There is a hum and my phone skitters an inch or so across the table, bumping into a pastel yellow beachhouse perched on wooden stilts above a vista of scenic rolling dunes.

It’s Marc, asking if I’m down for brunch tomorrow with his cousin who’s in town for a music festival.

With a sigh, I text back to say I can’t afford to keep going to brunch in the middle of the week, by means of the waffle, dollar sign, and sad face emojis. As I do so, a vision of a luscious slab of brown topped with green shimmers before my eyes, a beautiful, creamy, savory Platonic archetype of Avocado Toast—and a single salt tear falls into the above-ground pool of a charming duplex outside of Austin.

It’s one of a whole stack gathered haphazardly on the table because I’ve run out of shelf space.

I can’t afford avocado toast because I keep buying houses.

My pantry is full of them and there’s no room for culinary staples. I take a generous bite out of a mid-century colonial with a wraparound porch, and crunch through a mouthful of drywall and splinters. There is a complete lack of spicy green paste, and my disappointment is as vast and empty as the beautiful unfinished loft space on the colonial.

Today was the day I sit down and get my affairs in order. I turn from the phone and review the readout on the calculator one last time. Everything’s double-checked.

Of course I need something to nibble on, just to help me concentrate. And this split-level ranch was about to go bad anyway.

If I save up all of my tips for the next few years, and also win the lottery, I could put a down payment on a cozy artisanal open sandwich, crispy whole grain, a good location, lemon juice and spices lovingly folded into the avocado paste.

If I get a good rate subletting the apartment, maybe even a semi-attached iced latte.

Pumpkin spice, God willing.

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Daniel Galef has published humor in The American Bystander, Kugelmass, and The Journal of Irreproducible Results. Until 2017 he was editor-in-chief of The Plumber’s Faucet, the humor magazine at McGill University, where he also performed improv, stand-up, and sketch comedy and won First Prize at the 2016 McGill Drama Festival. You can follow him on Twitter here.