Rome if You Want To

We've purchased the tickets.

We've reserved the hotel.

We've scoured the guidebooks.

We've downloaded Italian podcasts.

Io sono Americana.

Non parlo Italiano!

A month from today, we'll be in Rome.

Praying to the Real Estate Gods

Some people go to church on Sundays to hang out in God's house.

We go to Brooklyn on Sundays to hang out at open houses. We spend our days trudging up creaky staircases, traipsing through tiny, dank apartments, and shaking the slimy hands of overeager real estate agents.

At the end of the day, we retreat back to our tiny apartment in Manhattan with our pockets tucked full of apartment fact sheets and our tails tucked between our legs. Exhausted from all of the talk of co-op board approval and maintance fees and minimum down payments, we fling ourselves onto our bed and stare at each other, and even though we're too exhausted to speak, the unspoken question is always there between us:

How are we ever going to be able to do this?

How is it possible that two reasonably smart, college educated, responsible adults cannot afford to purchase a home that's larger than the size of an average walk-in closet and that doesn't smell like cat pee? Surely there are people living in New York who own property who aren't investment bankers or living off a trust fund. Where are they? How do they do it?

I wish we could freeze-frame our lives in this moment, in which curling up together with the dog and a nice bottle of wine seems like the greatest of luxuries and 350 sq feet feels like all the space we'll ever need.

But nothing lasts forever, right?

So how does a modern couple with modern dreams and modest paychecks make it work in a city like New York?

I guess we'll just have to keep praying to the real estate gods for an answer.