— So, cutie, I’ve found you two options:
A house with a huge garden full of fig trees (so you can feel like Eve before the fall).
A house with huge windows and a mountain view (so you won’t run off to the mountains alone, but enjoy them from the veranda).

I’ve been looking for a new home for two months. K and I have moved out, and staying in a three-story mansion with a veranda, garage, a million rooms, and an office is just too expensive and impractical! I’ve been touring houses — each one worse than the last. I need nature… a view!

— Thanks. I’ll check them both, but you know I’ll pick the second one — the one with the view. I might be Eve, but I’m not going to cover myself with leaves — you know my free spirit!

Turns out, I was looking for houses not where I needed to, but where it was beautiful (classic me). 

It looks like Canadians have their own secret where to find the best real estate options: apparently, all the good houses are hidden deep in the woods, under snowdrifts, or behind moose trails. 

I’d set too many filters and got stuck in the swamp of unrealistic expectations. Princess and the Pea among Pemberton Holmes’ comfy mattresses!

But J — my true real-estate Jedi (he has a lightsaber) — pulled me out of that digital hell, found two wonderful houses, and put a big fat period on the search.

I’m pretty sure he has an internal “nonsense/not nonsense” filter which I don’t have. Sometimes I walk into a place and wonder if I’ll make it out alive.

And you know what? 

When the choice is limited, thinking gets so much easier — the brain doesn’t wander into fantasy jungles but calmly chews on the given options. 

Sometimes it’s nice when an adult shows up who:
Takes you by the hand and says, “Enough, darling, we have only two options.”
Doesn’t solve your problems for you but stands nearby, supporting you and quietly laughing.

Because I’ve been stuck in my comfortable, cheerful childishness. How can you not laugh when your house wishlist sounds like set design for a TV show? Kitchen — to host Gordon Ramsay. Living room — for Desperate Housewives gossip.

And my key demands:

Sun — to wake me up in the morning.

Fog — for aesthetically pleasing sadness.

A street with a beautiful name (had “Princess Avenue” already, wanted something more original).

Forest view — so I can feel like Snow White while doing the dishes (preferably without a poisoned apple).

Yoga veranda — where I’ll probably just drink coffee.

Kitchen island (in case Gordon Ramsay does show up).

Fireplace — to reread Nabokov and pretend I’m intellectual.

A quiet spot under birches — to cry to Zhenya Berkovich’s poems and then say it’s allergies.

A place to run — which will happen twice a year, but I’ll say I “run.”

And, of course, close to J — so he can bring me coffee in five minutes, not thirty.

— J, Will you drive that far to see me?
— Are you kidding? I’ll travel the world to see you!

Pure Canadian sweetness. We’ll see… Honestly, he should just move in already.

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By the way, the street is called “Quail’s Run.” Couldn’t find a cuter or funnier name! It perfectly captures the vibe of our community. It’s like the stories from children’s books where tiny birds wear waistcoats and host tea parties in the hedges. J probably moved us here just for the free scones and the neighborhood’s collective delusion that we’re all in a Studio Ghibli cartoon.
—
Eight months later, J was living on Quail’s Run too. (Guess he’d been house-hunting for himself all along.) 

Before he moved in, I’d fling the doors wide open, gulping down that delicate mountain-ocean breeze—along with every street insect in existence, ranging from ‘mildly inconvenient’ to ‘why is it looking at me like that?’ But that… that’s a story for another time.

A bug zapper