A few well-timed nods of the head, several glances, including eye contact, and 157 pages of Skinny Dip, that describes my daylong Board of Realtors orientation.

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Last week Dy wrote about loving your home. Since we sold our house in Hollywood four years ago, I haven't felt that happy, welcoming, secure feeling from any of the myriad properties we've inhabited, until this past weekend.

Late Friday evening, after a mishap with a malfunctioning tilt switch and a last minute swap of the car battery for a dead boat battery, we arrived at the island, anticipating a weekend of the best weather we have had so far. I finally felt like I had come home. That's where I want to be. That's where I want the grandkids to come visit. That's where I want to die. Throw my ashes out in the bay, or just feed me to the crabs.

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And in that same morbid vein, it must be Halloween coming, does anybody else enjoy visiting old graveyards? Our family loves to walk amid old headstones and imagine the lives and deaths of the people buried there. Last week we discovered Pine Knoll, an historic burial ground outside of Arcadia, Florida, that contains the remains of some of the area's pioneers. Definitely a hardscrabble life out there in the scrub. Modern cemeteries, boring and sanitized with their uniform bronze plaques recessed into the ground for easy maintenance, give me the creeps, I want to get out of there as quickly as possible. But plots with elaborate statues, engraved obelisks, stones so worn they are unreadable, family plots and crypts, and custom epitaphs are fascinating and can occupy my imagination for hours.

A few years back, driving through Comer, Georgia, at dusk, we found the old cemetery where my husband's ancestors were buried. Spooky old moss-draped oaks lined the short loop road. When we spotted familiar surnames we stopped the car. Two of the kids were asleep, the other was terrified, hiding on the floor of the car. "It's okay, honey, these are family." G got out for a closer inspection of the headstones beyond the reach of our headlights. Minutes passed and I could no longer spot G as a fog had begun to creep in. Suddenly G appeared, wrenched open the door, jumped in, slammed the door, locked it, started the engine and sped away. He said while he was kneeling down reading an inscription on one of the stones in the last row, he heard a twig snap directly behind him in the woods.

So now we only do our jaunts in broad daylight.

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My favorite epitaph:

As I am now,
So you shall be,
Prepare for death,
And follow me.

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Here's a fun one.

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Finally, my dream Paris itinerary:

First The Louvre, then this.