I looked at the calendar today, and realized that I had forgotten my anniversary. No, not the anniversary of my wedding. The anniversary of buying my building.

One year ago today, I was inside my building, walking around the retail unit, certain that it would rent within a month. I knew that the retail would rent first because the restaurant needed more work. I was also worried about getting the wall up in the back of the retail space before we did find someone who wanted to rent it.

One year later- the restaurant rented a while ago, and the retail STILL isn't rented. I've come to realize it's a hard space to rent. It's a great big open space that used to be a grocery store, and a department store in the past. And sadly, that's the only thing that it's fit for now. But department stores are old-school. Too old-school. And we aren't *that* far from the antique capital of the state, so that's out. Doctors, dentists, and tattoo parlors need cubicles, or some kind of separated area. So it sits empty. The wall in the back looks nice, though.

I was also certain that by this time, we would be living upstairs. I think I watch too many house flipping shows, because my goals were completely unrealistic. I'm cute when I'm naive. Somehow we were supposed to gut the upstairs, and have it to liveable standards (to be upgraded later) by this time. Well, there's only 5000 sq ft worth of former apartments that are being converted into one living space to tackle. You'd think that would make it easy, but it doesn't. I have no need for seven kitchens.

Instead, we have cleaned about half of the big room. It was full of things that the previous owners didn't feel like carting out. Just like the rest of the building. We have removed one wall of plaster, and a 4'X 8' section of plaster from the ceiling. We have a good 3 months solid worth of work left on the plaster removal alone. Why? Because of the restaurant downstairs, we don't work when they are open if we can avoid it. We try to be courteous neighbors. Currently, most of the removed plaster is sitting in one great big pile. If we rented a dumpster, we would not be able to fit everything in it in one load. And the difference to the space is very small. I estimate 5 dumpster fulls of old insulation, wood and plaster before we finish. And that's just the removal. We still don't have electricity or water up there.

Apart from the building, my movie was supposed to be finished. Instead, the script is still sitting on my computer. Someday I'll do it. Right now it looks like I can plan on finishing it around 2052.