Apartment Hunting

Dear Secret Blogiary,

I am not ready to move just yet…But I have an appointment tomorrow to look at an apartment.

Once Mister W and I decided that keeping this house was not worth our sanity or our marriage we knew that it would only be a matter of time before we would have to move. We thought that we would wait, though, until we actually got a foreclosure notice. That was the plan. And in the interim we would work diligently at paying off as much debt as possible.

This apartment though is absolutely perfect in location, size and price. It was an opportunity that we could not let pass us by without at least trying to get it.

Ideally the plan for next year is for me to work from home, home school The Girls and focus on writing. For that to happen we needed to reduce our living expenses to a single income: Mister W’s. We talked about trying to go to a single car household as well and since I wouldn’t be driving to work, I was okay with that.

This apartment is less than a mile from Mister W’s work (read that as walking distance) which is so, so, so perfect. Because it means that we could go to a single car AND I wouldn’t feel trapped at the house because Mister W had the car all day. Plus, it is close to potential part time jobs for me if the whole “work at home” thing doesn’t pan out well.

It is a bit smaller than what we currently have, 1,400 square feet versus 1,700 square feet, but we have 3 full baths and the master one is freaking HUGE (really unnecessarily large) with a closet to match and the apartment only has 2.5. So I figure I am losing a master bath and master closet sized space. I can live with that.

I am a teensy bit concerned about the credit check though. I plan on bringing copies of our W2s and a current bank statement. And I plan on being completely upfront with the whole foreclosure thing.

So I am hopeful.

Hopeful that it is as nice as it is in the pictures.

Hopeful that if it is as nice then our credit score doesn’t take us completely out of consideration.

Hopeful. Just hopeful.

And also, kind-of hungry.

I am so glad that I was home for this today

Dear Secret Blogiary,

What I don’t understand is why people have to be assholes. I went camping over the long weekend (I’m working on a post about it) and the last day it rained. So I have wet equipment. Wet tent. Wet fly. Wet chairs. Wet sleeping bags.

Clearly, the equipment needs to get dried out in order to prevent mold, mildew and other rot from taking over. So, I kept the tent in my trunk until it cleared up and then set it up in the driveway to dry at the first hint of a warm sunny day. And then it rained. Again.

Clearly, I am not going to leave the tent up forever! I would like to park in my driveway again. But it has now been set up for two days and I have been out with towels encouraging it to dry. It is not my fault that the weather is not cooperating.

So today, who shows up at my door? The neighborhood Nazi I mean the community “manger,” Anne and her lurking evil sidekick Haggy (I don’t know her name but she sure as hell looks like a nasty hag with required scowl and hairy moles).

Anne: (nodding over her shoulder at the tent) You know that isn’t allowed to be there, right?

Me: It’s drying out.

Anne: (looking back at Hag and tent) What do you mean?

Me: (confused because here I thought I was speaking plain English) Umm. The tent is wet. I am trying to dry it out.

Anne: Well, it isn’t supposed to be there. You need to take it down.

Me: Clearly. In fact, as soon as it is dry I plan on doing that very thing.

Anne: Well?

Me: Well what?

Anne: Go take it down.

Me: Now?

Anne: (impatiently glaring at me) Yes. It isn’t supposed to be there.

Hag: (glaring) Hrumph.

Me: Yes. So I gathered from the three times you have now told me that. It is not dry yet.

Anne: (taking out a little doorknob hanging “ticket”) Well, I am going to have to give this to you.

Me: Okay.

Anne: When will you take the tent down?

Me: Really? I‘ll take it down when it is dry.

Anne: (handing me the ticket) And when exactly will that be?

Me: (looking up at the sky as I take the ticket) Well, assuming that it doesn’t rain again today, then, as soon as the tent is dry. As I have said.

Hag: (glares and scowls while tapping her foot)

Anne: So you’ll take it down today?

Me: Jesus! Really? I’ll take it down when it is dry!

Anne: (turning away from the door) Well, I will be checking back later. See that you take it down.


I guess it was a good thing they didn’t go out back to see the rest of the gear.



See that? I have a permanent record now! I'm a hard-core bad ass now!!



Twisting the Plan Up in Bunches or How My Family Keeps Throwing Me for a Loop

Dear Secret Blogiary,

Is it a reprieve from angst and worry? Or is it a trap cunningly disguised as salvation?

I have written many times about my current position regarding the pit of hell I am living in my house. Just to be clear: we are upside down on the mortgage, live in a neighbor that is unfriendly and reside in a city that is a drug-runners haven. We want out and after speaking to a lawyer made the ultimate decision to walk away from the house and rent for a while.

Eventually the goal would have me at home writing, possibly home schooling Big Sis and Little Sis, and living on Mister W’s salary.

This was the plan. We agreed upon it and took steps to start it.

