What have we done? What are we doing? For a little while, we’ve been talking on and off about moving, having concluded that we were spending too much money each month on housing in the lovely apartment we have in Boston, in a neighborhood we’ve lived in for about 25 years. We hadn’t really started to think about alternatives when a house came on the market in Cambridge, a house we could afford to buy outright with what we can sell our present digs for. As it happens, this house -- half of a double house, actually, a “Victorian mansard cottage” – is on the other side of the wall from a house I owned in my thirties. (A long story could be inserted here.) I bought it that half with a borrowed down payment and a co-signer on what now seems a laughably insignificant mortgage. And I immediately began renting rooms out so I could afford the also laughably insignificant (from a 2014 perspective) monthly charges. Of course, we’ve bought the house. Or we’ve promised to. So now our apartment is on the market, and people are traipsing through each day. We have to be impeccably tidy. We have to have flowers in every room. We have to take the dogs out for long, long walks during the viewings and open houses. And in the middle of this, of course, comes the publication of my book – next week! -- and the rather minimal book tour I’m doing. And sadly too, in the middle of it, we had to put down our old, old dog, LouLou. She was arthritic, deaf, incontinent, and demented. And yet we held on and held on because she had moments when she seemed joyous, usually moments connected with food, but joy is joy. And now sadness is sadness. It has felt like too much. It’s been too much. A strange brew, too – loss and gain, sorrow and excitement. My computer stopped working in the middle of things, so I haven’t written for a while, either. Apologies. I hope my next posting will be more coherent.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 13:41:39 +0000
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