The House and I

Shit, Piss and Corruption

2009-12-04T03:18:00.000-05:00

It's over.

The last thing I heard my mother say was "Fuck it."

That was last Friday. Today she just went quietly. She sure was a swell broad, wasn't she?

I'll be back here in a week or so. In the meantime, if anybody should feel so inclined -- and I'm not saying you should, but if you do -- we're asking folks to make donations to Reading is Fundamental in lieu of flowers.

Su was her name. Susan Ferguson-Ellia. And I loved her a lot. Still do.

Always will.

The Tramp's Story, Part XIV: The End

2009-12-01T07:44:00.000-05:00

I mean it! Let’s get this over with, shall we? I should say it is continued from three posts ago, as if you didn't know. And about a dozen before that...

Maria explained the “preliminary HUD document” that she had in hand was a short summary of the terms of the agreement. In other words: my schmeschminance application was approved!

“So... we’re done, then?”

Woohoo!

“Well, not exactly.”

Balls!

“I’d like to go over the numbers here, make sure everything is what you were expecting.”

This sounded positive. Very Helpful and Informative. Not at all like the three-card monty game that SchmounschmtrySchmide put me through the last time. Until she actually started reading numbers off to me, and I realized there was nothing much I “was expecting.” Her numbers sounded like one of my grandmother’s recipes: a dollop of this, a smidgen of that, a soupçon of something else – except with Grammy’s recipes, I actually knew what all those these, thats and something elses were.

I played along gamely for a while, but finally – having run out of variations on “Um... okay?” and “Er... I guess?” – decided to hang up the charade and interrupt.

“Does it say 4.375%?”

“Yes.”

“Fixed for thirty years?”

“Certainly.”

“And my total monthly payment will be $1249?”

“Well, $1250, actually, because—”

“Sold!”

I think I genuinely startled her a little. By which I mean to say I heard her gasp. I gave her a minute to collect herself, and then launched my next Well-Informed Inquiry.

“So... we’re done, then?”

Woohoo?

“Well, not exactly.”

Balls.

You see? You see how disciplined I’m being? Because isn’t this story just aching to let off right here and be picked up at this point tomorrow? Or the next day? If you were me, wouldn’t you think one full page of single-spaced 12-point type is more than enough to have got done in one day -- especially in one day when your mom's in the ICU on a ventilator -- even if it is just a lot of one-word paragraphs? And wouldn’t you decide to eat a slice of apple pie for breakfast and go back to sleep? But no. Because I love you, readers, and because you have officially now been tortured with this story for longer than it took me to live through, I will let that pie-slice fortify my wit, and soldier on...

“The next step is to sign the papers. Can I tell the notary when and where would be convenient?”

“You mean – what do you mean ‘when and where’? ”

Poor Maria. By now must have thought I was retarded. How could she not?

“I mean what day and time would you like to meet the notary, and in what location?”

Well, yes. Der. I know what “when” and “where” mean. But what are my choices? Where’s the office? Is there more than one? What are their hours?

“No. They’ll come to you. Anywhere. Anytime.”

“Really!?”

“Well, within reason. Evenings are okay but not, you know, midnight.”

“And they’ll come to my house?”

“Sure.”

“Well, all right then. Today’s Friday, so let’s say at my house, after I get home from work on Monday.”

I was assuming that they didn't work the weekend. Turns out I was wrong about that, but it's neither where nor when.

“Fine," Maria said. "Can you give me the address?”

I don’t know if this was a test or what, but what I said was:

“The – um – haven’t we just – shouldn’t you already – I mean – well...”

So totally retarded. But Maria understood where I was driving.

“Is this the property in question? 3 Morrell?”

Yes. Exactly. Der.

“And what time do you get home from work on Monday?”

“Well, I’m usually home by 4:00, but let’s say 5:00 just to be absolutely sure.”

“All right then. At your house, at 5:00 p.m. on Monday, October 25^th. I’ll call you the next day to see how it went, and we’ll get this thing closed by the end of the month!”

Okay!

Or would we?

Again. You see? If you were me, wouldn’t you so much rather drop it here and pick it up again tomorrow? Scurry off to somehow miraculously save my mother's life and leave everybody wondering how I could possibly screw the schmeschminance up at this point? But I won’t. I can do it all. Crazy Ladies, sick Moms, this blog and The Project (which is really, really finished, by the way). So I will tell you.

Crap!

I sat bolt upright in the middle of the night.

Hadn’t Henry told me – weeks ago – that I could have Johnny’s name put on the deed? Wasn't Maria supposed to ask me about that? Or was I supposed to have brought it up to her? Or was it just miraculously done already? And speaking of things that Henry told me all those years and years ago...

“Hello, Maria?” I was leaving her a voice mail in the middle of the night. “I’m wondering if it’s too late to have my husband’s name put on the deed. And also, Henry told me that when we were done the process I would get to skip a payment, but he also told me to keep making my payments as usual till then, so I already paid November – weeks ago. If we close by the end of October, am I screwed?”

I probably shouldn’t have said “screwed.” But Johnny and I had already done the math and realized that one mortgage-free month was almost the equivalent of free heat for the winter – if you count the old, newly-raised mortgage amount. And if we had a very, very mild winter. And we had gotten used to that idea.

But no. We were screwed.

Maria called back to say it was not too late to put his name on the deed, but as far as the skipped payment goes...

“It’s all right,” I said. “It’s not a deal-breaker. Just would have been very nice for us, is all.”

It only occurs to me now that all I had to do was ask her to put off the closing for a week. We’d close in November instead, and I would skip December. But oh well. Plus, in my plentiful life experience, more lag time only means more possible screw-things-up time. So if I don’t get free heat after all, well, it’s not like I was counting on it before this whole thing began.

The notary called me on Sunday night.

“Is it possible,” she said, “for you to meet me at 4:00 instead of 5:00? I’ve got another closing I’ve got to do that night in Brockton.”

I said I would, but that the only reason I’d said 5:00 in the first place was so I wouldn’t have to worry if there was a backup on the train. I told her I’d probably be here at 4:00, but if by any chance I wasn’t then she would have to just sit tight and I would be here soon.

“Great,” she said. “And also: make sure you have a photocopy of two forms of ID. Your driver’s license and one other.”

“A passport, I assume, will be okay?” I asked her.

“Oh,” she said. “You don’t have a driver’s license?”

Well, yes. I do. But you said “your license and one other,” see, so I was clarifying? Because I’m not too terribly keen on giving away copies of my credit cards?

“Oh. Sure. I guess a passport will probably be okay.”

You guess? Probably? You sure you don’t want to look that up or something before we get any further in? Because, I mean, this little blue booklet with the haggy-looking picture (seriously: yeesh) is valid for identification purposes at any government-sanctioned occasion in any country in the world, but I would understand if a Notary Public must insist on a copy of my Mastercard. I just need to know ahead of time. In fact, should I just go ahead and copy my AmEx and Visa, too?

NOT!

This was just the first of several ways the Notary would prove to be a slightly flighty pain in my patoot.

Okay. I’m sorry. I am done. For today, I mean. I tried. I really did. But I’m at the bottom of page four (in Word) now, and I just can’t bring myself to go on anymore. So it’s going to have to be continued one last time, after all. Looks like it is going to be a fifteen-part series... And I lied.

Su me.

[That was not a typo, and I'm leaving it. Please send any spare mojo for her, would you all?]

Also, The Sun'll Come Out!

2009-11-30T06:48:00.000-05:00

I am going back to bed right this minute, to crank out the final installment of the Schmeschminance Saga, which I will post in this very space tomorrow.

Tomorrow!

And then it will finally be back to business as usual. You know, poop jokes and breakin' shit.

The Sub-Prime Mortgage Massacree (or: How's This for a Turkey?)

2009-11-25T07:34:00.000-05:00

I wrote this two years ago and re-posted it last year. I wasn't planning on posting it again this year, but I have three pies and a batch of dinner rolls to bake, so I don't have time to write a real post. Or else I just don't feel like it. Either way, I ain't. But this fits in well with the theme I've been endlessly dragging out for weeks, so enjoy! Again!

This post is called The Sub-Prime Massacree, and it's about the Sub-Prime, and the Massacree, but Sub-Prime Massacree is not the name of the Massacree, that's just the name of the post, and that's why I called the post the Sub-Prime Massacree.

You can get anything you want, and you don’t need documents!
You can get anything you want, and you don’t need documents!
Walk right in there’s beer in the fridge,
Just a half a mile from the damn drawbridge.
You can get anything you want, and you don’t need documents!

Now it all started six Thanksgivings ago, was on – well, actually was on Groundhog Day, when my Johnny bought himself a scratch ticket. Johnny didn’t live in the scratch ticket store but he lived nearby the scratch ticket store, on the second floor, with me and Him and Her, the two cats. And livin’ nearby the scratch ticket store like that, we got a lot of tickets where our bank balance used to be. Havin’ all those tickets, seein’ as how we had no money, we decided that we didn’t have to be responsible adults for a good long time.

But we got up this day, this Groundhog Day, we found a down payment in one of them tickets, and we decided it would be a friendly gesture to take the ticket down to the Lottery Commission and trade it in for actual cash dollars. So we took the scratched-off ticket, put it in the back of a red Cadillac Sedan DeVille, took passports and licenses and implements of identification and headed on toward the Lottery Commission.