Now? Oh Boy!

My father, after two long years in litigation regarding my grandmother’s will, is reaching a settlement that will free up his finances. The will was contested and it looks that the judgment will be in my father’s favor.

Well, after hinting and hemming and hawing for the past two years about “wishing” he could “help” us it finally came out that Dad wants to buy a home down here and will be able to plunk a $50,000 dollar down payment on one. Peachy. How does that involve me? Apparently, he wants to buy a 4 or 5 bedroom house and have Mister W and I live there and make the mortgage payment as he has no real income aside from social security. And he would have his own room.

Currently, he travels a lot. But the house would be his and when the time came, he would relocate here permanently and the unspoken arrangement would be that I would become primary caretaker in his elder years.

I love my Dad. I do. But he is very hard to deal with. So I made a pro-con list:

PRO:

1. house troubles = fixed
2. Mister W loves his job and wants to stay in the state
3. With such a large down payment, the mortgage will be less and I’ll be able to be a stay at home mom as I have been longing to do
          a. If I am stay-at-home then I can leave-the-home at will to go camping and kayaking
                  i. Not that I have a kayak yet…but I really want one
                 ii. And going camping during the week? How cool and less crowded would that be?
4. A single family home means that I can let the Psycho Dog outside and get chickens

CON:
1. Dad is a hoarder and as much as I love to stockpile Jell-O and craft supplies, I am not willing to live with a true should-be-on-Hoarders hoarder
2. I do not really want to be a caretaker, especially for my Dad...that just seems skeevy.
3. I would never feel like the house was my home...we might pay the mortgage, but we'd only be able to do so because Dad dropped that much money on it
4. Dad took care of my grandmother for over 15 years (she lived until 96)
5. I had the girls on the young side and by the time I am 45, they will both be out of the house…do I really want to be tied to house taking care of my Dad
          a. Oh Geez! How selfish is that?!?! It’s like I only think about myself!
6. I do not want to live in Florida for the rest of my life - seriously, I told them I was moving back up north and what do they do? They all follow me down here!
7. I hate being obligated to people – even family

I am not sure that this covers everything that I have been thinking about since my Dad offered this as an option…except that it wasn’t really phrased as an option; it was more like an expectation. Like when the finances cleared up, Dad would put the money down and Mister W and I would pay the mortgage.

Mister W is all for it. And by "all for it" I mean that he is willing to go with this "plan" because it solves a great many problems. The biggest one on his list? He doesn’t want to leave Florida. He likes it here amazing as that is. He doesn’t want to leave his job. He loves it and is quite good at it. I can respect that especially considering that in Florida we can live comfortably on his salary alone.

And if I don’t take up this offer, how do I tell Dad? “Sorry Pops, can’t be bothered with thinking about you in your old age, I am just going to put you into a nursing home?”

Ouch. I can’t do that. But I also have to be able to live with my choice. So how do I choose between a sharp pointy rock and a bigger jagged blood-stained boulder?

A Man Can Plan

Dear Secret Blogiary,

So the word is in and it is not in my favor. Not that everything has to be about me (though it is nice when it is) and not that I expect to win get my way all the time (although, really, I still don’t understand why I don’t).

Mister W and I had a deep standing-in-the-kitchen conversation about plans for the future tonight. This was probably not the best time to converse about the subject, but as I had finally forced my way through the massive number of secretaries and voice mails and actually managed to speak to the real live lawyer*, I was able to get some basic real estate advice. And the crazy thing was, after I explained what was going one with Mister W’s dad, the house and everything, his legal advice was explicitly simple in design:

Walk Away.

It. Isn’t. Worth. It.

This from a LAWYER!!

Wow.

He laughed and commented that I sounded like I had been raised by “proper” middle class parents who instilled in me a set of rigid morals that kept me on the straight and narrow.

And I certainly was. You pay your debts, pay your taxes and follow the rules. I was good with this system. I like it. It works for me. Everything is structured and symmetrical; which is odd, considering how chaotic and spontaneous I tend to be. I have never understood myself!

In any case, Mister W and I talked and we developed a three year plan. One that unfortunately does not involve me moving to Maine and becoming a lobsterwoman, never mind the fact that looking at waves gets me seasick! The plan then is this:

We walk away from the house, bankroll my paycheck, I keep working at least until the school year is over, and then we pick up an apartment closer to Mister’s work and I can work or not (probably will so as to keep the extra money coming in for the next two years and then Mister W will entertain the possibility of moving back up north. Maybe.

This is something that I have just got to accept. I knew way back when, that Mister W did not want to leave Florida. He likes it here, likes his job and really invested in it. But me? I’ve never been thrilled with Florida. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with it since I came here. I hate it for nine months of the year when the blistering sun bakes the very gray matter in my brain. And Florida loves to torture me with the blistering heat.

