pretty sight.

Of course, the circumstances of all three of the homes are different. It's bad enough that the vacant house up the street has stayed on the market so long. It's been on since the early spring. I don't know what the story is with that house. All I know about it is that it is on for a ridiculous amount of money - I don't remember the figure, but it seems like it was a good $25k more than anything else in the area.

Of course, it's a brick house with a bit more land around it than many homes in the neighborhood. It has outbuildings, one of which I guess is a garage. Somebody stuck a potted geranium on the porch, and the lawn is scrupulously cut, but the house has all the charm of rotton potato. It really lacks curb appeal. My guess is that the owners feel that they can wait to get their price. They don't seem particularly motivated to sell....Unluckily, they don't seem very motivated to take it off the market either.

The house now worrying me was also for sale in the spring. I was under the impression that an older couple lived there and they had died or gone into assisted living or something. I remember that the house sold in the spring for something like $239K and I was very shocked by that. "Word on the street", if there could be such a thing in a town this small, was that it had been bought by an investor who wanted to "flip" it - that is, fix it up and turn it around for a quick, profitable sale.

I thought "that's a bad investment" at the time. I hate it when I'm right. Some work was done on the property. The houses on that side of the street have extremely steep front steps. I don't mean like the rowhomes of Baltimore. I mean like houses in mountain towns. They are too steep and narrow for me, or any other person with balance or back problems to use safely.

Most of those houses have some back entrance off a side street running in back of them. But not all of them do. Even as anxious as I am to sell this place and pay my creditors, I feel sorry for the dude or dudes who bought the place. Because it's what I was most afraid of. They're dumping it. They've taken a loss and and their loss is liable to be my loss. It's on for $229K. I don't know what the inside of it looks like, but it's also brick. It's small, but my house ain't exactly a mansion.

I was so startled and upset that I didn't even ask the realtor for more details, such as the number of bedrooms or baths, or the square footage.

This collection of for sale signs, though, can't be good for anybody. It just makes the place look like a bad neighborhood, which it isn't. These are older homes which were owned primarily by older people. Meanwhile, I can't get on line without reading some screaming headline "Is the Bubble Bursting?" Sigh.

Anyway, I'll have to get my facts straight and talk to our realtors before I REALLY panic....this is just practice panic. In case of an actual panic you would have been directed to one of my friends' blogs to get a rational idea of I was talking about.

However, I will say this: I now have more focus than I did this morning. I have a plan. That plan is to eat one of the cheese cake slices I bought when I took Mother to Wegman's earlier today, have a cup of tea, and read my Oprah magazine ( sorry, Friend Will)where I will surely read the story of someone who is or has been in much worse circumstances than mine. Especially if they didn't have any cheese cake to see them through at a critical moment.

Oh the humanity! Oh my diet! Oh the heck with it.