It was a bad news-bad news day, followed, thankfully, by some good news.

The TV had a story last night about a fishing trip which ended in two young children drowning. While rescue services were retrieving their bodies from their parent's sunken boat, another body floated by. This one, a woman's, was unrelated to the boating tragedy. She had been in the water a few days. Police were having trouble identifying her.

This morning a friend rang to tell me that the mystery corpse was that of her mother.

She'd been missing for a week.

I'd met her mother once. I went to a house-warming my friend was holding and took some home brew and a pint glass.

The pint glass had “Of course I love you. Now go get me another beer” written on it.

My friend's mother commented on it. It turns out she was a little bit of a feminist and may not have appreciated the humor. But she was good enough not to say so.

She had been battling depression.
So the word “suicide” is being whispered.

My friend used to work for my company.

I had to break the news to some of the people who knew her well, including a woman whose mother committed suicide a couple of years ago. So that news went down really well. Sarcastically speaking.

I feel so bad for my friend.
And her 12-year-old sister, who was living with her mother.

Two minutes after my friend called to tell me her news, my wife rang to say our house deal – due to be finalized by the end of the day – was in danger of falling through, because the purchaser was insisting on us getting permits for work that did not and does not require permits, or we had to drop our price by two-and-a-half thousand dollars.

Which is not good news, considering our life has been in limbo for the past few months because of this house.

So we decided to take a risk and tell them to Stick It. We would not be making any concessions, so if they wanted the house they had until 5pm to finalize the deal and make it unconditional.

And the good news – which took it's sweet time arriving – was that the people realized we weren't prepared to play any games, and so they sealed the deal.

Which means we are soon to be homeless.

The plan is to move out next weekend. We'll be house sitting rent-free in a posh suburb for several months, and then look at buying a new house later in the year.
Hopefully in that same posh suburb.

Rock. On.