Lead Paint Gingerbread and being grateful for real estate

I was sitting in my office looking at a blank blog post screen, thinking about what I could say about Downtown Wilmington Condos on December 23rd, 2009. I do have a closing at Tanyard Parish (216 S. Front St.) next week. I am truly grateful for that and thought that's what I should write about. How in this market, we adapt, we work hard and persevere and by golly people are still buying condos, downtown or otherwise...when my phone rings....

I answer and my smug 13 yr old says, "You better talk to Sophie." Sophie meanwhile is having painful sobs and saying something I couldn't really understand. When I got her to stop crying I understood that they used my antique rolling pin, the one that sits on top of the cabinets for some added kitsch to the farmhouse kitchen, that also happens to have old old old red paint on the handles. The kind of old red paint that splinters off when little hands roll out gingerbread. Jo thought it would be fine to just bake the cookies with the paint sprinkles in them, but Sophie thought for sure it would lower everyone's IQ and we would turn into a house of drooling idiots from lead paint poisoned cookies, (isn't there a disclosure for that??) Jo tried to pick out the paint, but Sophie protested, "There could be dust!"
"Mom, we can still eat them right?"
Umm, you shouldn't.
"Ditch that dough, get the "real" rolling pin out and try again with the dough still in the bowl and Sophie, we'll make more dough tonight."
I got to thinking... if I wasn't a real estate agent, Sophie might not know about the dangers of lead based paint, from rolling pins, window sills, or the like. If I wasn't working in real estate, I wouldn't hear the "Full Price Offer" cheer from my girls as I headed off for work. If I wasn't in real estate they wouldn't understand how a free market works and how homes appreciate and depreciate. If I wasn't in real estate I couldn't volunteer in their classrooms every week, or drive on field trips, or well, you get the point.
So I'm grateful for that closing next week and to be in real estate even on December 23rd, 2009. And Sophie, a new rolling pin is on me, but not until next week...