This morning Tom and I are driving down to Portland to begin looking at apartment rentals. So far we have lost a bidding war on two houses, and very few new homes have come on the market during the past week. We need to be out of the Harmony house by the end of December, which gives us almost no time to go through all of the inspection and closing rigmaroles of a Portland purchase, should we even be able to make one.

So renting has become our option, but magically a couple of available and even affordable apartments have materialized, thanks to one of Tom's gallery connections. On paper they seem almost too nice for the likes of us, and I expect something will go wrong, because that has been the pattern of the whole ordeal. Still, the skies are clear and the winds are calm and I'm a little bit less sick than I was yesterday, so who knows? Maybe we'll sign a lease.

I imagine myself walking around Portland in my Carhartt firewood-hauling coat and red wool work hat, both of them still stuck all over with bits of bark and lichen, as the popular young men with their shovel-shaped beards head off to their day jobs at the mead brewery. When I moved up to Harmony, I immediately started dressing more glamorously in public--tights and heels and cute short skirts and big shiny earrings--as a way to cope with the grimness of my surroundings. It's conceivable that I'll find myself doing exactly the opposite in Portland. Or maybe I'll just relax and be normal. That could be interesting too.