how i started my all-ramen diet

so the new year has been off to quite a start, i must say. here's the first week quick nutshell:

• on wednesday we sold our apartment
• on thursday we bought our house
• on friday i had 2,569 heart attacks

here's what i have learned from the process: selling property is awesome. you make a squijillion dollar profit -- free money! -- and the purchaser has to sit there like a groveling jester in the court of the Slumlord King, signing contract after contract after contract. you sit there for 3 hours (because you were too stupid to remember to give your lawyer power of attorney) and watch them develop debilitating carpal tunnel syndrome. then you laugh maniacally and count your money, only you can't count as high as a squijillion. you might even take a check and rub it into your bare chest, which you find to be less satisfying than it should be. or at least than it would be if it were a pile of crisp benjamins.

then. then the next day the tables turn! buying a house is less awesome. you sign your name eleventy thousand times in a row and then big mean lawyers take the squijillion dollars you made yesterday and you wonder why you didn't run away to mexico in the dead of the night.

but then you are handed keys! and suddenly you have a house! a house that isn't an apartment! this is a very special feeling. the house is beautiful and it's YOURS and it's a house and it's 100 years old and beautiful. and then you realize that since it's 100 years old and needs a new kitchen and could use 90 coats of paint and is probably sinking and has rotting guts or something, there's another squijillion dollars worth of work that needs doing before you can spend one minute inside. also, the bank owns your ass. this is when the heart attacks start.

and that's the third thing i learned, heart attacks hurt. a lot. and they don't stop just because you want them to.

but what i really wanted to talk to you about today was poop. yet ... i just can't do it right now. sorry, i am too busy having my 2,570th heart attack to give the poop stories the full love and attention they deserve ... perhaps another day. because, seriously, this is one hell of a first week. 2007 scares me.