The Hunt Begins

What to do when not feeling like working at work? Search the New York Times real estate section online, of course. And search, scour, examine, look into, analyse, and whine we did (well, the whining was mostly mine). Anything we'd even remotely want to live in was well beyond the means of any normal wage-earners. Since neither of us was about to inherit a large sum, and we're law-abiding citizens so theft was out of the question, the apartment would have to wait.

We emailed each other listings from Elliman, Corcoran, Bellmarc, Halstead, and anyone else we could find... We decided to put off any vacations, and eat at home for the forseeable future to save everything we could. We even got all excited about a Greenwich Village apartment with its own little backyard (to make the suburbanite in me happy) in a former carriage-house now owned by Yoko Ono. Randy rushed to see it during the first Open House. Ummmm, no - not for us, thanks.... We have a "thing" about having a living room wider than 7' and a stairway that isn't in the middle of the kitchen.

We did a lot of math. How much do we REALLY need to live on? How much can we borrow? How much can we scrape together out of the change we've been tossing into jars??? ;-)

Jay and I figured out what we had, what we could expect to have within a year, what we could get for our current homes, and how long we could go at different apartment price points before selling our current homes. The numbers were somewhere between "what the heck are we doing?" and "can you believe they're asking THAT for a closet with a bathroom in it?"... This went on for about three years, with each year adding about 20% to the apartment prices but just 5% to the value of our current homes.

And then we started the Open House visits, and things got interesting in a hurry...

The Question (no, not that one)

Jay finally popped "the Question"...... "Where should we live so we can be together when we do decide to, well, be together...?" (While not "The" question, it was still a very good one.)

I like the Long Island life. I went to high school in Manhattan (a.k.a. The Big Apple, The City, and The Place Where Subways Are Easier Than Cars). I lived in an apartment from soon after birth to the age of 30, and moved UP to a house in the suburbs with my car right outside and a little button on my keychain that made the car turn on and get cozy warm in winter before I ventured out.
The garden, the lawn, the hedges - aah, suburbia. Well, I liked the garden; the lawn mowing and hedge trimming got old very early on in my homeowner life as did oil-burner repair bills.

But my job on Long Island wouldn't be there for much longer - there's only so much time you care to toil at company-wide reduced salary in a barely-making-its-bills place that sold stuff that you could get cheaper with a Google search and three clicks. Being a Vice President was nifty, having a varied job with clients I could really help and a staff I adored. A decent wage would be niftier.

Jay, on the other hand, was going from deep-in-debt law-school student when we met to "they gave me yet another raise" status. And even more work was piling onto his desk. His hours had always been long - like from 9am-ish to 9pm-ish, and were getting even longer. When many weeks had multiple 2am leaving times, it became clear that a commute wasn't practical.

There was only one solution. NYC living. Gentlemen, start your bank accounts!

So then, the apartment hunt began, if you find that sort of stuff interesting....

Things move along

The smart, handsome, fun, funny man was named Jay. And somehow he seemed inordinately fond of me (well, though I'm an acquired taste there are worse out there...). So we dated, despite the almost insurmountable physical and cultural distance - yes, he lived in Brooklyn and I was a suburban Long Islandite.

He did the traveling, I did the cooking, we did the romancing.

His trip started with a walk to the NYC subway. Two subway lines later, he'd catch a Long Island Rail Road commuter train, and finally be transported to my car waiting (when I wasn't late) at the station in Suffolk County. Every Saturday he'd leave Brooklyn for the 2+ hour trip. Every Sunday I'd drop him at the train for the return. And what did he get for his weekly pilgrimage? Dinner, cooked as only a never-tried-this-before new chef can manage. Good thing he was used to bachelor life since his divorce, and didn't expect much in the way of culinary artistry. OK, we also found time for some other stuff that may have made the trip worthwhile, but that's not what the story is about.

This once-a-week visitation thing went on for a while. About five years, actually. I worked in a suburban office during the week, and he worked at a NYC firm, and we both saved every penny that didn't go into MetroCards, 10-Trip Tickets for LIRR, or food. And I happily puttered in my garden and used duct tape to fix my house. And he subwayed back to Brooklyn during the weeknights and fell into bed, alone, exhausted after a 12- to 15-hour day at work.

But then it got interesting....

It All Started....

I've been online since 1994. And when it came time to find a serious mate, I did everything BUT go online. I flirted with friends-of-friends. I went on dates with business associates (though no co-workers, thankyouverymuch). I told people that I'd be interested in meeting their single friends. Didn't meet anybody I really liked, let alone would spend whatever's left of my life with.

Two cousins, both on AOL (which gives you a hint of their tech knowledge), dated and married people that they met on AOL (which gives you a hint of their taste). And still I insisted that the Internet was no place to find a life partner.

I gave in. I looked at Yahoo personals, but figuratively ran screaming when I read the fourth "looking for someone to have sex with during lunch" posting. Not quite ready to give up, I wrote a drastically honest profile of myself and posted it to friendfinder, as I figured that a spouse should be a friend, too. After a few under-wonderful email, phone and in-person exchanges, I got a response from someone whose humor, intellect and clear humanity came right through my screen.

We emailed, we spoke, and a few weeks later we met (in the obligatory neutral public setting - the NYC Aquarium in Brooklyn).

From there it got interesting.