But if I were forced to choose a word to describe how I felt about what happened to Betty Potts and her husband Buddy, whose combined ages are 163, it would be this one: Fury.

This is what she wrote: “Want to know what we really want for Mother’s Day? We want to get away from you. All of you.”

COLLEGE PARK — The 2012 Preakness will feature Grammy Award-winning artists, all-you-can-drink beer, and a “party manimal” with a unicorn-man sidekick.

When you ride the Metro to school for years, there are certain things about the system you learn. The first one is: The bathrooms are ALWAYS available for use, no matter what the station manager tells you. The second is: Never, ever, ever, ever lean on the doors, because those badboys just might open. I saw it plenty of times as a kid. And it happened again yesterday on the Red Line, The Post's Dana Hedgpeth reports. No injuries were reported, but I do wonder if the chimes rang first

A prominent rap star speaking out in solidarity with global acceptance is as big a cultural step forward as the leader of the free world making the same claim.

A man was shot and critically wounded by a D.C. police officer in Southeast Washington late Monday night, authorities said.

Police Chief Cathy Lanier said the man was apparently shot during an exchange of gunfire with an officer looking for a suspect in a shooting in the same neighborhood earlier Monday night.

“He is still in the hospital,” his manager Tom Goldfogle said at a Harlem Renaissance festival in Prince George’s County. .

According to the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC), the break happened early Wednesday in a relatively unpopulated industrial park in the 5600 block of Columbia Pike Road in Hyattsville.

The derailment occurred around 7:15 p.m., after the peak of the evening rush period, but at a time when the system is still heavily used.

Like most couples embarking on a house hunt, my husband and I frequently discussed both the needs and wants that would shape our search.

Continuing my hunt for a nice, cheap, convenient place to live in Washington has not been the easiest endeavor. It doesn’t help being a college grad looking for an entry-level job.

I got the electricity shut off. I got the water shut off. And I am trying to get the gas shut off. My problems dealing with Washington Gas will fill up an entire blog.

From Chinese consulate to church and finally, the home of one of the stars of “The Real Housewives of D.C.,” this week’s featured home has had an illustrious 86 years.

Stacie Turner, a real estate agent who was featured in the Bravo television show, is selling the16th Street Heights house she bought in 1999.

Congratulations! Here’s when the tough work begins.

“Pricing in the D.C. metro area continued recent positive trends with a year-over-year median sale price gain of 11.2 percent, the highest annual gain in more than six years,” the firm reported. RBI suggests this might mean all the talk of a shadow inventory of to-be-foreclosed homes didn’t impact home prices much.

The 30-year fixed rate average dropped to an all-time low for the second consecutive week, falling ever so slightly from 3.84 percent last week to 3.83 percent, according to the latest data released Thursday by Freddie Mac. The average stood at 4.63 percent this time last year.

In this week’s House Calls, designer Sharon Kleinman consolidates furniture and emphasizes texture over patterns to make the room feel less cluttered.

Back in the spring of 2005—in the crazy days of the housing market—the average house took just 15 to 19 days to sell in Fairfax County. In fact, in all jurisdictions in the region, the average days on the market was under a month. (The average days on the market is calculated by MRIS as the difference between the current date (sold, expired, or withdrawn date) and the list date, excluding any off-market time.) The rapid pace of sales activity was a departure from long-term norms.

Now that the moving process is behind us, it’s obvious that the reality of it was a far cry from my expectations.

A decision is considered rational if the returns justify the investment. But decisions can be rational in the short term and not so rational in the long term, or they can be rational in the long term but not so rational in the short term. This is the same distinction that made my decision to tear down and rebuild my house a long-term rational one, despite my reservations.

A home in Falls Church with its own private beach? It exists, says Roy Melloni of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty.

“Not a lot of people know this lake even exists,” said Roy Melloni of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty. “But to come home and sit in your boat or jump in the lake — you really can’t beat that.”

Pricing a listing is one of the hardest— and perhaps most important — tasks in residential real estate.

Sellers can get it wrong in either direction: If the asking price is too low, the sellers might end up leaving money on the table; if it’s too high, they won’t tap into the right target group, will lose a lot of time and may then end up selling for even less.

In weighing options to heat and cool my house, I have to consider how tight the construction should be.

This week’s featured home was designed by a local architect to be his personal residence in 1987. The house is filled with sky lights, round walls and floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook Sligo Creek and Sligo Park.

