The plan for Sunday morning in Port Angeles was to pack up to leave, to try the second breakfast place that I had been tracking from afar, and to visit the year-round Port Angeles farmers market, one of the reasons I chose Port Angeles as a potential place to live. While packing I kept dealing with annoying texts from a Port Townsend realtor: I had been trying to book an appointment to see a Victorian cottage there. Carol and I would be able to stop in Port Townsend on our way to her home in St Helens, Oregon, if we could get an appointment in the early afternoon.

The texts asked me to declare things like was I planning to buy a house. Yes. Then they wanted to know if I planned to buy it immediately, in two months, six months, or more than a year. My honest answer, “more than a year” was the kiss of death: the next flurry of texts concerned when an agent could speak with me. I kept texting “Pls no texts” because texting is difficult for me (flip phone meets dexterity deficits due to cerebral palsy).

Carol and I did make it to breakfast. After my elaborate French toast the previous day and our gourmet dinner at the lake, I decided to go with basics: scrambled eggs, breakfast potatoes and toast. I took particular care to ask about the breakfast potatoes because I do not care for hash browns.

The restaurant was a long narrow room with tables against the wall and a long counter. One server seemed to be doing most of the work: taking orders, carrying food to customers, serving people at the bar. She took our order, returned in a few minutes with our plates and was at the other end of the restaurant before I could tell her I had been given the wrong plate: there, next to the eggs, sat a slab of hash browns. Also, neither Carol nor I had received water, although we had asked for it.

While Carol tucked into her salmon I tried to signal our server. When she approached I said, “I think I was given someone else’s order.”

She consulted her pad. “Oh, they just gave you hash browns instead of breakfast potatoes.”

She swept the plate away and brought it back moments later sans hash browns. On another pass through the room she set down a second plate containing breakfast potatoes and several packets of jam. I lucked out here: my first plate had had Smuckers strawberry, which I do not like, but the new installment included blackberry.

It’s hard to mess up scrambled eggs and toast, but the potatoes were nothing to write home about.

We returned to Carol’s car and scored a parking spot across the street from the farmers market. While we waited for it to open, I received another text, asking if the real estate agent could call me at a later time.

“Yes,” I texted, getting tired of this.

We crossed the street and entered the farmers market. Carol had been talking about wishing she could buy a share of a butchered pig and, next to a bakery stall, we walked past a stall advertising beef shares and pork shares. Continuing on, we stopped at a produce stand with glowing golden beets: Carol bought some to take home.

We browsed a mushroom stall. Across the way I saw a beautiful wool hat on a stand. “That would look good on you,” Carol said.

“Try it on if you want” said the owner of the booth, who was spinning as she spoke.

“Your work is beautiful,” I said, pausing to look at bundles of roving. “Is this purple or indigo?”

“I would say it is a dark blue.”

That was the wrong answer: had it been purple I would have bought it for a friend.

“Have we seen everything?” I asked Carol.

“I think so,” she said.

On our way out she stopped by the pork shares guy and bought something. I had a sudden inspiration: “Do you have leaf lard?”

The vendor dug through a cooler and brought out a one pound package. Leaf lard is the fat around a pig’s kidneys: it is the best kind of lard for baking. I use lard as part of the shortening in pie crust — it adds flakiness.

“Do you know how to render it?” he asked. “Put it in a slow cooker for a couple of hours.”

“I have a slow cooker,” Carol said.

“Do you mind doing a kitchen project?”

I knew Carol wouldn’t mind: she puts up her own pickles and jams.

In the mean time, the real estate agent hadn’t called back, so we decided to drive to Port Townsend ourselves, figuring we could get a look at the outside of the house and be around if an agent could show it to us.

As we were approaching Port Townsend a real estate agent called to say he could show us the house at 3:00 PM.

“Can we see it at 3:00?” I asked Carol.

“No, that’s too late,” she said.

“That’s too late,” I said. “I’m only here one day from California and we have to get back to St. Helens tonight.”

“I don’t have anyone who can show you the house.”

Fine. Carol and I drove around Port Townsend until we found the small house on a corner lot. The backyard was full of deer scat and the exterior had not been painted in some time. There was a lock box on the red-painted front door and plenty of cars on the street but no sign of real estate agents or house tours.

“I’m going to look around,” I said.

I walked all around the house, peering in windows. I could get a good view of the living room that way. I hesitated before walking up onto the back porch to peer in the kitchen window. I couldn’t see the layout of the kitchen.

I wanted to jimmy a window, but I didn’t want to get arrested in Port Townsend. All I wanted was a three-minute walk-through of the house to see what the rooms felt like: I like Victorian cottages, but this was 692 square feet. I needed to know whether I could live in a place this small.

Because I was unwilling to commit a property crime, I did not see the house, which is now pending inspection. C’est la vie. Carol and I commenced our road trip back to St Helens, making a stop at a diner en route outside of Olympia, where I had a plate of sweet potato fries and Carol had half a club sandwich. Our server kindly filled both of my water bottles for me and we were on our way again.

The next morning in St Helens, Carol made the kind of breakfast potatoes I would have made, frying up the spicy sausage she had bought in Port Angeles with potatoes, corn, fennel and onion. Carol, Spike and I ate them with an egg apiece before Carol and I drove out to the Sauvie Island farm stand for more produce.