please send me money

blogging has been light here and i apologize but I DON'T SEE YOU TURKEYS PICKING UP THE SLACK.

the reason for the light-bloggery is simple and, if you must know, exciting and scary. mrs nice guy and i are suddenly, almost unexpectedly and very terrifyingly, buying a house. that we can't afford. for no justifiable reason.

it all started one brunch loooong ago in a galaxy far away. on sunday morning. we were brunching at a friend's place (this friend's new apartment, actually, almost a year to the day of the BACON INCIDENT) when, disgusted by the dearth of grease fires, we excused ourselves to check out an open house one neighborhood away. another friend who had been brunching with us chose to come. his name, for our purposes, will be Irwin.

Irwin lives near Columbia University where he is employed. he hates coming to brooklyn. he always jokes about needing a passport and having to change currency. when he showed up to brunch at noon he said he had left his apartment at 4 am. it's funny, but not in a ha-ha kind of way. it's more funny in a i-want-to-kick-you-in-the-nuts sort of way.

anyway, irwin came with us to the open house. we get to the open house and there's three of us and a baby. the broker is momentarily confused. i'm like "hey, this is park slope, dude. if you don't like our unconventional family lifestyle, then move to teaneck." and then we looked around the house.

the house. how shall i put it? "love at first sight" is a cliche. "dream house" is hackneyed. "instantly shit my pants" because i knew "we both had no choice but to buy this house and go into crushing debt that will eventually fall to our children's great-grandchildren long after we are buried, having starved to death from not being able to afford food for ourselves any more" is more accurate. about 30 seconds into the tour, mrs nice guy looked at me and she had that look in her eye that every husband of a strong and scary woman knows. it said: "this is MY house, bitch." and who was i to argue?

irwin turned to me halfway through the tour and said "even i would come to visit you if you lived here. probably."

some cool facts about the house:

• it was built in 1870! one-eight-seven-zero! that's older than the constitution! i think!
• during the prohibition, there was a secret entrance to the basement, which was a SPEAKEASY! the original bar is still there! so are the taps! (at this point in the tour, i handed the broker my daughter and said "is this enough of a down-payment?" mrs nice guy shot arrows of death and castration at me from her hell-red eyes.)
• it's an actual house. in new york. three blocks from prospect park.
• did i mention that the basement was a speakeasy? that's almost cooler than having secret hallways like in Clue and Webster.
• after WWII someone built a big-ass garage behind the house and ran an auto-body repair business. in the 70's the garage was converted into a big-ass master bedroom/screening room/play space/orgy hall.
• one word (comprising two words): roofdeck
• one more word (also comprising two words): speakeasy

the wife and i went back to our suddenly-repulsive condo and we she crunched some numbers. basically, we she realized that if we sold our condo for just enough money, we could afford the house and the utilities and all the sundry monthlies and bank fees and lawyers and engineers AND still have a whopping $8 a month to live off of.

so we made an offer on monday night.

yesterday it was accepted. then, for the second time in less than a week, i had to change my shorts.

that's why it's been hard to blog. it's actually been physically challenging to blog: i am in the midst of a three-day heart attack. my sphincter has seized up. one sip of coffee gives me seizures. my usually-strapping muscles are tied into Gordian knots. i think i just had a stroke trying to remember how to spell "Gordian." oop -- there was another one. there's no point in wearing clothes because i'll only sweat through them. WHAT. ME STRESSED?

so. deep breaths. every time i am confronted with a vision of my daughter being forced into sex slavery to help daddy pay the mortgage, i look at the original listing for the house again. and instantly, i feel better. i mean sex slavery, shmex shmavery. this house was a speakeasy!