Well we got there and there was a chain along the wall and a big sign saying “Welcome to the Mass State Lottery” and there was Fox News on the television. And we had never seen Fox News on the television before, and with tears in our eyes we cashed that ticket and went looking for a safe place to dump the money.

We didn’t find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the side road there was a fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was a credit union. And we decided that one big pile is better than lots of little piles, and rather than empty the credit union we decided to throw our money in there.

That’s what we did, and we drove back to the cats, had a piss-up that could not be beat, went to sleep and didn’t get up until the next year, when we got a phone call from the universe. It said “Kids, we found your name on an account at the bottom of a ton of money, and just wanted to know if you had any intentions regarding it.” And I said “Yes, sir, Universe, I cannot tell a lie. I intend to ignore it for a little while longer.”

After speaking to the Universe for about forty-five days on the telephone we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down and put that money to some Practical Use. So we got in the red Cadillac Sedan DeVille with the passports and the licenses and implements of identification and headed on toward the realtor’s office.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that the Universe coulda done at the Realtor’s office, and the first was it could have given us a medal for having avoided homeownership for this long, which wasn’t very likely, and we didn’t expect it, and the other thing was it could have bawled us out and told us never to be seen sittin’ on a wad of money like that again, which is what we expected, but when we got to the Realtor’s office there was a third possibility that we hadn’t even counted upon, and we was both immediately bamboozled. Bemused. And I said “Universe, I don’t think I can invest that money with these here blinders on.” Universe said “Shut up, kid. Get in the back of the patrol car.”

And that’s what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to quote Houses For Sale unquote. I want to tell you about fixer-uppers, which we looked at here. They got three kinds of poison, two infestations, and one major structural issue, but when we got to the AssVac there was five kinds of poison and three major issues, being the rottenest house of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted us to get in on the action around her. So we set to taking twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs or our bank accounts, with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was, to be used as evidence against us.

After the ordeal, we went back to the Realtor’s Office. Universe said he was going to put us in the red. Said, "Kid, I'm going to put you in the red, I want your wallet and your belt." And I said, "Uni, I can understand you wanting my wallet so I don't have any money to spend while I'm in the red, but what do you want my belt for?" And it said, "Kid, we don't want any hangings." I said, "Now there’s an idea," and I handed it over. Uni said he was making sure, and friends it’s a good thing he was, cause what we went through next I wanted to hit myself over the head and drown, and ‘bout the only thing I haven’t done with toilet paper since is roll it out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape.

But first we had to get a mortgage.

We walked in, sat down, with twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures of our bank account, with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one. Universe walked in, sat down. Man came in said, "All rise." We all stood up, and we presented our twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures, and the broker walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog. And he sat down, we sat down. Universe looked at the seeing eye dog, then at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog and began to laugh, as we came to the realization that it was a typical case of Undocumented Lending, and there wasn't nothing we could do about it. The broker wasn't going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. We was given 5% fixed for ten years and had to pick up the garbage in the AssVac, but that’s not what I came to tell you about.

Came to talk about foreclosure.

They got a final step in buying a house, called Closing, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected. I went down to get my Closing one day, and I got good and drunk the night before so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning. `Cause I wanted to look like the all-American kid from Townville. Man I wanted, I wanted to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from Townville! I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all kinds o' mean nasty ugly things. And I walked in and sat down and they gave me a piece of paper, said: "Kid, sign this sayin’ you’re not poor."

And I went up there, I said, "Bank, I’m poor. I mean, I’m freakin’, I’m freakin’ poor. Poor. I eat soup three days a week, I reuse my tea bags. Eat dead burnt hamburgers for breakfast. I mean poor, Poor, POOR, POOR." And I started jumpin’ up and down yelling, "POOR! POOR!" and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "POOR! POOR!" And the banker came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

Didn't feel too good about it.

Proceeded on down the hall, skippin’ all the injections, inspections, detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they wasn’t doin' to me at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty ugly papers I didn’t understand and I was just having a tough time there. Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the see the last man after that whole big thing there, I walked up and said, "What do you want?" He said, "Kid, we only got one question.

"Have you got a down payment?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Scratch Ticket Lottery, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that - and he stopped me right there and said "Kid, did you ever cash it in?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Cadillac Sedan DeVille and the Fox News on the television, and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Undocumented .... NOW kid!!"

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there. Undocumented’s where they put you if you may not be qualified to get a mortgage after spending all your money, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Single mothers. Immigrants. Single immigrants! Single immigrants sitting right there on the bench next to me! And the singlest, immigrantest mother of them all was coming over to me and she was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and she sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?"

I said, "I got 5% fixed for 10 and I have to pick up the garbage."

She said, "What house did you buy, kid?" And I said, "AssVac." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and gave me the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "I’m gonna fix it up and sell it." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about money, real estate, bein’ poor, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, until the Banker came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said.

"Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-we-wanna- know-details-of-the-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-I-want-to-know-names-and" and talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there, and I filled out about the scratch ticket with the four part harmony, I wrote it down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the pencil. And I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the following words:

("KID: WOULD YOU SAY THAT YOU’RE A LIAR?")

I went over to the bank, and I said, "Bank, you got a lotta damn gall to ask me if I’m a liar, I mean, I mean, I mean I'm just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Undocumented bench 'cause you want to know if I'm stupid enough to buy a house, burn money, hit myself on the head and drown myself after winnin’ the lottery." He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your mortgage application off to Washington."

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my mortage application. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the bank wherever you are, just walk in and say "Bank: You can get anything you want, and you don’t need documents!" And walk out.

You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't notice. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think it’s performance art and they won't notice them either. And if three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin’ a bar of Don’t Need No Documents and walking out? They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in, singin’ a bar of Don’t Need No Documents and walking out? Friends, they may think it's a Recession.

And that's what it is, the Sub-Prime Mortgage Anti-Massacree Recession, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar.

With feeling.

So we'll wait for it to come around on the guitar here and sing it when it does.

Here it comes.

You can get anything you want, and you don’t need documents!
You can get anything you want, and you don’t need documents!
Walk right in there’s beer in the fridge
Just a half a mile from the damn drawbridge
You can get anything you want, and you don’t need documents

That was horrible. If you want to avoid Depression and stuff you got to sing loud. I've been writing this post now for three and a half hours. I could write it for another twenty minutes. I'm not proud... or tired.

So we'll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part harmony and feeling.

We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing.

And now here it comes.

You can get anything you want, and you don’t need documents!
You’ll wish you didn’t
You can get anything you want, and you don’t need documents!
Walk right in there’s beer in the fridge
Just a half a mile from the damn drawbridge
You can get anything you want, and you don’t need documents!

Da da da da da da da dum
You don’t need documents!

Everything I said in this little ditty was true when I wrote it, but some of the facts might have changed in the last few years. I don't know. I didn't read it. It's freakin' long!

Oh, and apologies to Arlo. Somehow, I think he'd understand.
Da da da da da da da dum
You don’t need documents!

Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!

The Tramp's Story, Part XIII: Children and Fools

2009-11-23T07:43:00.000-05:00

Con’t from a couple of posts ago, in which I faxed my 1099s to Maria, so as to convince her she ought to lend me more than ten times my yearly income…

I made the same piddling amount of money the last time we went through this, but — well, actually, last time my puddle was even smaller. And despite what the news cycle can't bring itself to stop reporting, even at the height of the Stupid Boom banks were not just throwing money at anyone with a death wish and a catcher's mitt. They did still have at least one standard in 2004, and my husband (only he was not my husband then) was not up to it: Johnny had no credit rating whatsoever. Still doesn't, as a matter of fact. So he couldn’t be officially included on the mortgage papers, which is why I (not entirely truthfully) added his annual income to my own.

I still think of this as a little white lie, though. It was our honest household income, even if that isn't the question that was asked. And at least I wasn’t like those other people, inventing million-dollar incomes to get $500,000 loans. All I did was add Johnny’s $25K on to my 17! And that still wasn’t enough to buy even this shitbox of a house! The mortgage broker took it upon himself to pop another $15K on top, just to be sure! But it wasn’t my idea! All I did was sign the freakin’ thing!

Yeah.

So I was pretty well determined not to get into any of that crap this time around, even if it meant aborting the attempt. Johnny doesn’t have any income this time, anyway, and I’d been very up front with everyone about that from the start. Henry, Aroutyan, Sarah, Maria – all of Sybil’s alternates who’d so far come out to play. I made good and sure that not one of them would be surprised by the wee numbers reported on my 1099s, but I didn’t know if there were more I hadn't met. And I didn't know how the Inner Council would judge these things. I didn’t know what Runic Guidelines they might follow, what their Urim and Thummim would have to say, or if anybody’d told yet them exactly how much money I don’t have.

So after I faxed the 1009s, I emailed Maria:

“Is there any chance that they’ll say no,” I asked, “when they see these numbers? I mean, you and Henry have both made it sound like a done deal, but… $17K? Are you absolutely sure no one will laugh?”

“This is not an income-based program,” she assured me. “They really only want to see proof that you’re employed. After that, the numbers just don’t matter.”

“Okay, then I have another question: If you – or ‘they,’ or whomever – aren’t interested in how much money I (don’t) make, then why do you-or-they care if I’m employed? I could very well be jobless with a ginormous trust fund like My Lady, or I could be gainfully employed by her and pulling down seventeen grand. If all you really care about is my past record of timely payment, then why bother with all this hoop-jumping rigamarole?”

