The last time I wrote, I was trying to be brave. But I was really scared that I might not find a new home for myself and my six pets. To keep from panicking, I reminded myself that even though I had just three days to find a place to rent, I only needed one place.

Just one house with one fenced yard. Just one landlord amenable to six pets.

On the second morning of my search, I set out to see a house. My map indicated I could go south, then east to a major road that would lead to my destination, or so I thought. Turned out that while the roads cross on the map, one is an overpass, and I ended up on an interstate highway headed out of town.

Annoyed, I exited at the first familiar road. As I was finding my way back, I spotted a "For Rent" sign, and turned to see what was available.

It was . . . shall we call it a cottage? A very modest house with a fenced yard. The neighborhood seemed quiet and nice. Quickly I called to ask if it would be available to someone with pets. How many pets, the landlord wanted to know.

Some people I love and respect had advised me to lie about that. But AA teaches honesty in all things, and I soon realized that the stress and distress of having to explain or hide some furry person or persons would put me in jeopardy of drinking.

I took a deep breath and told the truth, all set to drive on.

"Hmmm," said the landlord. "That's a lot. I'd have to meet you, and we'd have to talk about it. Where are you now?"

Within minutes he was showing me the house. I scarcely looked at it: Did it have floors? Yes. A roof? Check, and ceilings too. Oh, and how much was the rent? I was thrilled to learn I could afford it.

I went back to see the place twice more that day, and the next day I said I would rent it. As we shook hands, I sighed in relief.

"Feeling better?" asked my new landlord. "Much," I replied.

OK, I give up. I surrender, I confess, I admit it: I cannot afford my home anymore. By my home I mean both my house and the crazy city that I love, where I've lived for the past 20 years — longer than I've lived anywhere else, nearly half of my life.

I went "back home" to North Carolina last week, to attend my 30th high school reunion (!) and spend a week with my parents. I ended up using a lot of that time looking for a place to move my remaining family, the three dogs and three cats.

And I found something, a tiny little house in a great, big fenced yard. The rent is just over half of what I'm now struggling to pay for my mortgage.

For years I'd been scrambling for work, and just getting by, with the inconsistent assistance of Ed. It occurred to me, as I gazed at the satellite image of Hurricane Ike covering the entire Gulf of Mexico, that homeowners insurance — already prohibitively expensive - will never get any cheaper in Florida.  

My beautiful house, the cherished fulfillment of a long-held dream, needs work that I can't afford. Relatively speaking, it's a wealthy person's home. 

Relatively speaking, I am not a wealthy person.

Also, my parents also are not getting any younger. I'll feel better being closer to them — though I will decline, at least for now, their generous offer to let me live in their basement for a modest rent. I would not feel better being that close.

Speaking of which, I'm not opposed to putting several hundred miles between myself and my soon-to-be-ex-husband.

I don't want to move, I don't want to leave, but I can't afford this life any more.

I give up. That much is certain. Now all I have to do is work out the details. 

This past summer will henceforth be known as "Cohabitation Experiment Summer." Yes. Just a few short months ago, Mike and I tried living together — in strictly controlled, scientific circumstances, of course.

The Initial Plan: I am used to spending the summers in New York. Since I am now dating someone who lives there, living in the NYU dorms no longer seems like a good plan. Mike, unfortunately, lives in an apartment the size of a shoebox. There is no possible way two people can spend an entire summer in a place this size and not tear each other's faces off.  We both like being alone too much. We both want the option of getting away.  We need a door to close.

We decide that he will sublet his shoebox, I will take the money I normally spend on the dorms, and, together, we will sublet a larger apartment for the summer.

This will be a living together experiment. We will see how we do when it's longer than a week or two. We are pretty sure we're not ready to live together For Real — at least, I am, but this will not be For Real. There is a time limit. It is temporary. It is safer. We will discover new and exciting things about our relationship.

Delightful Possibilities: The luxury of spending time together without anticipating its end in a few short days. Seeing what "real life" with each other is like. Waking up together every morning.

Scary Possibilities: That we won't get enough alone time. That I will somehow freak out and mess everything up.

All these things, as it turns out, came to pass.

Next post: Alice examines just why this experiment was such an epic failure.

Maybe I didn't have it all, but I had managed to build a life I wanted. I had a home and a family. (Well, I had a husband and a bunch of animals.) I had work I loved. It took my entire adult life to put it together.

And now it looks like my next task is to take it apart.

Typically, perhaps, I didn't give a lot of thought to what would become of me after Edgar. I was positive, though, that it wouldn't be good for me spend the rest of my life with someone who evidently could not stop drinking to excess.

So I plunged ahead and got him out of my house, mostly out of my life. There is the pesky little detail of actually divorcing him, but we're over.

Since I married late, at 40, I figured I'd just kind of go back to what I did before I had a husband.

Yeah, right.

Nothing is the same as it was, not me, not the economy, not the fields in which I have decades of experience. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Since Ed's been gone, I've found new homes for more than half of my pets, gotten a roommate, tapped my precious retirement account (and am about to do so again), and I failed to get jobs as a waitress (no experience), in retail (plenty of experience), as well as in public relations, publishing, and journalism.

