Birda is back at the old house. I was there and noticed a new nest in a different part of the car port. Also, there has been a frog population explosion. A lot of debris was floating around in the pond, and I felt strong and balanced enough to work on getting it out with the net without falling in. As soon as I scooped out the first bit, about 15 frogs hopped into the water from all sides and disappeared into the depths! I was like - whoa! BIG splash!

I thought that bird hopping around in the back yard looked like Birda, but robins really do look a lot alike. I didn't think I could actually recognize an individual bird not having seen it for the whole winter. Of course, if she's still with her mate, who, for some reason The Hub and I both started calling "Cyrano" at the same time, he'll be easy to spot. Cyrano is like the Hulk Hogan of male robins. He is a really large bird, his chest has a sort of orange cast to the red coloring, and he struts more than he walks. We're talking walking tall north american robin self confidence here.

Then, I went up to visit my parents the Saturday before Easter. We were sitting there discussing the issue of the house when The Hub called to let me know we had an offer. Our first offer on the house though it's been on the market 6 months....total, counting from the fall.

It's a crappy offer, insulting really, and way lower than anything we thought we'd have to consider. So we asked our realtors for their advice - after all, this is the point of having professional realtors. They advised us to counter offer, a little higher than I thought of counter offering. But nobody is more interested in selling that house than our realtors, Jeff and Susan, and they say that there really has been more interest in it and that the market, in general, is heating up. I have seen more "sold" signs around the County than I've seen "reduced" signs lately, and it no longer seems like everywhere you look whole blocks of houses are on the market.

They probably didn't get a chance to present the counter offer until today, what with yesterday having been Easter and all. And God bless Jeff and Susan, nobody can say they don't work hard enough. They were willing to meet with us in person on Easter Sunday to discuss all of the aspects of the offer, if we had wanted them to. As it was, we were able to clear everything up over the phone. It's a huge comfort in this kind of situation to have realtors you trust, whom you believe are looking out for your best interest. And they brought up a good point in the negotiations: to ask them to bear the expense of anything that was brought up in the home inspection, and thereby keep things from getting bogged down in repairs before we could go to settlement.

We have very little personal information about the prospective buyers. We have no idea how motivated they are to buy that particular house, or if they are the kind of people who would just throw out a low ball estimate for the hell of it, and then see what happened. In any event, I am keen to negotiate, believing, as I do that you can almost always work something out if all the parties are in good faith.....but sometimes, it's through negotiation that you learn if the other party IS dealing in good faith.

Sigh.

I hope we hear something soon. You'll be among the first to know!