Not really. I didn’t say that to Maria. I thought it, but I kept the idea to myself. I decided it was best to leave well enough alone for the time being, sit on my hands until I had a final answer, and repeat the mantra “The worst that happens is we’re back where we started” over and over in my head while rocking back and forth, eating my hair.

The next morning, Maria called me on my cell phone. I was standing in my living room at the time:

“I just wanted to let you know," she said, "I have your preliminary HUD document in front of me.”

“Okay...”

“Yeah. So have you got a minute? I'd like to go over the numbers.”

Sure! But um, first...

Can you tell me what “preliminary HUD document” means?

To be continued. Maybe only two more times! Or three. But the end is in sight, I swear to god. Really. Do I seem like the kind of person who would lie? I mean about something of this magnitude? To you?

Well, I never.

I'm Baaacck!

2009-11-21T08:13:00.000-05:00

Here's what I learned at My (Crazy) Lady's house this week:

1. It's okay to say Crazy. Her psychiatrist did, and he's the head of the department at Mass General. If that's not authority pronouncing, then what is? Crazy!

2. No matter what the psychiatrist says, though, doubling down on all her meds and throwing in 5mg of Valium for good measure will not knock her out for the night. And when she comes creeping out into the living room in the midnight dark, you get frightened like a small child and have to fight to not throw shoes at her till she retreats. But instead you get up, take her arm, and guide her back to bed. Then she gets up again, and you steal a valium from her stash to enjoy later.

3. I'm not the kind of person who can steal a valium. The idea of it in my overnight bag got me through the longest night, but I put it back in the bottle the next morning.

4. It took three days for me to figure out that when she said she used the bathroom "comprehensively," that meant she pooed. Still not sure why she felt I had to know.

5. Crazy is just a little bit contagious. I wrote the next installment of The Schmeschminance Saga while I was over there, but it's not the most coherent thing I've ever read. I'll need a few more days of R&R before the mental and physical knots all get untied. Ugh. I've never played so much computer solitaire or eaten so many cheese-based meals in my life. So I'm not doing anything for a while.

Comprehensively speaking, that is.

In the meantime, let's have a hand for...

Dr. One Friend!

She performed nobly in my absence, and is looking over my shoulder right now as I type this -- she even brought me a bottle of It's-All-Gone-To-Shit Champagne (although she thinks it's a celebration bottle, because I may have possibly finally finished my Big Project before I went away). But upon seeing that picture of herself, she'd decided to remind me that I gave her the password to this blog. I can't change it, because then it won't be the same as all my other passwords and I'll never be able to remember what it is.

So. If you should happen to read anything here in the future that you don't think seems up to snuff, blame her. Also, any pictures posted of a kohl-eyed, sideburned punk purporting to be me: if you don't think it's pretty, then it ain't.

In conclusion,

2009-11-19T07:19:00.000-05:00

Psst....
Psst, over here....
Shhhhhhhhh

Hi All -

Dr. One Friend here again. E is still busy dealing with a (not so) minor crisis with her Lady. Since I feel sorry for you guys, I am going to finish the story for her. Don't tell though. You have to promise to act surprised when she gets back to blogging on Friday or Saturday.
Promise?
Okay, here goes:

THE END.

Well I did warn you that I stopped paying attention to the details with E years ago. I am sure there will be lots of words and details in the story when E tells it...but at least you now know how it ends.

Love,
Dr. OF

We interrupt this broadcast...

2009-11-17T16:15:00.000-05:00

Hi All -
The magnificent Dr. One-Friend here. E had to go away, something about her Lady and medication and staying over. Blah blah blah. To be honest I stopped listening to the details with E years ago. As you guys have witnessed with this last 5,000 part series about a phone call, E's explanations can get a little long...amusing, but long.
Anyway, I am pretty sure she apologized for the interruption, and that she would finish the story ASAP (I wouldn't hold my breath though or your end will likely come before the story's end if you do).
Ta
Dr. OF
P.S. I know all of her secrets and I can be bribed (I'm just sayin'...)

The Tramp's Story, Part XII: The Imaginary Unit

2009-11-16T06:20:00.001-05:00

Con’t from previous post…

I faxed my Lady-signed, employment-verifying letter over to the third number Maria gave me, and called her to make sure it came through okay. It did.

So, you know, that's a huge relief.

Maria said the next step was for her to send it along to Bank of America’s Super Secret Illuminati and Knights Templar Division (which I believe she said is located in the basement of the Heart of Gold building on Yellow Brick Road in Atlantis), and then we wait. Not long. We should expect an owl back with the Oracle's secret message within two days.

Modern technology. What won’t they think of next?

Well, I’ll be damned if I didn’t have an email from Maria almost exactly forty-eight hours later, just like she said. Sort of. An owl had arrived from the Sanhedrin, she explained, but not an answer. The Ouija seemed instead to be spelling out "1099."

“They want to see your forms," Maria said, "just as further proof of your employment." I'm sure she intended this to reassure. "Better send a couple years' worth if you have 'em, to be safe. And then we really, really ought to be all set.

"Oh, I almost forgot! I just got my own fax machine in my office. So could you send them to this new number instead?”

Another number? Certainly! At least that shatters the Illuminati curse! 2-6-3-4 ≠ Skiddoo!

The shocking part, you understand, is not that I went ahead and did what she asked me without question. No. You all ought to be well inured to that sort of shit by now. The truly shocking thing here (and if you know it, sing along!) is that I had the freaking things to send. Right handy, too. On the shelf in the closet in my office.

For a couple years, the cats pooed in that closet. By which I mean to say: it's where the cat box lived. But when the dog arrived in June and the litter box went in the master bedroom (which is really loads of fun, I tell you what) we started using it as a sort of spillover pantry. You don’t want to think about those facts too hard, I know, but I’m only talking about things that come in cans and jars. Maybe the occasional box of pasta. Bag of beans. Old El Paso Taco Dinner Kits that Johnny made me buy last year and has still refused to eat. What? I mopped it first! It’s not like we're eating cooked spaghetti off the floor!

Anyhoo.

On the top shelf of that closet, on the left, behind the cans of whole, peeled, crushed tomatoes, there lay a stack of manila envelopes, all but forgotten. Labeled things like “computer garbage,” “water bills,” and “Dublin House,” they were artifacts from a burst of organizing I accidentally found myself up to my armpits in last spring. And, if I remembered correctly, there was one up there somehow related to the IRS.

There was! Three of them! Labeled “Tax crap” and sorted by year!

Two minutes of shuffling, and I had ‘em in my grubby little mitts. Right there, in black and white, there was cold hard proof for Caiaphus that I am actually employed. See? In 2006, I earned $12,000! $17,000 in '07 and '8!

Ulp.

Tell me again, Maria, about how you're going to lend me eleven times what I manage to bring home in a year?

Somebody out there -- I believe it was AtlanticMo -- guessed that this would turn out to be a fifteen-part series. I think that's starting to sound about right.

The Tramp's Story, Part XI: Only the Insane is Absolutely Certain

2009-11-13T06:58:00.052-05:00

Con’t from previous post…

Turns out I’d spelled Maria’s name wrong. Her last name has a K in it, see, and when she spelled it for me the first time we spoke on the phone, I misheard that letter as an A. You’d almost think she might have pointed that out to me when I hand-wrote it the wrong way on the cover sheet to the fax I’d sent the week before – considering it is the first letter of her last name and all, and the resultant spelling was somewhat bizarre – but I guess that level of detail is beyond the ken of a multi-billion-dollar, post-bailout, Fannie-Mae-backed mortgage corporation. I mean, really, don’t these people have enough to do?

This time she sent me an email, asking me to have My Lady write a letter for my file. She said it should be on letterhead (which My Lady doesn’t have, because she’s just a Lady). It should say when I was hired (that's easy: sometime in 1999 -- or was it '98?). Should explain that I'm a 1099-contracted employee (which I’m sort of kind of not). And state my job title explicitly (I do not have one).

So what I did is, I made it up.

I created some letterhead for My Lady on my handy-dandy home word processing machine, whipped up a hundred words on a sheet of it explaining that I surely was her 1099-contracted employee, had been for at least a decade, and that the job title I use on my 1040 form is “Writer” (and that part there is even true). Then I stuck it in my bag for her to sign.

Ha! You thought I was going to say I signed it for her, didn’t you? Eh, I probably could have. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t think about it. After all, I wasn’t going to be seeing her for another couple days, and this damn thing has been dragging on for long enough. But no. She’s too savvy, My Lady is. And even if she wouldn't catch me, she's too kind. I knew there was nothing in that letter she’d object to, but I also knew I couldn’t live with myself if I signed her name.

So I waited two more days. I brought it to her. And she signed it. Then I called Maria to report that I’d be faxing it along.

“Great!” exclaimed Maria K---. “But do you think you could fax it to this other number? The one you used last time in is my boss’s office, and she’s gone on vacation for a week.”

Sure. Because naturally a multi-billion-dollar, post-bailout, Fannie-Mae-backed mortgage corporation doesn’t have communal fax machines for folks to use. They’re all in bosses’ offices, of course. And everybody knows that when a boss goes on vacation, she locks her office and swallows the key. Along with her secretary. And what’s left of my mental health.

