But the little kitchen was purely 1964. No dishwaser. Basic icebox. nice gas range, but every dish that was used had to be washed in the single sink, and you know the peril of allowing even a single dish to remain unwashed in the shallow sink- soon they multiply.
 
So I had the Guatemalan craftsmen gut the place. Rip up the ancient wall to wall rug; refinish the parquet floors; replace the appliances, install tall new cupboards, marble counters, dishwasher, built-in microwave; new paint and new walls with a big aperture in the wall with two retro diner-style stools to make a breakfast nook bar cum dining area.
 
The intent was to make the place an annex. It was too small to really live in, as a very good friend pointed out, and the crap that came back to me after the marriage ended made something small into something almost claustrophobic when the days grew short and the chill darkness filled up the pool deck outside.
 

The Three Letter company that sent me a regular paycheck encouraged us to “work from home,” which is a euphemism I still do not fully understand, and it was entirely too disorienting to live with my personal affairs mixed amid the papers of commerce.
 
I often said that home-workers, on a day when the blizzard came, were snowed in at the office. I thought having an actual office separate from the living place would provide the separation to keep things in their real perspective.
 
The work turned out pretty well, but of course by the time I was done with the reconstruction I had fled to another, larger place with two bedrooms and baths that I called Tunnel Eight, after the place where General Yamashita hid all the gold of China.
 
Imaginary gold, in point of fact, and capable of being dissolved over night in the frenzy of greed that swept over us all in that lamented decade of the zeros.
 
I should have known then what we now know painfully; it was as plain as the noses on our beaming faces. The going rates for rent in Big Pink were less than what the mortgages cost to own one. A lot less. The only advantage was the tax write-off, and that was a solitary pleasure that only came once a year, not twelve times.
 
Oh well. I will try to sell the place, open-house this weekend. The farm and Tunnel Eight are probably more than I need at one time, and having a third place is positively irresponsible.
 
But I will miss it. I really should sell the larger one, but it is only now- barely- not underwater.
 
That will be the next project. I guess this crap only ends with the first of the only two certainties in life, of which the latter- taxes- are by far the more pleasant alternative.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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