Takin' Care of Business

My real estate business has experienced a major up-tick in the last couple months. Pending home sales rose in June for the 5th straight month in the U.S. The last time there were five consecutive monthly gains was in 2003. The housing market is getting better. Let's hope that's an indication that the economy in general is moving up.

These last two weeks have been incredibly hectic for me. I actually put two properties under contract with the first people who looked at them! I don't usually even speak about such things as I am a bit superstitious. There are so many points in a real estate transaction where a deal can fall apart that I'm afraid to jinx myself by mentioning them.

Then add in my little adventure on Tuesday two weeks ago. I have been trying to take it a tiny bit slower since then. Mostly we've just been eating out more so I don't have to think about household responsibilities so much. I'll milk that as long as I can. I still have some medical tests scheduled, and the doctors haven't been able to give me a definitive answer as to what happened that day. My gut feeling is they never will.

My posts of the last couple weeks were mostly done in advance which was a good thing. What I've really been missing is the time to read all you good people and leave my usually witty comments. So imagine my surprise when I logged onto Google Reader last evening and found a message telling me I had over 1,000 posts to read!!! Okay, time to scale back some on who I'm following.

And among those many unread posts were two awards for me!

Award #1

This first award was from Shauna at They Call Me Lucy.

I imagine the first time I stopped by to visit Shauna I was drawn there because she named her blog after my Lucy. What? She didn't name it after my Lucy? Well, never mind, I love her blog anyway.....she's a wonderful shopper and finds all sorts of cool decorative items for cheap and I wish she lived near me so I could hire her to decorate my house.

So now I'm supposed to pass along this award to some of my favorite bloggers.

1. Stacy at Boomerang Chick One of the few bloggers I'm following whom I actually know. This girl has a shoe collection to die for! And she drives a Mini-Cooper, so how cool is she?
2. Diary of a Not So Glamorous Housewife She always gives me a chuckle.
3. Brittany at Food for Thought Great recipes, great photos and just a sweet lady.

Award #2

And then as I was going through the 1,000 posts I found this award from Mama-Face at Blog Ignoramus.

I read the post where she sent me this award at the same time as I read her post about the loss of her lovely friend, Susan. It seems more than a little foolish to be going on about such frivolous things as blog awards after reading about such a lady but hopefully she would understand. So thanks Mama-Face, your blog is always such an eclectic mix of ideas and subjects, I never know what I'm going to find.

So now I'll send this award and all of you nice people over to:

1. Just Breathe mostly 'cause she's got this great little dog named Skye and you know how nutty I am about dogs......she's really sweet, too.
2. Midlife Jobhunter because I love her quotes and her photos.
3. Angie at Step-Fabulous for lots of reasons....she's a dog lover, a step-mom and just a really nice person.

So please go and visit all these nice people and spread some love!