Two people, six names, three email addresses, three fax numbers.

2-6-3-3

Holy shit.

Have I gotten myself involved with the Illuminati?

If I don't post the next installment in two days, you'll know who to blame...

The Tramp's Story, Part X: As a Dog Returneth to His -- Well, You Know

2009-11-11T06:27:00.034-05:00

Con’t from previous post…

Maria said she’d have to check with "people" to find out what we had to do about my peculiar employment situation, and that I should just sit tight and wait to hear. Two days went by, though – which is an eternity in schmeschminance time – so I shot her a quick email asking how things were going and if there was anything she needed me to do. Or, rather, I tried to shoot her a quick email asking how things were going and if there was anything she needed me to do. But the email address she gave me – which was just her.name@bankofamerica.com – came bouncing back.

What the tap-dancing Christ!? First I get two different contacts with six different names between them, and now the one we finally settled on does not exist? What kind of short-bus scam-operation is this, anyway? Somebody really ought to remind these folks that the “con” in “con game” is short for “confidence,” because they aren’t inspiring too much of that in me, I tell you what.

I called Maria – or whatever her name was – ready to tell her to tear up my application form once and for all. I’d already signed and faxed whatever the hell documents I’d signed and faxed, so I’d probably already consigned myself to at least two or three circles of financial hell (I imagined Satan as the naked love-child of Suze Orman and Alan Greenspan, with a pair of very small Dick Cheney horns). But maybe, if I reached down waaay deep in my dark inner pocket where I keep spare sets of testicles for times like these, I just might be able to stop it from getting any worse. I would be firm, and forceful. I would insist upon my right to be heard. I would not be fast-talked out of my newfound resolve. I would, for once in my 40 years of miserable existence, make a sensible decision and follow through with it, so help me god.

Or else I would just leave a friendly voice mail.

Well, Maria did not answer her telephone! What the hell was I supposed to do? Besides, I’d had a chance to think about things while I listened to it ring and ring, and I reminded myself how this whole mess got started in the first place. I had called them, remember. Not about schmeschminance, certainly, but it’s not as if I gave it all up to a telemarketer like some yokel Pollyanna innocently describing her undergarments to a heavy-breathing caller.

“Maria? Um, it’s Erin. Ellia? Calling about loan #XXXXXX? I’m just wondering how things are going, because I haven’t heard from you in a couple days. Sorry to bother you, but I tried to send you an email and it came back. I probably just wrote down your email address wrong or something, but… Yeah. Well, anyway. Call me back and let me know if there’s anything you need me to do at this end. Okay? Thanks.”

Sorry. Probably my fault. Thanks.

Way to follow through, there, Pullback McBunterson.

How will our hero get out of this latest scrape!? Will she finally be done in by her own stupidity? Find out next time!

The Tramp's Story, Part IX: A Fool and Her Money

2009-11-09T07:06:00.057-05:00

Con’t from previous post…

My Lady, see, she's very…

Well, I might as well just lay it out: she’s very rich. She inherited her money, she has never really worked, and – unless she goes on some kind of P. Diddy spending bender – there’ll be loads of it leftover when she’s gone. But if you met her you would never know. She lives in a two-room condo, for crying out loud, with thirty-year old Shaker furniture, and her biggest personal indulgence is local art. Granted, the condo is on Beacon Hill, but she paid cash for it ’81 so it probably cost her like a hundred bucks, and she hasn’t ever once in her life owned a car. She does happen to own a parking spot that’s worth more than my house, but that’s a story for another time.

The point is: My Lady is very aware of her good fortune at having been born into a cushy safety net. Because, see, the money’s not the reason she has never really worked, it’s just what allowed her to survive without the pressure. Lots of schizophrenic folks wind up wandering the streets, or hospitalized, or worse, and thanks to her inheritance she’s been stable now for quite a while. So she does her best to pay it forward to the universe.

She gives thousands to charity and spare change to homeless people. She funds children’s theater and food projects. She gives scholarships and land trusts and butterfly gardens, and is just generally – discerningly – philanthropic to a fault. I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that she's also been very generous to me over the years, but what I find most endearing is how exceedingly wise she is about her finances. Very wise, and very wary. My Lady is no chump, is what I mean.

She can smell for miles when a charity, a foundation, a friend or family member is circling to try to hit her up. When she senses it, she makes her yes or no decision in advance -- if yes, then she decides how much -- and heads them off before they reach the pass. She's had the same accountant, bank, and broker for at least thirty years. When her trust fund account-exec retired, she had his replacement vetted and requested someone else.

Her phone number’s unlisted, naturally. And she never, never, never gives it out.

I meant to ask if I could have Maria call, I really did! But I meant to ask in person, when I saw her face to face! I didn’t know it would be happening so fast!

She was very nice about it. I apologized and said I didn't expect her to say anything that might make her uncomfortable. Once I reminded her, though, she did remember having been through this before, when I got the mortgage in the first place. All they wanted to know -- then, and now -- was simply that yes, I was employed by her, and for how long.

Okay, My Lady said. Maria could call back. She’d tell her.

Well. Before I even got off the house phone with My Lady, Maria was on my cell phone in a tizz. “It’s okay,” I reassured her. “I know it probably sounds shady, but My Lady understands now. She says that if you call her back, she’ll be happy to cooperate this time.”

“Hang on,” Maria said. “Are you a W-2 employee?”

“No,” I said. “She gives me a 1099. Why?”

“Well, on this form you sent you checked the box that says W-2.”

Balls.

You see? You see how much fun it is being me? Don’t you wish we’d never embarked on this together in the first place? Who wants to guess how many more installments there will be?

The Tramp's Story, Part VIII: Evil is Easy

2009-11-07T07:01:00.147-05:00

Con’t from previous post…

So I sent the forms in.

I called Maria first and told her I was going to send them in like she asked because Henry said it was okay, but that I couldn’t help but notice the name on the letter in the package wasn’t hers. She wheezed her answer, just like she always did.

“yeah things get shuffled around a lot but--"

“I understand,” I interrupted. Her simpering voice was really grating on my nerves. “I’m just wondering if the fax number it gives for her will also work for you.”

For those of you out there growing increasingly concerned: I thank you. But these forms I was faxing out into the nominal void were not deeds to my soul or anything. They were just – well, one of them I’ve forgotten what it was. Borrower’s Certification and Blood Oath or some such fucking thing. I don’t know, I didn’t read it. But I do still have it in an envelope around here, somewhere. I’m pretty sure I do, at least. I'm in bed, though, and it's cold. So you're nuts if you think I'm getting out and looking for it now.

Anyway, the other one I definitely remember. I don't know what it was called, of course, but it wanted me to check a box per my employment: was I a W-2 employee, it wanted to know (i.e., for you foreigners out there: was I employed by an actual company getting actual paychecks with actual taxes taken out of them. As if.) or was I self-employed.

Honestly, I don’t remember which box I checked. This is always a tricky question for me. I work for My Lady, of course, so I don’t consider me self-employed -- but the IRS does. My Lady gives me a 1099 form instead of a W-2, and that's all they care about. Because self-employed people, you see, have to pay taxes at twice the rate of W-2 people, to make up for what they’re not getting from your employer.

Oh, it’s totally fair. Not so much for me, I mean, because I make $17,000 a year so I can totally afford an extra grand. But let’s say for, oh, I don't know -- a painter. A regular-employed person puts in their eight hours (or more; I do recognize that oftentimes it’s more) and collects a check with roughly 1/3 missing – some of which, if he’s planned it wisely, will come back to him as a refund in April. A painter, on the other hand, spends half his time unpaid, driving around and pricing jobs he will not get, or picking up material for those he does. Plus he has to spend evening hours doing his own billing and accounting. Or his wife does. He can’t possibly charge enough per hour for the time he’s actually at work to make up for the time he’s not – people already think $25/hour is too much to pay for labor that they don’t believe takes any skill. (It would work out to $52K a year, before taxes, if he worked 40 hours every week -- with no sick time, health benefits, or paid vacation. Which is about what a secretary makes around these parts with all of those. But never mind.) And for all of this he gets the privilege of paying half again as much in taxes, not a cent of which does he have any hope of getting back.

I know, I know, I said “twice the rate” above and then “half again as much” right there. That’s because I don’t remember what it is, exactly. Johnny hasn’t had work in so long, we haven’t even had to file for the past few years, and if I look it up right now I will get agida.

Anyway. This form was surely asking how I file, and since I didn't in the years they specified, I didn't see how it mattered what I said. I considered checking yes, I am a W-2 employee, because it seemed it would be easier, and because -- since this was a non-income thingy-dingy -- I assumed they weren't checking, anyway. But, honestly, I don't remember if that's what I did or not. I could find out. It's in an envelope around here somewhere, swear to god.

Whatever box I checked, I sent it. Maria gave me a new number, I faxed the forms from Gary Drug, and when I called to confirm that they’d arrived, I found Maria working up some actual inflection! Was she warming up to me? Or was this a Pavlovian response in direct proportion to the tangibility of my account? Either way, it didn’t matter. A stalk of celery makes a more stimulating conversationalist than a limp carrot, any day. And what she said to me in her crunchy new voice was:

“What fax number did you send them to?”

Oh, jeez.

“Um? The number you gave me? This morning? When we spoke? The XXX one?”

