And Donna, how are YOU doing?
Donna, I have been doing genealogy research on my husband’s Galician roots, and I have thought of you often in this process!
+1 on Toronto being great, the city and the university.
You are in New York, right? Toronto isn’t much cheaper than Manhattan – think desirable neighborhoods in Brooklyn – and CDN $25,000 is more like USD $20,000. It’s going to be tight. I would be thinking about how to find a roommate situation that works for him, or seeing about renting a room in someone’s house.
Has he considered living in Grad House for a year? That will give him the opportunity to get to know the city, discover the neighborhoods he likes, and maybe even find a compatible roommate. Lots of grad students and law students live there.
Fantastic news @DonnaL , thank you for coming back to keep us old-timers updated.
Hi Donna! Nice to hear from you and happy that you have such good news about your S. Toronto is fabulous!
Thanks to all of you for your kind words. I had no idea that so many people I remember were still around!
If the funding my son is getting turns out not to be enough to rent even a studio on his own, he understands that he’ll have to have roommates, as a “last resort.” Believe me, I get his reluctance; I wouldn’t have wanted to share an apartment myself when I was 29! (He just had his birthday. Auspicious timing, because he was walking on air!) Unfortunately, a single room at the Grad House costs more per month than he thinks he can feasibly spend on rent, so he may have to do a share. But I’ll let him figure all that out for himself.
As far as how I’m doing, I don’t want to go into too many details because I don’t want to detract from a happy thread. I had another c-difficile infection last month and was quite ill for a few weeks; I’ve still hardly begun to gain back the 10 pounds I lost. But I’m actually feeling OK right now. I ended up losing that job I had after I was there for nearly a year (long story, but remind me never to take a job again with a tiny non-profit with a micromanaging board that’s liable to decide to stop doing the kind of litigation I was hired to do!), so I’ve been unemployed again since last summer. It’s not easy to find something else, and at this point I have no choice but to go on Social Security, even though I’m only 64.
Ah rats.
I remember getting hired by a small firm that then did mass lay-offs about five weeks later. What the heck were they thinking? I ended up getting rehired by them a few months later on a part-time basis which was fine with me, since I wanted a paycheck, but also wanted to keep looking for a job more in line with what I wanted to do.
We shared houses and apartments even a couple of years after we got married. Was very happy though to finally get a place of our own at 31 or 32.