The 30-year fixed-rate average returned to 3.88 percent after climbing slightly last week to 3.90 percent. The average has stayed below 4 percent all but one week this year and remains far lower that its mark of 4.78 this time in 2011.

This week, I checked out south Fairfax County on my expedition to find the right place.Being car-less, I made my way via Metro and bus to Engleside, a small apartment village outside Mount Vernon.

In 2003, then-mayor Anthony Williams pledged to attract 100,000 new residents to the District over 10 years. The mayor’s goal was based on research conducted by Alice Rivlin and Carol O’Cleireacain in 2001.

Think of it as a month-long open house. The D.C. Design House, which is open to the public until May 13, is on the market for $3.9 million.

“It’s the cornerstone of Spring Valley,” said Daryl Judy of Washington Fine Properties.

The answers may be in your pocket.

Total existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, declined 2.6 percent from February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.48 million in March. That figure is 5.2 percent above the 4.26 million-unit pace in March 2011. March marked the ninth consecutive month of year-over-year sales increases, which NAR called a sign of a recovering house market.

Both primary indexes increased a mere 0.02 percent this week, with the 30-year creeping up from 3.88 percent to 3.90 percent following a massive dip the week before. One year ago, the average stood nearly a full point higher at 4.80 percent.

I am a journalism student, and most of the (good) journalism-related jobs in the country are here in Washington. As I have only one semester to go for my undergraduate degree, I am looking for jobs in Washington and thus looking for an apartment here, as well.

Omar Soliman launched College Hunks Hauling Junk, a moving and junk-removal company, in D.C. in 2005 with a beat-up cargo truck he borrowed from his mom. Since then, the company has grown to 50 employees and 14 trucks in the Washington area, as well as 40 franchises across the country.

The sale of apartment buildings in the Washington region reached their highest level in three years in 2011, edging 2010 sales volume and far surpassing 2009, when sales reached a trough in the wake of the recession.

Because I’m renovating my home from the ground-up, I’m making sure that every last detail fits my lifestyle: single, aging and with lots of pets.

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This week’s home of the week is a 4,000-square-foot home in Old Town Alexandria that was built in 1790.

The five-bedroom house has three fireplaces, an outdoor jacuzzi and a detached garage.

The number of for sale signs in yards and the advertisements of weekly open houses indicate that there are homes out there for would-be buyers.

But buyers in the Washington region are facing a limited supply of homes in lower price ranges, particularly in the closer-in jurisdictions. It is a sellers’ market in the lower price ranges, which will put upward pressure on prices and may lead some potential first-time homebuyers to remain renters.

In yesterday’s paper, Lori Aratani writes that Mount Vernon Triangle, the Northwest Washington neighborhood flanked by the Convention Center and Chinatown, is teeming with new high-rises. Aratani writes:

Q : Twelve years ago, I bought a unit in a co-op in Foggy Bottom. At the time of purchase, the bylaws permitted 20 percent of the units to be leased. Three years later, the by-laws changed the limit to 10 percent. During the real estate boom, this change had little impact on resale values but now that the market has slowed, owners like me are finding that the leasing restriction has led to very few people wanting to invest permanently in the building. Many home buyers in the area are State Department or World Bank/IMF employees whose jobs often send them out of town for short periods of time, and they would like to rent out their units while they’re gone — so they are very conscious of the rental restrictions. Some are walking away over concerns about the restrictions. How do we rebuild property value and attract new buyers?

In my family, I am never too far from architects. My sister and brother and sister-in-law are architects, and my mother was an architectural historian. But that doesn’t mean I know what to look for when I went around shopping for one. My sister lives close by but is consumed with another project. Besides, in case I start yelling at my architect, it’s better that it not be a family member.

The 30-year fixed-rate average remained just below 4.00 percent after crossing that threshold for the first time in months two weeks ago. The average this past week was 3.98 percent, nearly unchanged from the 3.99 percent posted the week prior and still well below the mark of 4.87 percent at this time last year.

When I bought my Arlington house, I considered just adding a small second floor. But the house needs so much work that everyone with any common sense advised me to tear it down and start over again. With some misgivings, I agreed.

This 3,100-square-foot property in Capitol Hill has housed a variety of ventures: It was a Kern’s Pie factory in the 1870s, an ice plant in the 1920s and a bottling facility after that.

