August 04th, 2026

Do you have a "Dream Home"?  I mean, in the broadest sense of hopes and wishes and dreams, is there a mental image of a house that has a better look, layout,  location or number of rooms?  Is there something would better strike your fancy?  Maybe it's not an entire house, maybe it's just one room that, in a perfect world, with deep enough pockets, you might tweak a bit?  Or perhaps you love your home, just as it is, but you wish it was closer to or farther from town?   I suspect that most us do.

Tim and I love where we live, walking distance to our cute little downtown, walking distance to the beach, easy driving distance to multiple different cities and airports. We are very happy  with where we live.  And we even like our little house.  It's just a cute little old beach house, emphasis on the little and the old.  

We've updated and improved things, one project a year for ten years now, and we still like our house just fine. Honest, we do!  If we spend every day of the rest of our lives in this house, that would not be a problem at all. And, as I said before, we love where we are.  But is this our Dream Home?  No. Not at all.

And that is a huge part of why we enjoy going to see model homes and Open Houses.  We are, mentally building, our Dream Home.  Seeing ideas, up close and personal, as opposed to just reading about them, has helped us to decide is this something we like (and if so, why) or is this something we do not like (and if so, why).  Other houses sometimes showcase things we might never, in a million years, consider. OR it's something we considered, discarded and now are reconsidering because seeing it in person is completely different than on paper.

I guess we take this fairly seriously because we have been "building" our Dream Home for nearly the entire ten years we have lived here.  The whole, if we were starting from scratch, what would our house HAVE to have, or what would be nice, but is not an absolute necessity, and what do we absolutely positively NOT want.  We have tossed around ideas, agreed, disagreed, made our case(s), discussed endlessly, drawn sketches on paper and pointed out in other houses that we see and even done a little research - (mostly about construction ideas and landscaping thoughts).

When Tim and I do the Noonwalk, which we try to do most everyday, it's a common discussion if we have nothing else pressing to discuss.  What do we think about this, that or the other thing.  When we are on a long drive, one or the other of us might be struck with a new Dream Home thought and that discussion might last 100 miles or so.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, that if we have a weekend day with no other plans, we sometimes will look to see if there are any models or Open Houses that we haven't already seen scheduled.  And that is what happened this past Sunday.

You are familiar with Open Houses, I assume.  The owners vacate the premises for a few hours, the realtor puts up Open House Signs with arrows around the neighborhood and in the yard, greets everyone who wants to check out the house and hands out paperwork telling about the home, the neighborhood and so forth.  Sometimes they want you to "sign in" sometimes they don't.  Sometimes they offer cookies and water. And they try, very hard, to answer all of the questions asked.  

Tim found Three houses, online that were listed as Open Houses that day all of which looked interesting, two of them in an unfamiliar neighborhood, one in a neighborhood we already like. We had no other plans, no other errands and it was a gloomy day that threatened to let loose so why not.  Off we went.

Tim was Pilot, I was Navigator, as per usual.    The drive was perfectly ordinary, it was rainy true enough, but ordinary otherwise, and when we arrived at the neighborhood, we both remarked on how cute it was. The lots were large, the houses set well apart, there were sidewalks on both sides of the street and mature growth trees.  The homes and yards were well kept and the houses of wildly diverse architectural styles, ages, and eras.  We were suitably impressed.

When we arrived at the address in question, however, there were no Open House signs, not one. How Very Odd.  I re-checked the  date and time on several different real estate websites and all of them agreed that it should be an Open House. Not only were there no signs, but no sign of life!  No realtor's car in the driveway, no lights on inside. Very Very Odd.  Well, we thought, perhaps they were delayed by the rain and would therefore be getting a late start. No worries. We moved on to the 2nd house on the list.  We continued to note pretty homes, the surprise of a body of water very nearby, what an adorable neighborhood feel it had and then, we arrived at the second address which also had Zero signs, Zero cards in the driveway or in front of the house AND Zero lights on inside. What the what?

Hmmmm.  We drove around the area for a bit then, just in case there was, in fact,  the late start, returned to the first house but nothing had changed. Bizarre.  How odd that both houses in that same neighborhood were apparently listed incorrectly?  Whatever, we said out loud to each other and moved on to the 3rd house and guess what?  Also no signs, no signs of life, no nothin'. What exactly is happening ?  

It felt Very Twilight Zone.  what are the odds that all 3 houses, three different realtors, three different streets, two different neighborhoods would all have Open Houses listed very clearly on line but not in reality. 

We headed for home, perplexed and disappointed, wondering what on earth was going on. Then we wondered, were they called on account of rain?  Wait a minute that makes no sense, this is not a baseball game.  We aren't viewing the house through the windows from outside getting soaked in the downpour.  The only time rain enters into the situation at all would be the short trot, under an umbrella mind you, from car to house, house to car.    But is it possible?  Could that be the case?  Has this ever happened to any of you?

Is this a new thing?  I admittedly do not keep up with all of the New Things happening in the world out there, but Open Houses that are, in fact, not open due to weather?  That's a new one for us.   Hurricanes?  Yeah, absolutely, that would be cancelled.  Tropical Storm, yupyup. Same goes for volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and blizzards, but just ordinary rain?  Colour me surprised. I just don't get it. I was just regular rain.....Gene Kelly did a whole song and dance in it!  Ryan Gosling and Rachel MacAdams had a famous kiss in it!   Football games get played in it.  Most of Woodstock was rain soaked.

I guess I just need to file this under, Learned Something New now let it go.  But that doesn't mean I like it.