My Million-Dollar Donkey Read Online Free Page A

work and sacrifice, fueled by the idea that we weren’t spending our nest egg irresponsibly—just investing in a different sort of future.
    Mark absolutely loved remodeling, decorating, and interior design in any form, and for the first time ever, he had money to burn at Home Depot and Lowe’s. He began buying tools, wood, and fixtures.
    Me? Still vibrating from the echo of that one encounter long ago with a beast of nature that somehow tapped into my deepest longings, I embraced the concept of country living and as soon as I had the chance, I bought a donkey.
    The donkey was two hundred and fifty dollars. A new halter to make him look dapper was eleven. The land we purchased to house my midlife crisis pet and to appease Mark’s latest fascination for building cost half a million, leaving us with enough cash to build a reasonable cabin home and take a sabbatical from a traditional job long enough to reinvent our lives. Meanwhile, we still owned the buildings that housed our business, and when the new owners of our school eventually bought them, we could sock the cash away to provide income for life.
    With such ample resources and a common agenda to embrace the simple life, what could go wrong?

“This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.”
    — Henry David Thoreau
ONE TWO-STEP FORWARD
    The Smiths didn’t simply forego our offer to help them learn about the dance business; they ostracized us and made us feel unwelcome to give advice or in any way be involved with the transition. Customers called us to complain, begging us to intervene, furious that we had sold the school to people who were now making drastic, unnecessary changes. Our staff turned on us too as if we’d selfishly and purposefully left them in inept hands. We made numerous attempts to help, but our words and actions were twisted to make us out the enemy. On the day we were physically thrown out of the building by our former, dearest employee, we had no choice but to accept that we were powerless to affect what was happening.
    I was hurt by the way people I once cared deeply about were now behaving. Worse, I’d spent so much of the last twenty years trying to please my staff and customers that it was almost impossible to let go of the feeling that I was responsible for everyone’s satisfaction and welfare still. In an attempt to make our former friends and students see things with more perspective, I had heart to hearts, blogged, and even drove back to Florida a few times to intervene when trouble stirred. But as every well-intentioned action was enthusiastically misinterpreted, I eventually had to admit defeat.
    I felt like a dog with her tail between her legs and no understanding of why she had been beaten. Everything I once loved and felt reverence for seemed superficial now. I grieved over lost relationships and soiled memories.
    Mark’s attitude was, if twenty years of teaching, caring, and sacrificing for students hadn’t earned us even the dignity of respect, the hell with them all. Overnight, my ballerina husband turned into a tree hugger, and I’m not talking about the kind saving the world one tree at a time. He caressed the trees as if they were wooden mistresses, basking in the feel and smell of virgin oak or poplar. Mark was hugging trees to determine their girth, staring at them as if he was imagining their trunks supporting a roof or stairway. My husband wanted to build a new life, and he decided the place to start was in building a home. The fact that he’d never built anything before didn’t seem a big obstacle. If a pioneer could forge a homestead without even the use of power tools, certainly a dancing boy with a million in cash at his disposal could figure