Today, I was reminded of the way it felt two years ago when our house was on the market and we had to wipe the crumbs off of the kitchen counter, make sure that the cats hadn’t made any recent deposits in their litter boxes, and stash the dirty laundry in the cupboard so that a real estate agent could show our house to prospective buyers.

Even though moving boxes are starting to stack up around the perimeters of the rooms, we went through the same “staging” routine today because we are moving out of our rented condo in about 10 days. The landlord is hoping to have the new renters move in before the carpeting has even had a chance to spring back from our footsteps carrying out the last moving box.

While I typically would have spent my Sunday afternoon at home staring down the account balances in QuickBooks in the hope they blink first, Steve and I needed to make ourselves scarce while the landlord held an open house to find a new renter.

So, what to do with ourselves for four hours? There wasn’t anything worth spending $20 on to see at the movies so we decided to visit a nationally-recognized Sonoma County landmark: downtown Healdsburg which was recently named one of the 13 “most beautiful town squares” by Travel and Leisure magazine.

Healdsburg is certainly charming on a beautiful warm spring day. We sat on a bench in the square watching the passing tableaux – that’s a fancy way of saying we were people watching…and goodness knows Steve and I watched a lot of knobby knees in shorts pass by us…while we shared a cup of double espresso gelato and made silly jokes about whatever passed in front of us.

Had we not been forced to get out from behind our computers, I’m sure we would have missed out on enjoying some uninterrupted time together on a gorgeous day. If a delightful afternoon together wasn’t enough, I came home to uncluttered rooms and clean counters. Now it’s back to packing.