Apparently? In an attempt to turn my own inflection up a notch to match Maria’s? I’d turned into an up-speaking Valley Girl?

“I’ll look around,” she said, “and call you. But next time use this other number, just in case.”

Um? Okay?

She called back in an hour to say she found the forms. “That person isn’t in today,” she said, “so your fax got kind of buried.”

You mean that person? Who’s fax number you gave me? Isn’t you?

Whatever.

The next step, Maria said, was to verify my employment, which she would do in the next day or so and call me. But what happened instead was that, an hour later, I got a panicked phone call from My Lady.

“Some woman from Bank of America just called! Asking all these questions! About whether or not you work for me!" She was quite worked up about it. I felt bad.

"But don’t worry," she went on.

"I didn't confirm anything.”

To be continued. Because I really don’t see any reason why you people should get to know how this turns out any faster than I did. This is MY soul I’m selling, after all...

The Tramp's Story, Part VII: Whena Yousa Thinking We Are in Trouble?

2009-11-05T07:02:00.116-05:00

con't from previous post

Although I felt I ought to sort through this roll call somehow, my gut told me not to rely on the two people with five names between them to dish up the straight dope (I know: I astound even myself sometimes with these rare moments of clarity). But Bank of America is so large and ubiquitous that I didn’t even know which state to call for Directory Assistance.

In a flash of inspiration (moment of clarity #2), I logged on to the BoA website. I was looking for a general customer-service phone number, but all the listings were so specific that I got all turned around. Somehow, I found myself on a page that wanted me to "live-chat with a representative to confidentially discuss the possibility of a schmeschminance!" I’d already done that, of course, but it sounded close enough. I might even be connected to the same bank of employees as I was the last time, and this way I could get candid answers about Aroutyun/Henry V--/B-- and Maria/Sarah without the chance that either -- or any -- of them would overhear. And if they weren't quite rubbing elbows, well, whoever came on the chatline would at least have access to a directory of employees in the schmeschminance department. No?

Well, to put it frankly: I don't know. Because simply by having an application on file already, I started off on the wrong foot with Mr. Chat.

He called himself something nonspecifically exotic – Nevi or Udal or Jar Jar – and, perhaps because of this, seemed to infer a level of ethnocentricity in my questioning of Henry’s list of names. His response was: “Mr. V-- may find that certain people have difficulty pronouncing Aroutyun and so uses Henry to make it easier on them” (n other words: “shut up, you racist retard”). Refusing to be cowed, I countered with “What about his second last name? The Germanic-sounding one that starts with B, that may or may not have been clipped from a certain terrorist-hunting agent, played by someone who I still think of as a vampire, on a clock-watching television show I’ve never seen?”

Silly me. I thought he might look up Henry B— for me, confirm whether or not he actually exists. But no. Jar Jar told me to ask Henry. He gave me Henry V—’s phone number (which I already had, but which means he did look in a directory, just not for the right guy), and the number of his boss (because if we’re all changing names around here on a daily basis, our bosses are going to both be aware of it and confirm it to our customers). I ended the chat right then and there without saying goodbye, never bothering to ask about Maria’s alias at all.

Why is Jar Jar’s the only name in all of this I can’t remember? Prick.

So anyway, I did. I called Henry and asked if he could catch the cloud and pin it down. He said well, yes. Since it can sometimes take six months between the package and the phone call, see, accounts do tend to get shifted around. It’s not unusual for the name on the letter not to match up with the person who eventually makes contact. That's why he originally told me not to mail the forms. You see?

I bought it. Doesn’t seem like a sound business strategy to me, but then again, neither does giving a $189,000 loan to someone making $17,000 a year, and I’m still hoping for that to happen, aren’t I? So what the hell. Until I actually put pen to paper, after all, I'm still no worse off than I was before I made that fateful first contact. So I don't see any harm, for now, in letting this particular charade keep playing out.

As far as his new last name went, Henry was baffled. I had to pull the papers out and tell him exactly where to find it on the page. “Very, very tiny type,” I said, “up in the extreme left-hand corner. ‘Prepared,’ it clearly says, ‘by Henry B—.’”

Henry laughed. Laughed!

“You are very meticulous about reading your paperwork,” he said. “That is just the name of the person who printed and collated the physical pages. He is not an account representative, he's just a clerk. He apparently has the same name as I do, yes, but it is purely a coincidence.”

“Really?" I said, a bit relieved despite my surviving skepticism. "How odd. Because, I mean, it’s not as though 'Henry' is the most common name in the English language.”

“Yes,” Henry agreed. “That’s why I chose it.”

I am so totally not meticulous about reading my paperwork. At all. I think that much, at least, should be obvious to everyone (if not Henry) by now.

But I don’t see any harm in letting that particular charade keep playing out.

to be (say it with me) continued!

The Tramp's Story, Part VI: the people the people the people the people...

2009-11-03T07:09:00.097-05:00

...con't from previous post...

It must have been a bad connection or something. The voice on the answering machine was so wee and small, it was like Horton Hears a Who (the book, I mean; I didn't even know there'd been a movie till I googled it. I am so sick of Jim Carrey screwing up classic literature, man). The only reason I didn't just delete it was that I managed to catch the words “Bank of America,” and I had to listen two more times before I caught her name:

Maria.
I've just met a—

No, I can’t say I heard the swelling of the orchestra quite yet. Even when I called her back, I could barely hear Maria's freaking voice.

Maria...
I can’t hear a girl named Maria...

Yeah, that's more like it.

Seriously, she had a voice like a weak handshake. No force or inflection, no enthusiasm or punctuation. She just exhaled, almost simpered, only barely repositioning her lips. (I wouldn’t swear to that last bit, either, except I’m pretty sure you can’t say “Bank of America” without moving your lips at least a little bit. I can’t, anyway. You try it.)

“hello ms ellia," Maria said, "my name is maria k— I will be handling your [schm]e[scmh]inance and I was just wondering if you had any questions”

No. My best friend Henry was pretty clear about everything – oh, wait.

“Henry told me to verify my new loan number with anyone who called. Do you have it?”

She did.

Well, all right then.

Um…

Nope. Still no questions.

“okay well my last name is spelled xxxx and my email address is yyyy and my phone number is zzzz and you can call me anytime if you think of any”

Okay, but I really won’t. Henry told me to just sit tight and wait for somebody to call, so that’s exactly what I plan to do.

“have you received the package”

I have, but I haven’t opened it, because Henry told me not to send the forms.

“oh I do need you to send the forms”

What? No. No, no. I need to speak to Henry V—.

“do you want me to give you his phone number”

No. No, no. I have it.

“okay well call him and then call me back if you have any questions”

I’m not saying she wasn’t nice. She was very nice, and trying to be helpful. In a disturbing and uninflected sort of way.

“Henry?" I said. "I’ve got this Maria K— lady on the phone telling me I have to send the forms, but you told me I didn’t have to send the forms!”

“I told you not to send the forms until somebody called…”

“Right!”

“Right...”

“So...?”

“So now somebody did…”

“Yes, but – oh. Oh!” Der! This is the call I'm waiting for! “But you said it wouldn’t come for sixty days!”

“That’s the average. I actually have some people who’ve been waiting for six months. Yours is happening very fast. That’s good. So yes, you should definitely send in the forms she needs.”

I hung up and tore open the package, only to discover three mildly disturbing things:

1. The account rep who signed the cover letter was most decidedly not Maria X.

2. The person who prepared the package went by the name of Henry B—. Which is just weird. I mean, I forgave Henry his pair of first names, why'd he have to go and get a spare last one as well?

3. It said if I didn't get the forms back to them in twelve days the whole thing would fall apart, but I had no idea what day the FedEx box arrived. I suppose I’d better fax them to be sure – but which of these three (or four) people am I supposed to fax them over to?

Well, hell, you didn’t think I was going to put the brakes on this process just because everyone I speak with seems to be under witness protection? Come on, people! Let me remind you:

4.375%!

Although, now that I see it written out like that in bold italics...

Doesn’t it look like a bunch of cartoon swears?

Somebody told me once, a loooong time ago, that she got the sense just about anything could be turned into a good story in my hands. It was a very nice thing to say, and because of it -- because of her -- I’ve stuck with this little hobby through incomeless-years of shouting my barbaric yawp into the void. And, although god only knows why, she has stuck around with me as well. If she even remembers saying it anymore, however, I bet she’s regretting having thrown that particular gantlet down before me now. 8000 words (and counting) on schmeschminancing a schmortgage. Yeesh.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying...

To be continued. Yet again.

The Tramp's Story, Part V: Everything is Fine. Period.

2009-11-01T08:15:00.017-05:00

Con’t

I panicked that night and sent Henry an email telling him about the bonuses I usually get from My Lady. I could have called, but it was a Friday, and I didn’t want to let my neuroses snowball for two days. Also, it was like 3:00 a.m. I did this when I got the first mortgage, too, for a completely different reason. Money talk just makes me tense, okay? I plain old didn’t see how they could possibly give me the loan he described based on what I said I made. Not that the couple-thousand-dollar adjustment up to what I really make would matter, but like I said: this time I wanted to tell the truth.

I mean, sure, I lied a little – about how it works and why it happens – but that’s just because the truth is too personal and complicated to explain. So I told Henry it was a “Christmas bonus” and left it at that. That’s not a lie so much as a sparing him of the gory details. He should thank me. And, really, he should not give me the loan.

