If I asked you that IRL* you’d look askance as though I’d asked when you had your first sexual experience or to recount the details of a loved-one’s death.

I learned the money-taboo early. Although I grew up in an environment where we would discuss politics and religion and sometimes both over a meal, money was never ever ever up for discussion. Indeed, my father was so uncomfortable with the subject, he grabbed every bill that ever landed on the table before anyone could start discussing divvying it up. Such processes were too unseemly. My mother recently told me that when my paternal grandfather left medical school in the mid-1920s in the UK, he expected to receive some family money to buy his first practice. Instead, he was left empty-handed and had to eke out a living in partnership with someone he reportedly didn’t like.

As I walked towards my chiropractor’s office, a car was backing out of a driveway across the sidewalk ahead of me. A parked car made the maneuver more complicated than it should have been. While the car undertook a few back-and-forths, I crossed the street to avoid being delayed and to get out of their way. To be polite, in fact.

With the many reasons for which people are building laneway suites, who would have expected two lanewayers could have so much in common? Or so I found out when I met Louise James, a 60-something big-firm litigation law clerk. Louise moved into her 1000 square foot laneway house in July - a stunner! - and I was thrilled to be among her first guests.

Here’s Louise’s story.

James bought her Pape/O’Connor house in the east end of Toronto 21 years ago as a divorced mother of three. For the past thirteen years ago, she’s shared her house with her youngest daughter and her son-in-law. Louise jokingly told me the arrival of a grand-baby one year ago limited her entertaining to before 7 pm to avoid waking the baby! They’d clearly outgrown the space.

Chandlerville. I first imagined converting my garage to a laneway house two years ago. In short order, while conscious, I thought of little else. Asleep, it was more intense - the backside of my eyelids showed a night-long reel of my imagined new house.

Friends, concerned that reality might fall short of fantasy, would remind me if it didn’t work out, other plans could emerge to simplify my life. Some even gently said if I didn’t like living small, I could move back to the main house and rent out Chandlerville instead. Each time I’d respond that it would work out (because I’d make it so) and that I would like small living.

It’s got me thinking though - has an idea ever outshone the reality?

The National Geographic. Yes, I think I’ve maybe been wrong about it.

Most Huron County farmhouses in the 70s had TVs; not ours. National Geographics provided visuals about the bigger world, supplementary to CBC radio news. Nat Geo was the only periodical we received other than the Wingham Advanced-Times, the local weekly. Yellow spines, in chronological order and unsullied by scissors, pens, or dirty fingers, lined our shelves. Beyond the initial read-through, they were rarely consulted, but they occupied the coveted spot beside the complete works of Shakespeare and under every book Dickens ever wrote.

My parents ate porridge followed by poached eggs on brown toast every morning for decades. Then during retirement, their lunch options narrowed to a point too: cheese sandwiches and salad. The serving window was tight - if you weren’t at the table at 8, 12:30, or 6, the kitchen was closed. And grazing from the fridge was not allowed.

If you are reading this, you already know a whole lot about me but here are the high points. You know, for example, that I have just built a new house so space might be an issue, but that I have a nice yard perfect for us to hang out. You know I recently changed jobs and work away from home a couple of days every week. You might also be aware I have had three prior walking companions and for each, I made sure they didn’t suffer at the end. You for sure know I write and that one day you’ll surely end up featured in a weekly blog.*

“Next, you’ll want me to take my own blood!” I reply, hoping my tone is light, but fearing otherwise. The tech has just withdrawn the needle from my arm having extracted enough blood for my doctor to confirm my thyroxine dose is still right.* As has happened so many times in recent years, my tech asks if I would like to get the results online. And as I always do, I have declined.

I lay on my back listening to mayor-elect, Olivia Chow, give her victory speech. Tears soaked into the duvet cover on either side of my ears. No sobs though - I was anxious to hear the optimistic message from this career politician whose views have so often mirrored mine. My tears were not a reflection of my joy, however. No, my heart ached for the words she dared not utter - how much she wished her husband and political partner, Jack Layton, was here to share in her success.

No-one I know believes former Mayor Tory resigned in February because he’d had an extramarital affair with a staffer in her 30s. There’s obviously more to that story which may one day emerge. Regardless, many in my circle were happy, despite the expense and disruption of going through another election just a few months into Tory’s third term. It felt like a chance to rebuild some of the city’s social fabric and invest in necessary infrastructure after a couple of decades of the tax restraint of centre-right leadership.