For sale: My house

Ordinarily a personal blog isn't a shill for real estate sales, but in this case it is.

My house in Evanston, Illinois, is going on the market today with an open house from noon to 4 p.m. It's at 2800 Harrison Street, in the most-sought-after northwest quadrant of this university town.

I can tell you that the walls echo with 40 years of writerly striving. Also it has three bedrooms and a nursery upstairs, and a living room, dining room, family room, kitchen and foyer downstairs.

Lots of recent updates, too. It's in great shape for a 104-year-old house. It's also located in the Willard Elementary School area, considered the most desirable in Evanston.

Photos and details here.

Now maybe you can understand why I've been so silent these last few months. It takes a long time for a mature couple like the Lady Friend and me to jettison four decades' worth of stuff, rearrange the rest, and bring everything (we hope) up to code. Notice that nice new front stoop in the photo?

We're hoping to move to a condo in the same neighborhood, using it as our urban pied-a-terre while we spend half the year in Upper Michigan, inspiration for my mystery novels.

If you're around, come by and see it today.

LATER: The house is now under contract.

Happy Father's Day

As part of his annual Father's Day email to me, my second son offered the following. It is too good not to share with the rest of the world. (Dramatis personae: Conan and Annie, parents; Emmet, 5, and Alice, 2 1/2.)

As a special treat, I will provide a transcript of Saturday morning's breakfast table conversation:

Conan: Emmet, did you go to the pool yesterday? Please eat your waffles.

Emmet: When there's danger, you need a Space Ranger! Wheeeeeoooooo Wheeeeeooooo (siren sound).

Alice: Yeah, and you have a peanut butter hat. I went pee in the pool. Do you have a microphone hat?

Annie: Alice, we don't dunk our bacon in our milk. Would you like me to cut your bacon for you?

Emmet: . . . And then Jack bonked Quinn, and Quinn bonked Bobby, and I said, "Do you want to be arrested?"

Annie: Alice, don't. Please don't.

Conan: Wait--Alice, did you pee in the pool?

Alice: Yeah! On your mud hat. On the cement. Do you have a paper-airplane hat?

Annie: She peed on the pool deck in front of everyone. Mortifying.

Emmet: So I bonked Quinn and then he bonked Jack again. Donna's teeth are far apart. Dad, show me your teeth.

Alice: ... and I climbed up on the roof, and peed all over, and told the police officer, "You get them. I am a princess!" Where is your bucket?

Conan: My bucket?

Alice: For your bucket hat, you Foopie. You are a bucket hat. You Foopie. Foopie, foopie, foopie, foopie.

Emmet: Alice!

Annie: People were staring. Emily Maines came up and said the kid she was babysitting for did the same thing. The weird thing was, Alice had pooped in the potty like 10 minutes earlier. She needs to connect that you can pee and poop in the same go.

Emmet: Alice! Stop it! Why do you keep saying Foopie?

Alice: . . . Foopie, Foopie, Foopie, Foopie . . .

Conan: What time do we have to be in Downers Grove?

Annie: After naps. Although Alice never naps anymore. I don't know why I pretend that's an actual time of day.

Alice: You have banana soup, you Foopie. And mud soup!

Emmet: After Quinn got out of jail, he went right back up and bonked Jack again.

Alice: May I have some more bacon please?

And that, Conan assures me, is a typical breakfast-table conversation at their house.