He wrote back first thing Saturday morning, which surprised me, and here’s the sum total of what he said:

everything is fine

Well, the italics are mine, but the rest of it is his, verbatim. No Dear Erin, no capital letter, no period, no any more sentences at all, and no Love, Henry. I realize that Love might have been a bit too much to expect from him so soon, but he could have at least slipped a capital-E on it and said my name. Plus, I mean, call me superstitious if you want to, but a missed period so early in the relationship is not what this girl would call an auspicious sign. You know?

Johnny kept up a steady stream of soothing chatter in an attempt to talk me off the ledge. The worst that he could happen, he kept repeating, was that we’d be back where we thought we were stuck anyway. We didn’t ask for this twist of fate, we just kind of stumbled on it, and so we shouldn’t fret that it might fall apart. It’s not like last time, where we stood to lose our $12,000 deposit if the loan fell through. This time we’ve got nothing to lose. We already own the house (for what it’s worth), we already live here (damnit), and if we wake up Monday to find ourselves exactly where we were on Thursday after all, so be it. There are plenty of people in the world who would kill for that to be the case.

I tell you, man. That Johnny. What a pain in the ass.

He’s right, though, so I tried to hold my head. And the FedEx package did arrive a few days later. I don’t remember when, exactly, because – since Henry had instructed me not to mail the forms until I got that call in sixty days – I did not so much as tear it open. I just tossed it in my office, where it commenced to being in the way no matter where I put it, as if determined to fall behind a trunk and or something, thereby ensuring I’d be unable to find it come December.

But then just a few days later I came home to a message on the answering machine—

Actually, hold up. What happened first was that I got a call on my cell phone from an 866 number, which pretty well always means automatic-dialed junk. I answered it, but I didn’t say anything (which is what I always do), and when the delayed-human voice came on the line hello-hello-ing, I hung up. Later, when I was writing down the number from the answering machine, I realized: that person I hung up on was That Person from the bank.

Whoops!

It’s possible I’ve decided to drag this story on for as long as it took to go down in real time. Because finances and phone calls are such supreme suspenseful fun. Or maybe I’m just trying not to jinx it because it’s still not over. There might still be every chance that I’ll get sick of it and gallop right up to The End, or every other chance the whole thing will fall through. Also, there might be sex and drugs and leprechauns and intrigue! You never know, is what I’m saying. So stay tuned…

Con’t…

The Tramp's Story, Part IV: Share the Wine

2009-10-30T07:51:00.010-04:00

con't from previous post...

“Okay,” Henry went on (yes, yes, we’re three days in and still on that preliminary phone call). “Here’s what you can expect to happen. You’re going to get a FedEx package sometime in the next ten days with the workup of the loan – if it doesn’t arrive by the 12^th, you call me. There will be a few forms in there it’ll tell you to sign and send back – don’t send them. Wait until you hear from somebody. It has generally been taking 60 days.

“Your new loan number will be ######. If anybody contacts you to discuss this process, ask them to verify that number. If they don’t have it, hang up on them right away and call me. And remember, you do not need an appraisal. Sometimes people get confused. If someone calls to schedule an appraisal, tell them you refuse to do it, and—

“I know! Call you?”

“Yes,” Henry chuckled his deep, island chuckle, “you call me. Call me for anything, at any time, always. Now, sometime around the first of December you’ll get a phone call from the person handling your loan. At that point – would you like to put your husband’s name on the deed?”

“Oh! Yes!” He’s not on it yet for lots of reasons, not least because we weren’t yet married at the time. Now that we are, though, we’ve been meaning to do this for a while. It will be a whole lot easier on him when I finally freak out and throw myself under a bus

“All right,” sweet, soothing Henry said. “When that person calls you in December [he might not have said ‘that person.’ He might have said a job title or even a name. But I was having a hard enough time writing down things like ‘do NOT mail forms’ and ‘Johnny’s name on title’ to think about who ‘that person’ might be], you tell them you want to do that, and they can set it up. In the meantime, if you have any questions or need anything at all, you have my number and email address. I’m in Orange County – California – so we’re three hours behind you.”

“Orange County, huh? Actually, that reminds me: I do have a question.”

“Yes?”

“Why was your very first question what county Weymouth’s in?”

What can I say? I’m all about the details.

“Oh, that was just to make sure you were really you, and not somebody trying to get a [sch]mortgage in your name.”

Ah. I see. It’s a good thing I happened to guess it, then. Because it’s not like that information’s publicly available or anything.

As soon as I hung up I told Johnny what happened, then proceeded to call everyone I know. Well, not everyone – I don’t want all of you people I know out there start to feeling bad you didn’t get a phone call. What I meant to say is that I called my dad and Dr. One Friend. But the responses I got from the two of them pretty well covered it.

Dad said “That’s great! But is it too good to be true?” And Dr. One Friend said “That’s great! But – what exactly does ‘[schm]e[schm]inance’ mean?”

Ha! Right?

Took me three days to come up with an explanation.

Really, really to be really, really continued…

The Tramp's Story, Part III: A Rose is a Rose is a What Now?

2009-10-28T07:06:00.211-04:00

con't from previous post

Just when I was deciding whether this Henry person might be my new best friend, he said “Are you sure you don’t want to discuss this with your husband or anything?"

There was a time I would have bristled at that question. When I would have heard it as “Sweetheart, you are obviously not qualified to make this decision because you are a girl.” But I'm much older now. I've learned from more than my share of life's mistakes. I've realized that if I squeal and let the Big Strong Man kill the Little Hairy Spider (or vice versa), that doesn't mean he won't still hear me roar. I also know the sorry truth is that I am not qualified to make this decision – which isn't due to my X chromosomes, as far as I know, but to some other wonky aspect of my DNA.

I am an idiot. Financially, at least. I go through life like a tourist: holding out fistfuls of pretty-colored currency and trusting random strangers to take their pick. That's how I wound up with my first schmortgage, more or less, and just look at the bollix that turned out to be. This time, though, I was determined to do it right. So I slapped a muzzle on my inner Steinem and assured her Henry just meant that was this was not something to be taken lightly. He just meant that, since there did happen to be another member of my household, the two of us might want to take some time and hash it out.

“Nah.”

Well, Johnny would likely have opinions. That could only serve to complicate things, after all.

“All right, then, we’ll get you started. 4.375%, fixed for 30, no appraisal, no income verification, no penalty for early payment – in case you win the lottery, which I sincerely hope you do. Plus you’ll get to skip a payment when it’s finalized, so you and your husband can take a nice vacation." We could. Or we could heat our house! "And it looks right now as if you'll be getting $1600 back from the balance on your escrow account.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on a second...

“Why doesn’t this email I just got from you say ‘Henry’ on it?”

“Oh, does it still say ‘Aroutyun’?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.”

You bet your ‘Hm,’ there, Henry! Or, should I say, Aroutyun? Now I’m confused. The fast-talking Countrywide I dealt with last time at least let me call him “Kevin McGoff” the whole time he was shoving my first schmortgage up my ass. Your accent is lovely, Henroutyun, and while I certainly understand an immigrant taking a name that’s easier on the natives, don't you think you should pick one and stick with it? This is two-names stuff comes across a little shady.

Then again, my own grandfather abandoned the name on his Albanian birth certificate at age 14, when Dmitri became Mitchell at Ellis Island, and Dimi became Jimmy to his friends. So what the hell right do I have to judge?

I still didn’t quite grok why the $1600 escrow balance would be mine to keep, though. Don't I still have to pay insurance and property tax and stuff? Ah, well. For now I could afford to take Henroutyun’s word for that part, because apparently I’d have plenty of time to suss it out...

“It will probably take about 90 days to be final, so—”

“Which payment do I skip? November?”

“No! No, you’ll skip one when it’s all finished and closed. In the meantime, you must not even be late with a single payment, or the whole thing will fall apart. The only reason I can give this to you in the first place is because you don’t have any payments late so far. You’re very lucky.”

“Well..." I said. I don’t know how much ‘luck’ had to do with that, Henroutyun.

“Not lucky! I know! Very responsible! What I mean is, you’re very lucky with the timing, with this rate. Even if you do live there for thirty years, I promise you will never refinance this house again. You will never get a better deal than this.”

“I can imagine. But then, the only reason I let myself be fast-talked into an adjustable in the first place was that I thought we’d never see 5% again.” That, and I really did think we’d be out of here by now.

“If we did adjustable today,” said Henroutyun, “I could give you 3%.”

“Really!?”

“But you don’t want to do that!”

“No, no. I don’t. I was just saying: Really!?”

“Even if you did want to, I wouldn’t do it. I was just making small talk while I have a quick look through your file.”

God bless you, sir. Just for that, I’ll call you Henry again from now on.

So we went through some small details – my SS#, marital status, clearing up the fact that I do, in fact, live in the house now, and they can disregard the address and telephone number of our old apartment -- stuff like that. He asked me how much I earned and I told him, honestly. Actually, I told him a lower number than the truth, because I left out the healthy bonus my Lady usually gives me at the end of every year (I figured that, even though I’ve never not gotten it, it’s still really more of a gift than salary and therefore not a guarantee, so I’d be both more polite and better off to not assume).