So what am I to do? Something completely different, apparently.

Probably something I don't want to do.

I may have to find homes for the rest of my animal family. I may have to sell my house — if I can find a buyer. Either of those options is heartbreaking, but as my friend Curtis says, "It's all on loan."

Even if I manage to hold on, neither my dogs nor my house will go with me when I leave this life. But I will die knowing I was able to get myself out of a disastrous situation, even though it hurts a lot in ways I wasn't expecting.

Remembering that doesn't make me feel any better, but it does kind of put things in perspective.

It’s been a year now since I determined I could not go on living with my husband, Ed. While he was the first one to bring up the D-word, he is also the one who does not want to get divorced.

Once I finally got him out of the house (my house, thank you very much; I bought it a few years before we married), I devoted myself to scrambling for money to keep body, soul, and animal family together.

I soon realized that divorce, with its lawyers and fees, was a luxury. And Ed, never a financial genius, said he didn’t have the funds either.

He did email me a proposed settlement agreement; I think he found a template on the Internet.

We have no kids and my lawyer tells me our pets are considered chattel (I’m sorry; anybody who looks to me for food and shelter and doesn’t work is a dependent).

I wasn’t seeking alimony and he wasn’t planning to battle over the house. Still, like any good divorcing couple, we managed to oppose each other.

I wanted to keep the health insurance he got through work, at least for a while; he would not sign a quitclaim deed formally relinquishing any interest in the house, until the divorce was final.

I was more concerned about the health insurance. I could keep that by just keeping quiet, so I did.

But after I tapped my retirement account to cover all the things I hadn’t earned earning enough to handle, I remembered that I’d also meant to get divorced.

I got out of bed in the middle of the night and emailed Ed, asking how he thought we should go forward.

Then it was his turn to keep quiet.

Weeks passed without a word from him.

I felt I’d done my part for the present, but my therapist thought I was procrastinating.

Imagine.

I said I’d get in touch with Ed, ask what he wanted to do. “Why are you giving this back to him?!” she demanded.

I thought about it briefly before replying.

“Habit.”

When you start dating, you realize there are a number of things you don't necessarily want the other party to know about — at least, not at first. Habits, tendencies, things you're mildly embarrassed about, things you're not sure will go over well, things that didn't go over well with the last partner. They're small, yes — not really that big a deal in the grand scheme of things — but you're not necessarily eager to share them.

I mean, you can love and trust someone and still not want to them to know you have a really, really hard time peeing when you think anyone can hear.

Since we're in a long distance relationship, when Mike and I see each other we stay in each other's apartments. This means we're together a lot of the time. This means he's figured a lot out already.

And no, I can't pee if I think anyone can hear. Or if I think someone's waiting for the bathroom. Obviously, this had to come out into the open early on. He hasn't stopped rolling his eyes, but he has let me pile pillows on his head before I head to the bathroom.

He's found out how I feel about jammies. In that I like them — a lot. In that I tend to come home from work, put them on, and stay in them the rest of the day. In that I avoid getting dressed as long as possible over the weekend.

He knows the house kind of revolves around the cats.

I've had to admit, recently, that I have a number of friends I only know through the Internet.

He knows I smoke sometimes.

These things have all come to light. None of them, of course, have been a big deal, but all of them were things I was reluctant to share. They are all things that may not have been learned as soon as they were if we hadn't been sharing a space.

In less than a month, we're taking a trip together. There's no hiding when you're traveling. What will come to light then?

It's official: Larry the Cat has given up his vendetta against Mike.

The last time Mike was in town Larry made it clear that he was displeased. This was odd, since Larry is a cat-whore. He loves everyone, boys especially. His normal reaction on meeting someone new is to make out with them, or, at the least, sit behind them on the couch and hug their heads.

Larry is convinced that he is my boyfriend, although he considers it a fairly open relationship, what with his tendency to stick his head into other people's mouths. When Mike came to stay for the first time, Larry took one look at him and realized something was different. I'm impressed, still, with Larry's insight here — he's not the smartest cat in the world. This is a cat who runs into walls. This is a cat who has set himself on fire — twice.

Larry, the lap-lover, would immediately vacate the couch if Mike sat beside him, stalking to a chair across the room and watching with hostile eyes. He stopped trying to sleep in the bedroom, much less on the bed. He refused to let Mike pet him.

One of the things I love about Mike is that he loves my cats. At the risk of being the crazy cat lady, they're awfully important to me, and anyone who wants to be a part of my life in any significant way really has to be ok with that. Finding someone who not only tolerates this but is actually pleased when I drag him out of the shower to see them in a particularly cute position...well, it doesn't get much better than that.

So Mike's been on a mission to win Larry's affections.

It helped that his second visit saw him working a lot — it got the desk lamp on his side. Larry loves napping under the desk lamp.

Then there was the miraculous day when Larry actually got into Mike's lap. I have a picture of Larry looking over at me in horror and guilt before leaping off and pretending it had never happened.