I’m not much of a Monopoly player. I get too attached to the high-dollar properties and usually end up losing all my money before the game is over.

Bob, on the other hand, is excellent at it. He usually snags the roachy purple properties near GO – Mediterranean and Baltic Avenue, then puts hotels on them. By the end of the game, he’s cleaned everyone out.

So it was that when my neighbor P’s property came up for sale, Bob jumped on it with a bid hours after the “for sale” sign went up. To me this is the equivalent of buying Baltic Avenue. We already own Mediterranean.

Our house is what you might kindly call a “fixer-upper.” We have been fixer-upping for six years now with no end in sight. P. wanted to sell us her house a while back. She told Bob, “Those kids need a good house to grow up in.” Implying that ours is not.

P. is now in a nursing home and her son says she is at peace with the idea of selling her house. I have my doubts. Her counter-offer can best be described as hard-assed. She seems to have forgotten that the Bob who wants to buy her place is the same Bob who picked her up off the ground and washed the blood off her knees. The same Bob who rushed over to meet the ambulance in the middle of the night. The same Bob who kept her children informed of her condition. Maybe it’s dementia. Or maybe it’s just her.

No matter. P has given us pause, and pause is a good thing. Bob did some more math and the numbers are not friendly. That little red hotel she’s built over there could drain our stack of bills.

Plus, we’re asking ourselves if it make sense to buy Baltic when there’s still so much work to do on Mediterranean. The whole game has made me rethink my little green plastic house here. One of the reasons I have been willing to keep fixer-upping has been that we were zoned to a good junior high and high school. It now looks as if that is going to change, and if it does, I may want to put Mediterranean on the market. Staying here is not worth it to me if it means Boy and Girl have to go to Thug High.

So yes, I continue to suck at Monopoly. I’m trying hard not to suck at the Game of Life.