It didn’t phase him. A $189,000 schmortgage on a $20,000 salary didn’t phase him. And here you thought they weren’t doing that anymore.

Hey, though, you know what? Whatever. At least I am better off now than I was before, and isn't that the American dream? That is to say, I will be. If this schmeschminance actually comes through. And if it doesn't, or if I wind up plastered to the rolling-snowball anyway, I can still blame it on Kevin McGoff.

That bleedin' Countrywide.

Tune in next time for the exciting continuation. There’s a FedEx package! And forms!

The Tramp's Story, Part II: Oh, Henry!

2009-10-26T08:20:00.003-04:00

The voice on the line was deep and accented – Caribbean, maybe, or Pacific Island – and the first thing it asked me was what county I was in.

“Country?” I asked, already getting annoyed. Couldn't they have headsed him up on at least that fairly major detail?

"No, Ma'am," the voice went on, calm as a tropical breeze. "County."

I put the beer down. What is this, a civics quiz?

I can never keep this answer straight. When I was growing up I lived in Worcester County, which was easy to remember because Worcester was the giant nearby city where I went to school. But now... Weymouth is twelve miles south of Boston, see, and therefore (obviously) Boston is twelve miles north -- but Boston's Suffolk County; and Weymouth's Norfolk. This makes no sense -- which really makes it quintessential Beantown logic, considering that East Boston is actually north and South Boston is actually east and the South End (which is not the same as South Boston by any stretch) is smack dab in the middle of the Hub -- but I still tend to get the county names confused.

“Um... Norfolk?” I guessed.

“Okay. My name is Henry. What can I help you with today?”

So does that mean I guessed right? Is this how the process is going to work? Like Who Wants to be a Millionaire? You keep asking questions and as long as I keep getting them right I keep playing, until – ta da! – I'm all schmeschminanced? If so, could we maybe play it like Cash Cab instead, where you get easier questions, three wrong answers, and a chance to double your money at the end?

“Well, Henry,” I said. “I honestly don’t think you can help me with anything [despite my brush with civic success I was still feeling a little cocky with the hopelessness of it all], but the Nice Lady told me that it never hurts to ask.”

I explained everything to him -- in more grotesque detail than I'd given the Lady, but maybe a little less than I've given to you here. I'm really not a skillful liar, see -- the "undocumented" process nearly killed me last time -- so for this go 'round I determined to 'fess up to everything and let the schmortgage chips fall where they may. The worst that could happen (in fact, the most likely thing to happen) was that I’d hang up fifteen minutes later exactly where I’d been before I made the call. Unless -- they couldn’t take away my active schmortgage, could they? Shit!

Well, it was too late. I’d spilled it. And here is what ol' Henry had to say.

“It looks like you’ve been a good customer so far. Never had a late payment or anything. So, sure. I can take care of this for you. We’ll do a non-income based loan, with no appraisal of the property, fixed for 30 years at 4.75%.”

Four? Point seven five? You mean my interest rate – my payments – would go down? And I say "would" because you and I both know that there’s no way any of this is really going to happen, but anyway: Four point seven five?

“Oh, yes. Or I could give you 4.375%, also fixed for 30 – which would bring your monthly payments down another $40. But only if you think you’re going to be there for a while.”

Huh? I mean, what kind of idiot choice is that? Who cares how long we're going to be here? Even if it's just one more month, I would like (der) the one with lower payments, please!

“Hang on,” Henry said, “let me explain. The closing costs on the lower rate are $3,500 higher. But if you’re going to be there for – wait a minute, let me do the math... Thirty-five hundred divided by forty dollars a month is 87.5 ... divided by 12 months is... Okay, it’s worth it if you think you’re going to be there for at least seven years. Otherwise, $3,500 is a lot of money and you might want to think about it and call me back.”

Well, chop me off and call me stumpy, don’t that shit just beat all. A schmortgage guy, explaining things, and giving a girl time to think. Kee-rist, I’m getting all verklempt just thinking about it. But, um, oh:

“Closing costs? I forgot about them. We don’t have—”

“They’re added on top and rolled into the loan. It won’t cost you anything out of pocket no matter what you choose. But it’s still real money, so you ought to think about it anyway.”

Yeah, I probably ought to. But I shan't.

“Give me the lower one.”

I still had no delusions of financial grandeur -- I knew I wouldn't actually get it or anything -- but this was starting to be a pleasant conversation, so I thought I might as well try on the princess dress and prance around.

“The lower rate?” asked Henry. “Or the lower closing costs?”

Oh, Henry, listen to you. You're like an Antioch college freshman, doggedly asking a girl's permission every tiny step along the way. I’m telling you, your mama would be proud.

“The lower rate. Please.”

I don’t know if we’ll still be here in seven years or not. That's not the plan, but the plan was for us to be out of here in less than ten and look how well that worked out. What I do know is that at this point forty bucks is forty bucks, and it will come in handy every month no matter what bad-in-the-long-term plan it might have come from. If we are here for seven years it will be worth it; and if not, well, $3,500 was never going to save our asses, anyway. Besides: who knows? Maybe we’ll be such billionaires by then that a measly couple thou will feel like pocket change.

Hey, man, it could happen. I'd give it even odds with this schmeschminance, anyway.

To be continued… again… I swear to god…

The Tramp's Story

2009-10-25T07:57:00.052-04:00

I’ve been hesitant to mention this because I’m scared to jinx it. I was told I’d have an answer in two days, and as I type these words there are eight or nine hours left before that's up. But it will probably take me at least that long to pinch this post out, so I might as well go ahead and plunge in. I'll just keep dragging it out if I have to, until the fateful final phone call comes. I'm good at dragging things out, don't you think? So here goes -- but, for extra-special jinx-protection, I hope you won’t mind if I speak in code:

I’m schmeschminancing my schmortgage. At least, I schmink I schmam.

See, I’m one of those idiots you've read about who overpaid for a house she could only tenuously afford, lied about her income on the loan papers to get it, and was fast-talked by a shady broker into an adjustable rate. Yep. I’m a regular housing-bubble hat trick, that's for sure. But you can’t blame the big KAPOW on me, oh no you can't. I'm still making monthly payments like a good girl, yes I am. Because my loan hasn’t adjusted yet, and since we had the foresight to buy this crumbling shitpile instead of an actual house (what I meant when I said "I overpaid" was "I shouldn't have paid anything at all") our monthlies don't bleed us quite as hard as some.

So, last year or so, when the news cycle was all aflutter with bailouts and homeowner assistance programs that were supposed to turn bad loans into good ones, I perked up for a second before tuning it all out. Honestly, I tune out the news a lot. It's so depressing. But this time I had a reason. I'd blipped in long enough to realize we wouldn’t qualify for any help. We had been stupid, yes, but apparently not quite stupid enough.

We only paid $245K for the AssVac, for example, a not-astronomical number we could just about afford. Put 20% down, too, just like in the olden days. And she's still worth $238K on paper, thanks to the buckets of sweat-soaked money we've flung at her since moving in. Our interest rate is fixed at 5% for ten years -- instead of a piddly, stupid, one or two -- and when it does adjust (in 2014) it will only go to market rate plus one percent. Plus, like I said, we've always paid our schmortgage bills on time. Not just on time, for that matter: I have a habit of sending checks almost a whole month in advance.

In an alternate universe, those would all be good things. Not as good as having gotten a fixed-rate mortgage in the first place, but darn close. But when everything's gone all topsy-turvy they help the hardest cases first, which means you had to be in arrears or underwater just to get a place in line. Plus there was that whole underwritten-by-Fannie-Mae-in-the-first-place requirement, which we didn't have. And presumably a little thing called income, too, which ditto.

Ever since our schmortgage-chicken's retarded cousins all came home to roost and started laying rotten eggs, Johnny hasn’t had a lick of work. We’ve been raiding our retirement funds for a year now just to keep on sending in those monthly checks. We made the decision to do it because (A) we couldn’t rent for cheaper, so there isn’t any sense trying to sell, and (B) as much as we hate Townville (a.k.a. Southie With Trees) here, the AssVac herself has (kind of sort of maybe) started to (yack, yack) grow on us a little bit (who said that? What?). If we were going to have to sell our stock to pay a landlord anyway, we might as well avoid the move and do our best to see the old girl through.

Schmeschimnancing sure would have been nice, though. The rate we have for five more years is low enough that in the short term our payments would probably go up, but it would have at least gotten that adjustable-rate-monkey off our backs. Ah, well.

So anyway, that brings us to about three weeks ago. And then...

Remember how I said I pay my schmortgage in advance? I mailed my November 1st payment, for example, on October 2. I started doing it the day we closed -- that first month's payment was included with the closing, but I went ahead and sent it anyway. Because I haven’t always been the best at paying bills on time, and one of the few things I knew about owning a house before I did it was that schmortgage bills are not like paying rent. If you’re late, you don’t just get a reminder phone call from some pain in the ass you can yell back at because your toilet's overflowing or your front door doesn’t close. No. If you forget to pay your schmortage you get a black mark next to your name in the Big Book for all time. And if you accumulate too many marks, they take your house and send you back to the Old Country. So I got in the habit of mailing checks in early, just to give myself a 28-day leeway to forget.

