One of our tenants is about to move out of her apartment in San Francisco. While we wait for the City to digest our plans to build a new house, we have two mortgages to pay; one on the house we live in, and one on the empty lot that, if pressed, maybe we could camp in.
It’s not as satisfying as you might think to watch a lot of money fly out the door every month, especially as most of it is interest.
Whereupon I observed to Rachel that it would make good sense for us to move into the vacated apartment; we could sell our current abode and fill in a big chunk of the money pit that is the empty lot.
But, I observed, we could obviously not do any such thing, because Shannon is (a) pregnant, (b) on bed rest and (c) due about a month after we expect our tenant to move out.
Shannon calls me, several days later, using her “exploring uncharted territory” voice.
“I’d like you to sit with this idea for a few weeks; please don’t prejudge it. I know you’re very stressed at the moment.”
Oh, shit! She wants a divorce!
“What if we were to move …”
Apart? To different cities? Noooo!
“… into the vacant apartment and sell our current place, then use the proceeds to pay off a chunk on the empty lot?”
What? No divorce?
Only packing a 250-square-metre house into a 100-square-metre apartment?
While Shannon’s heavily pregnant and unable to do more than walk to and from the car?
“Sure!”
“What? No need to think about it?”
“I was talking about just this with Rachel the other day, but it didn’t even occur to me to mention it to you.”
I am bemused that each of us expected the other to write the idea off as nuts. Let’s chalk it up to our continued power to surprise each other.
What remains is a job of daunting proportions: to move all of our crap twenty kilometres, filtering more than half of it into long term storage, all without causing ourselves fits of insanity.
Leave a Reply