1. Date (for obvious reasons - I've reached the end goal and I'm quite happy with it).

2. Drive across the country in Barnaby - he's just too old.

3. Live in a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment.

Let's just discuss this last one, shall we? Now, I know Emily's cornered the market on sucky living situations right now, but I'm just gonna whine for a minute about forced intimacy.

First of all, let's discuss that one bedroom. Now, it's not so much the bedroom that's the issue, it's the construction of the bedroom. See, in this particular apartment, the builder had the genius idea to make most of the floorplan open, and then to leave big gaps in the tops of the bedroom walls to promote air circulation. It would be "green"! It would cut heating and a/c bills! What's not to love?

I'll tell you what's not to love: sneezing in one room and the person in the farthest part of the apartment saying "bless you."

Well, ok, that's not exactly unloveable. But maybe you get the idea. It's that you can hear. Every. Single. Sound. Any. Person. Or. Animal. Makes. At. Any. Time. Of. The. Night. Or. Day.

This means: we have to be diligent about keeping the fish tank topped up, or the splashing water in the other room will keep us awake. This means: if one of us wants to stay up later than the other watching TV, we have to keep it on the lowest volume possible and the other has to wear earplugs. This means: if one of us wants to sleep in on the weekend, the other has to get dressed quietly and go somewhere else until they wake up.

And then we come to the other issue - bathrooms. Just imagine you really, really, really, really have to pee.

But someone else is already using the bathroom.

And there isn't another one. At all. At ALL. You're on the fifth floor, in the farthest end of a large sort of S-shaped building, and even the resident lounge bathrooms are at the farthest end of the S, so really your only option is to wait it out.

But you REALLY have to go.

Pretty much, it just sucks. Which is why I will never live in an open-plan, open-walled, one-bathroom apartment again.