Well, that'll teach me.

Never take a day off.

Our big excitement for the day was this morning, when I was sitting at the sewing machine working on James' dragon costume, wearing the clothes I slept in, with my hair going in 20 different directions, when the doorbell rang. We weren't expecting anybody, so I thought maybe it was FedEx, and I took my time getting to the door. Well, it was our real estate agent. He said he likes to show up early, just in case. I'm like, um, early for what? And he said he had a 10:00 appointment to show the house, which we mistakenly thought was cancelled, but turns out it wasn't. It was 9:45 and Jim was sleeping in. No way am I going to disturb his sleep if he's able to sleep in, but he'd heard the doorbell and had gotten up. We did a very impressive stash-and-dash in ~ drum roll, please ~ nine minutes!! Yay, us!  Anyway, the lady and her two sisters showed up, and they spent a loooong time looking at the view from the master bedroom. I was trying to hide on the back patio, but when the ladies opened every single one of the blinds in the master bedroom, there I was. The lady waved at me. She seemed to like the house and didn't seem too distressed at seeing my disheveled self sitting cross-legged on the garden hose like a lawn troll.

THEN James was weed wacking the lawn, and he saw a bobcat come from our east neighbor's yard, across ours, and into the west neighbor's yard. He ran in the house to call the neighbors to keep their kids inside, and Jim went out to try to see it. A woman on the golf course said the bobcat had gone into the yard on the west side of our west neighbors. She said it was knee-high, and James said it was as tall as our dog Tate but not as wide. Where was *I* while a bobcat was wandering through our yard? I was in the shower.

All these years living here, where they are sighted fairly regularly, and I've never seen a live bobcat. One moseys into our very yard and I missed it.  

It reminds me of our first trip to Alaska back in 2001. My fond desire for that trip was to see my first moose. No matter how hard we looked, we couldn't find one, and then on our last day there, a moose with twin calves walked right through our yard. I think the bobcat was trying to do me a similar favor as we get ready to leave Texas, but oh well. Maybe next time I'll see it.