There are way more reasons than this, but far too many to go into any great detail. Let’s just say that I came with the understanding that I would remain no more than four years. It has now been ten years and I am more than ready to exit stage right!

The biggest problem I have with this plan is that it puts Big Sis as a junior in high school when the plan magically comes to fruition. And I would feel bad ripping her from school (assuming she didn’t graduate early and head to MIT or Yale because that is how bad-ass her brain is). I hate that I have been unable to provide for her the kind of physical environment I had growing up. I hate that for most of her life she had lived in a city and a crappy one at that! Obviously, I can’t change the fact, I can only do what I can to ease my mind about it (because really, I don’t think she has ever once complained about it except once she mentioned she wanted to live in the country and raise chickens).

Little Sis is, quite honestly, happy wherever. She wants a horse and to live on a farm, but then so did I and that never happened and I turned out mostly sane. I still want to live on a farm though, except, I’d rather have llamas than a horse. And a large concrete wall but that’s a story for another day.

Little Sis seems to have the mindset that home is where Mommy and Daddy are and if we don’t have a horse, chickens or llamas, that’s okay because it is. She is so wise sometimes and makes connections that I just don’t remember making at her age.

I guess what it boils down to is that Mister W needs a plan and I think plans take too long. I’d go tomorrow if Mister W said, “Hey, let’s jam!” I’ll go his way, though, if for no other reason than that while I hate my job, Mister W loves his and he is really good at it. His biggest fear about the “let’s just go” plan is that we’d go and end up in a worse situation where he is in a job that he hates and I can’t find a job I love.

Also, he seems very concerned about food.

Geeze. As if I wouldn’t pack a few granola bars to tide us over.

*Coolest thing about being part of a union, I totally have free access to a lawyer…and of course, by free I mean I make regularly monthly payments to be able to have access to a lawyer.

When I Get My Own Compound There Won't Be Any Stupid HOA Fees!!

Dear Secret Blogiary,

I hate my neighborhood. No hate is too much of a sissy word. I loath my neighborhood. Despise it. If I had to choose between living in my neighborhood and living in Hiroshima right after the bomb dropped…well, I’d probably choose my neighborhood over death, but you get the gist of the intensity at which I abhor my ‘hood.

I almost wish I could say that I hate it because it is a ghetto full of crack-whores and gangstas. I wish I hated it because it was full of child molesting fiends peeping at my kids through Venetian blinds. At least then, then I would have a better justifiable cause for my hate.

No, I hate my neighborhood because:

7. The Walls.

Now last time I lived in an apartment, the walls were paper thin. I not only heard porno-worthy sex that lasted for hours, but I heard the kids yelling and screaming too. The cool thing is though that I only heard the LOUD stuff. Here in my townhouse, shoot, I hear the neighbor’s phone, the radio, the TV. If I am in the right place at the right time, I even know what bedtime story is being read!

6. The “Waste Management”

My stupid neighborhood doesn’t recycle and every time I try to bring it up to the board to get a recycling program here they completely ignore me or try to placate me by telling me that the company we use sorts the trash at the landfill. Right. By “sort,” I believe they mean “dump it in a pit and let some future generation deal with it.” Have they not seen Wall-e?

5. The Retention Pond

Not only do they insult my intelligence by calling it a “lake” but they won’t even let anyone canoe or kayak on it. It is certainly deep enough to canoe on and I’m not asking to set up a permanent mooring, but really? What’s the point of a “for decoration only” pond?

4. The Damn Feral Cats

Yes. I get that feral cats are a problem. I get that there are animal lovers in the neighbor who want to “take care” of those “poor unfortunate” animals but seriously, TNR programs are not proven to work and besides which, the neighborhood is not running the stupid program the way it was meant to be run. The cats continue to reproduce, continue to use the playground as a litter box and continue to hunt and kill the good wildlife. At a recent board meeting when asked if the cats were more important then the children having a playground, three of the board members said, “Yes.” When the neighborhood puts feral cats above the children, it is time to get rid of the cats...And the board members!

3. The HOA fees.

I could live in a two bedroom apartment for what I pay in HOA fees per month; maybe not a great apartment but a decent one in a decent area with a pool and a fitness center. And exactly what am I getting out of paying the HOA fees? Well, every other week, a guy comes to mow the sand in my “backyard.” There is a pool, so that’s okay. Ummm… yup that’s it. $500 per month gets me a pool and sand maintenance. When I asked if they could put sod down on my sand they said that I would have to pay for it even though it was not my fault sand was there in the first place. When I asked if they would remove the stump that they left after taking down a tree in my patch of sand out front they again stated that it was my responsibility to remove the stump even though they were the ones to cut the tree down without even informing me about it.