Now, for $983,500, it can be your home.

The 30-year fixed rate average sank back to 3.99 percent after jumping to a five-month high of 4.08 percent the week prior, while the 15-year dropped from 3.30 percent to 3.23 percent. Both are still well below their averages of 4.86 percent and 4.09 percent, respectively, at this point last year, but both remain higher than new lows set last month.

Living in a one-bedroom apartment in Bowie with a rambunctious golden retriever made one thing clear to Brian and Jessica Smith: they needed a backyard.

My name is Mary. I’m an aging person with an aging house. I’m going to tell the story of transforming my house from something I don’t want into something I do.

There are a few goals for this project.

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North Capitol Street has long been a bastion of rather drab office buildings, many of them home to D.C. government agencies. However, that has been changing recently, particularly as nearby development in the Neighborhood North of Massachusetts Avenue (NoMa), north of Union Station, has picked up.

This week’s featured home, the Almond Birch House in Falls Church, played a role in the Civil War.

Real estate agent Sue Jin Song of Coldwell Banker writes:

During the Civil War, on June 18, 1863, two Union officers had supper with Almond Birch at his home. Major Sterling and Captain Fisher were carrying important war dispatches from General Hooker to General Pleasonton. They were captured by Confederate cavalrymen at the yard gate. The dispatches were confiscated and hand-delivered by Major Mosby to General Stuart. This event was subject to a Congressional investigation.

The 30-year fixed rate avergage rose from 3.92 percent to 4.08 percent, marking its higherst peak since October 2011. The 15-year average also spiked from 3.16 percent to 3.30 percent, the highest point since November 2011. Still, both are down from one year ago, when the the 30-year averaged 4.81 percent and the 15-year averaged 4.04 percent.

Congratulations are in order to . . . Christopher Mckechnie and Avivah Jakob of Baltimore for capturing the most votes among our five finalists of our “Mad Men” Look user poll last week.

In the totally unscientific poll, the Mckechnie/Jakob entry (submitted under the screen name “cmxnie”) received roughly 40 percent of the more than 600 votes cast by our digital readers. Thank you to everyone who voted!

The warm weather is bringing a swarm of people to see the early blooms of the region’s cherry trees. The unseasonable weather—along with positive economic signals and an increase in consumer confidence—is also bringing crowds to local open houses.

After months of searching for an apartment, I was starting to feel like Goldilocks. This one’s too small. This one’s too old. This one’s too expensive. Only difference is, the clock is ticking for me to find a place.

The latest trend in home staging is not something that makes a house or condo look great, but a trick that makes the buyer look better while they are inside the property: Skinny mirrors!

This week’s featured property, a stucco home with a tiled roof, was built in 1925. It has been renovated and expanded since, and now features two master suites, a basketball court and modern “work stations” where children can do their homework.

My fiance and I rent a one-bedroom in a co-op in southwest DC. We’ve noticed that the studio and one-bedroom units in our building are selling for pretty low prices — some for $150,000 or less. Our lease doesn’t end until summer 2013, but we’d hate to miss out on a good investment. Is it a good idea to buy property while still renting?

The average 30-year fixed-fixed rate mortgage jumped to 3.92 percent, up from 3.88 percent last week but still well off the pace from a year ago (4.76 percent). The average has now remained below 4.00 percent for 15 straight weeks.

Now, it’s your turn.

We’ve narrowed our impressive pool of entries from our 2012 ‘Mad Men’ Look contest down to five finalists.

Please vote on the home that you think should win our contest and in the comments section, tell us why you voted for the one you did.

Creating the right set-up makes cooking an enjoyable, and sometimes fun, experience. If you’re looking for inspiration on how to decorate and design your own kitchen, look no further.

Drumroll, please . . .

We asked for your photo entries for our “Mad Men” Look 2012 contest and, wow, were we blown away. It was a very hard decision to narrow it down to five finalists.

But I hope you’ll agree that these five entries below really showcase an impressive display of the mid-century modern look.

Are you a District homeowner facing foreclosure? Have you tried to take advantage of the 2010 mediation law? Have you been affected by the slowdown in foreclosures?

If any of these apply to you, I’m interested in hearing your story. I can be reached at shina@washpost.com

If your home has this mid-century modern look, snap a few photos of it and upload them to our gallery. Our contest is as simple as that.