Dear future children,
This is Week #19 and you are both the size of a [Note to Self: remember to ask mommie what that website says you are this week. Update: she says you are either Heirloom tomatoes or softballs.] It’s been a stressful week for us — your parents — for a variety of reasons. In no particular order:
- Our Cat Maggie has Lymphoma
- My condo tenant wrote me an essay email
- Mommie’s condo is unrented
You may hear us talk about these events when you get older, or other similar events. You may not remember Maggie because she is 14 years old right now and healthy cats typically have a lifespan of 16-20 years. And Maggie has not been healthy in a very long time. So the question many pet owners face is how long do you keep spending money to keep your pet alive versus maintaining a Quality of Life lifestyle?
What is so bad about my tenant sending me an email the word length of the Declaration of Independence? Tenants don’t write to see how you are doing to share good news. When they contact you, it’s usually because something happened or something broke or something happened that broke something.
Our issues with our condos is that at the moment, like many Americans, we are Reluctant Landlords. We don’t want to own two condos and a house especially since we are about to embark on a whole world of expense of raising two kiddos in this world. Not that we begrudge you any expense, something to remember when you select our retirement home.
The problem is that we cannot sell our condos without bringing a lot of money we do not have to the table, therefore we have to keep renting them until the market improves. And given our luck one of two things will happen: we will own them until they are just about paid off and then they get condemned or we sell them one year before their respective locations gentrify and become the next Lincoln Park (I know we’ve told you to stay out of Lincoln Park at night but back in our day, it was safe, trendy and fun.)
“It’s always something,” — Roseanne Roseannadanna, SNL Character played by Gilda Radner.
With any luck, by the time you are old enough to ignore this post, these conflicts will have been replaced by other problems which will be replaced by other issues. Wash, rinse repeat. That’s kinda how life works. Remember the Gilda Radner exhibit at the Saturday Night Life Museum we visited in NYC? You should know that a lot of SNL cast members got their start in Chicago. Well IT always IS something.
As you get older and deal more with people and the real world, it will seems like there is always something big on your radar. Maybe when you’re students you’ll stress about finals are coming up. Or once you enter the workforce you will have a deadline at work on some huge project. Or in your personal life you wonder how you’re gonna tell someone that you have to break up. Whatever it is, it sometimes seems like there’s something that is taking up all your attention, energy and resources.
I refer to this as the Crisis Of the Week, or COW for short. It may not be earth shattering or life threatening, but it generally consumes 80% of your attention. It may not even be a week’s length of time. I guess there could be the Crisis of the Day (COD) or it could be longer, like Crisis of the Month (COM). I guess there could even be a Crisis of the Year (COY). Lot’s of possibilities.
Then the thing passes. Finals come and go. The deadline arrives and then ends. The breakup occurs. Maybe things were a disaster or maybe they weren’t as bad as they seemed. Whatever happened, the next thing you know, there’s a new new thing on your radar to replace the thing that passed.
The other thing we want to let you know is that while this week’s COW is sad, stressful and expensive, we are dealing with it together as best we can. We are very lucky because many more people have it much worse than us. We will get through this COW and hopefully have some down time before the next one arrives.
Love, your parents,
Icarus and Nightingale
Maggie in her natural habitat — sitting on her Princess Pillows
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