Must See to Appreciate!

This is not my house.

Nor is this my view.

However, this is my life: cream cheese on toast for breakfast sitting at my kitchen table wrapped in a duvet cover because it's cold and I don't want to turn on the heater. And no, that's not a wayward speck of cream cheese there on my chin but a dab of zit medicine. It would seem that the recent turn of my life's events has festered into one of those under-the-skin blemishes, the kind that harbors its own beating heart, Edgar Allen Poe in the dark sebaceous world of the tell-tale pimple (out in paperback soon!).

We're selling our house. I suppose it's really only 90% decided, but I don't do 90%. Already I have mentally moved us into a rental, a cute 2br, 1ba with w/d hookups and a grdn. Must see to appreciate! Except, of course, I can't see, it's not real yet, or it's too real, the surreal estate of this new life. Somewhere on the walls of my new home the clocks are dripping time and there is an oversized apple just standing there in the middle of my living room like an awkward, tongue-tied guest. Ceci n'est pas une pipe-dream. Nothing makes sense.

Last night Bryan obliged my need to control the situation and we sat down at the computer to look at rentals listed at half the cost of our current mortgage. Duplexes and apartments, cottages, all deemed Real Charmers! by their landlords who pay for water and trash, landscaping, and all upkeep. Then, just for shits and giggles and because we're masochistic this way, we typed in what we currently pay in mortgage and this is what we found for rent in the town in which we live:

UNIQUE DESIGNER HOME! 4BR, 2BA W/GOURMET KITCHEN, SPA, ELEVATOR AND OUTDOOR SHOWER! LIVE STEPS FROM THE BEACH!

What the post did not say but should have is this: LOOK! YOU MORONS! FOR WHAT YOU ARE CURRENTLY PAYING FOR YOUR 2BR, 1.5BA MOLDY HOUSE WITH THE AGING ROOF--YOU KNOW, THAT PLACE YOU'RE ONLY PAYING THE INTEREST ON RIGHT NOW?--WELL, FOR THE SAME PRICE YOU COULD RENT THIS FABULOUS DESIGNER HOME RIGHT ON THE BEACH! AND THEN USE EXCLAMATION POINTS AND UPPER CASE IN REGULAR CONVERSATION BECAUSE LOOK! THAT THERE IS SOME NEW STAINLESS STEEL KITCHEN APPLIANCES! AND GRANITE COUNTERTOPS! YOU IDIOTS!

Of course we are not selling our house only to rent a UNIQUE DESIGNER HOME ON THE BEACH! For one thing, I cannot stand exclamation points and if I had to live in that house and speak that emphatically I would probably stick my head in the stainless steel gas oven to end the futile existence of living in a house with an actual elevator. And if that weren't true (which duh, it's totally not, of course I would live in that UNIQUE HOME ON THE BEACH! I'm not a complete killjoy) then here's the truth: we are selling our house so that we can return to spending only 25% of our income on housing, not 50%. Also on the (decidedly un-designer) table? Selling my car. Selling our house and selling my car to buy back our lives because maybe, just maybe, if the thousand different Excel Spreadsheet scenarios I have worked on over the past few days are correct, then maybe I can be a stay-at-home-mom slash writer slash me. Yes, you read that correctly: maybe if we downsize I can be the me I'm supposed to be. A better wife, a better mother and a writer, better or not. A writer.

Maybe.

There are still a thousand different things to think about. Logistical issues: healthcare, pre-school, 401k, savings or lack thereof, the future and its endless schedule of a dental exam every six months, the plaque of everyday existence really. And these things cannot be tossed aside for a dream, even if ceci n'est pas une pipe. Still. There is an apple in the living room of a house I don't even live in yet. Oh, sure, I don't own the house, per se. I don't even own the apple. But I can see that apple nonetheless, I can taste it. And oh, does it taste sweet.