2. The Elderly

Okay, I can’t say too much about the elderly in the neighborhood except that they our number the younger 10 to 1. And if I thought my students had no manners, then my students need to the poster children for the next edition of Guide to Good Manners and Etiquette because these elderly folks could teach the younger generation a thing or two about bad manners and nasty, spiteful personalities. Living in this neighborhood, I have encounter more disrespectful, rude elderly then ever before in my life. Surely I am exaggerating you say. I’ll admit I am very good at hyperbole; however, in this case, not an ounce is stretched. For example, one man rides his scooter around the neighborhood every day, not a problem, until a car comes by at which point he starts weaving back and forth across the street preventing the car from passing him. He then screams obscenities at the driver when they make an attempt to pass.

1. The Board

I have never encountered a ruder bunch of S.O.B.s then the board. When discussing the feral cat issue, two of the board members continued to make rude, nasty comments about the people speaking, they rolled their eyes, heaved great exasperated sighs and proceeded to be the biggest bitches I’ve ever seen. The president is weak willed and cows at anything the VP or CAM says. The only information that he has is what the CAM gives him to recite. They will solicit open discourse from the few members that show up and then the board, all save one member, openly ignores the community input. I was ashamed that I voted for them. And I am now getting involved in the process to recall them.

There you have it the Top Ten Seven Reasons why I loath my neighborhood. What makes it all worse is that until the market turns, I have to tolerate it here. UGH! At this point I am not sure that I care if I have justifiable cause to loath...in fact I don't mind at all if I am a little bit irrational!

Aside from Bill Gates and a few others, who isn’t having money trouble right now?

Dear Secret Blogiary,

I know that this is a cry echoed around the country right now, but it is hard to hear the cries of others when my ears are ringing with my own cries.

I have a job. Mister W. has a job. We own a home that is worth 60k less than when we bought it. We had to take two mortgages and high interest to afford it. We shouldn’t have bought it but we were young, trusted our real estate agent and the mortgage company she recommended. At the time our toes were on the edge of a giant chasm and we held hands and leaped.

Big Mistake.

But isn’t that part of life? Making mistakes makes us stronger, wiser, more determined, right? Well, with the high interest we almost walked, but were assured that within three years we could refinance at a lower rate and all would be ok. Made sense. Mister W and I both thought and agreed that three years was doable. Throw in a HOA fee and our monthly payments topped out at $1850 per month. Twice that of what we paid in rent. But we said, we had some credit bumps and we knew we were going to take a hit.

Three years of tight living went by. It took my entire paycheck to cover the mortgages, the HOA and my student loans. Mister W’s check paid for everything else. We had no savings, no backup, nothing. We went without. But we did it.

Three years later we were ready to refinance and then the bottom of that chasm we leaped into flew up to meet us – the market collapsed, banks failed, Mister W’s commission based job went into a sharp decline. He didn’t lose he job, but the paycheck took a sizable hit. We contacted the mortgage company and asked for a refi. They laughed. Your house they said is worthless than what you owe and therefore you are ineligible for a refinance. I tried the bank. I tried third party mortgage companies.

We were like lepers. No one would touch us. Months went by and we kept paying, hoping that the market would recover. And when it became obvious that recovery was a long time coming, we talked to friends and neighbors about what we should do. On the advice of one such neighbor, we stopped paying the mortgage. They claimed that if for three months you didn’t pay the company would then work with you.

It sort-of worked. We were able to complete a temporary modification of our primary mortgage; this after a frustrating and humiliating battle with a “finance manager” who expressed disbelief at our “outrageous” grocery bill (she claimed that for a family of four we should spend no more than $400 per month on groceries. Right, because I don’t like to eat fresh food or make lunches for my kids for school). Our second mortgage would not help us and demanded that we get caught up immediately.

We ended up lowering our mortgage payment by about $150. Then the HOA fee went up from $312 to $450, an increase of $138. Great.

So what happens now? Well, for the past two years we have wanted desperately to get out of the house. Can’t sell it since it is still upside down. Can’t make improvements since we are still living paycheck to paycheck. Can’t rent it because we couldn’t get what we need to cover the expense. Can’t walk away because we don’t want the black mark of foreclosure on our record (besides, it goes against how I was raised to renege on debt).

That leaves us stuck. We fight because we are stressed out about money and the house. We are miserable because we have no money in which to do anything and we are fighting. And we are scared, because we don’t know what might happen next.

It makes a nice mix, right? Just like a good chef salad. Fights, stress, misery, scared…what is this dish missing? Oh, I know, let’s toss in with a nice vinaigrette of both cars need to be replaced. Oh, some crunchy slivers of Mister W’s dad is sick and needs us to be closer to him (he can’t move in with us as we literally don’t have the room and we cannot afford to make the place handicap accessible).

Oooo! This salad is tasty!!