It never happened, though. Not really. Once it got lost in the mail (honest to god, I'm not just saying that; I mailed that fucking thing, I did, I know) and I called and yelled at a customer service rep until I cried. That Countrywide was no help whatsoever, but I managed to stop payment on the check and send another one in time. (Two years later, when we re-did the kitchen, that lost-in-the-mail envelope turned up behind a bookcase -- so maybe I didn't mail the fucking thing. What d'you know?)

But last month I almost missed it. We were trying to put off raiding our retirement again as long as possible, and we thought we could afford to wait because Johnny had actually lined up a job. The carpenter on the job was dicking around, though, wasting time, and the carpenter has to finish before the painter can get in. Weeks went by while the schmortgage check sat – forlornly written, sealed, and stamped – waiting in my office to be mailed. Finally, on the 16th, I broke down. But it takes ten days to get a check mailed from Fidelity. And then I had to wait till Monday before I could get it in the bank. So I didn’t mail October’s payment until September 28th.

On October 2^nd, I got a notice reminding me I had a payment due. I was pretty sure they’d crossed in the mail, but my check hadn't been cashed yet, so I called because I wanted to be sure. Yes indeedy, the Very Nice Customer Service Rep assured me, they certainly had received my payment and everything was set -- but, since she had me on the telephone anyway, would I like to talk to someone about possibly scheschminancing and bringing my monthly payments down?

Now, say what you will about Bank of America. I don’t know what they’ve got going on with Merill Lynch, and I don’t care. What I do know is that ever since Countrywide went under and BoA bought our stank-ass loan, I have felt much more like I’m in an actual business relationship and much less like I’m standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, tossing fluttery fistfuls of cash into the void. And I appreciate that feeling. The new one, I mean. I didn’t realize how much I'd missed it when it wasn’t there.

Still, though, this latest offer was a little much.

“Oh, no!” I said. “I mean, I’d love to, but -- I don’t think your schmeschminance folks would want to talk to me. My husband’s been out of work a while, see, and we just don’t make enough these days to get approved for any sort of loan.”

“It never hurts to try,” the Nice BoA Lady replied. “Would you like me to go ahead and patch you through?”

"Oh, sure, what the hell," I said, reaching into the refrigerator for a beer. "There's no way it's going to happen, I assure you. But the conversation ought to be good for a laugh."

To be continued tomorrow – really, I mean it this time. I’ve actually already posted it on a time-delay. I just think the whole story is too long to expect you to read it all at once and besides, it’s a rainy weekend. What the hell else am I going to do?

Snowden's Secret

2009-10-16T18:39:00.009-04:00

Oh, you want to know how my mother’s doing. Sorry. I forgot you can’t just share bad news and drop it like a speeding ticket, or else you run the risk of caring cyber-strangers starting to fret. And you can only take advantage of caring cyber-strangers for so long. So, before I lose my cyber-privileges, here goes:

Mom’s home from the hospital and she’s not dying. Not unless she gets hit by a bus, at any rate. Which isn’t likely, considering the dearth of bus routes running through her bedroom these days. Although of course there’s always the porcelain one down the hall…

The short version is this: being bedridden and appetite-suppressed for long enough can make a person averse to getting out of bed or eating food. And if you think that’s not funny, well, there are lots of things not even funnier. Like the fact that Mom hasn’t been out of bed since early June.

Here’s the long version: The Lyme disease is finally cleared up – you might not know she had that, but she did – and when she finally finished the course of kill-‘em-all-and-let-god-sort-‘em-out antibiotics that finally cured it, her liver pulled the rip cord on its fall. Which is to say: it’s not actively failing anymore, but it’s not exactly pulling down straight A’s. In fact, it’s going to need all the tutoring and legacy-help it can get just to be a gentleman’s-C-student from now on.

The doctors say a transplant’s not an option, for two reasons: A. in the overall weak state she’s in there’s just no chance she’d make it off the table, and B. if she eats and moves around and gets her strength back enough to survive a transplant, she won’t be sick enough to need the transplant after all.

What I take away from that is: C. my own liver is standing down till further notice, so it’s okay if I go ahead and have a beer. And: D. just to avoid confusion for anyone out there who’d like to join me: I’ll be calling Mom “Yossarian” from this point on.

Yossarian needs to eat – the equivalent of six nutrition-drinks a day, the doctor said, plus as much healthy food as she can hammer down. But Yossarian can’t stomach any of it. The doctor says if she’d just eat she’d feel like eating (which gives me flashbacks to all the times Johnny’s tried to get into the union through the years), and if it makes her sick she’s under orders to wipe her mouth and turn around and try again.

So that’s where you find us. She's still not eating near what she’s supposed to – and she's still not out of bed at all – but she says she’s trying. Which is hard for the rest of us to understand. I mean, if somebody told me I’d never get out of bed again unless I could suck down a lump of dog shit, you can bet your ass I’d be holding my nose and making like Divine. All she has to do is drink a milkshake...

I don't know.

Oh: Chuck (TFT) is not dead, either, as it turns out.

But that’s a story for another time…

P.S. Yossarian doesn’t get on the computer anymore at this point, either, so I haven’t considered the possibility that she might read what I have to say. If she does, though, and if it makes her angry, then I hereby swear that if she comes here and kicks my ass, I’ll take it down.

A Large, Friendly Dog in a Very Small Room

2009-10-10T10:16:00.000-04:00

I've mentioned Chuck (TFT)'s brown bread, have I not? How the slow transmission leak he had for a few months has turned into a roaring case of Motor City's Revenge? Well, it did. And this is it, folks. The Big One we've been waiting for. You hear that, Francine? He's coming to join you, honey...

(That's not the best link to give you to explain Francine, but a search turned up the shocking discovery that I've never really written about her here. Hm. We'll have to rectify that someday. But for now...)

Since Monday, then (which is really not too long in the grand scheme of things), I've been busing and hoofing and otherwise prioritizing all the to-do in my life. Drinking Budweiser, for example, because you can carry 18 of them home from the packy in one hand.

I've also been taking the dog for actual walks. I'd more or less stopped doing this, because we both loved going to the you-know-place so much -- but the you-know-place is almost two miles down the road (I may have said it was one mile before; I may have lied. The point is) you can't walk there, and play there, and walk back, and have any time left in your day to write. And let me tell you, that dog is a bear if he doesn't bang out his daily thousand words. He really is a diligent dog, after all.

So we've been walking in the neighborhood, and it's... you know. Lots of crossing and re-crossing of streets to avoid unfriendly dogs. This is part of why we stopped it in the first place. The Old English Sheepdogs who try to come over the fence. The German Shepherds who bark largely from the back of theirs. The trio of Dachshunds who get all I'll-bite-your-kneecaps if you laugh at their yippy 'tudes. Charlie is a friendly dog at most times, but you'd be well advised to avoid pissing him off. And the best way to piss him off (other than trying to hump him in his you-know-place and not stop when he asks you nicely) is to be a dog and refuse to sniff hello. If you're not sniffing, he figures, you must be a Bad Guy -- and before you know it I'm flying a 90-pound-dog-shaped kite up in the air.

The other day, after taking an unscientific Facebook poll about its couthness and deciding it was cool, I decided to take him to the cemetery near my house. The Old North. It's an old one (hence the name, der) -- Abigail Adams's folks are buried there; other stones date back almost 400 years -- so I was pretty sure we wouldn't run into any living relatives who might bristle at the idea of a Shetland pony pooping on Deargrandmother's remains (he really is a very big dog, after all).

The Old North really is almost a mile from my house, and if you'd seen us on our way you would've thought I never walked a dog before. It was my first time with a new leash, see, and it was the extend-a-kind -- which I'd asked my Dad to send along precisely for occasions such as this. I can't very well let him off-leash in the graveyard, I figured, but I could let him extend-a-ways and give the place a thoroughgoing sniff.

As I said, though, I had a hard time getting used to the device. Charlie was in the middle of the road before I realized you're supposed to keep your thumb down on the big black button all the time, and we had one foot in the graveyard before I found the small button that makes it so you don't. But I did figure it out. Eventually.

The Old North is built on a series of small hills -- wooded, now, though I doubt they were when it was consecrated -- with the newer graves spread out on the flat land around the edge. I kept Charlie on a short leash through the new part, and when the road curved sharply up and to the left it seemed safe to give him a little head.

Not -- jeez, people! Gross! Not like that! I meant "give him a little" as in "let him have his." Jeez! It's a horse thing -- and not a Catherine the Great horse thing, either. Jeez.

Anyway, I let him have his head, and at first he just went out before me on the road. But when he realized he was more or less free he set off to explore -- sniffing under bushes, drooling over headstones, peeing on trees -- wondering if this might be a whole new you-know place after all. Not thirty seconds in, though, I saw something out of the corner of my eye that gave me pause: a man, middle-aged and maybe a little rough-looking, running for the wooded corner in a crouch.

Junkie, I thought. And maybe you'll think I'm overreacting, but this town is gross. It might seem all idyllic and Olde Newe Englande, but really it's just South Boston with trees. Just yesterday, in fact, Johnny asked a friend to run him to the package store so he could haul home an economy-sized case of Bud for the weekend, and when they ran back in for cigarettes somebody stole the 36-pack from the car. Nice. So, although it hadn't occurred to me before I set out for it, it's not hard to imagine junkies in the wooded corners of Old North. The real-life guy that Johnny Depp played in the movie Blow was born here, after all.

Thinking all this, I found myself very glad to have a Giant Black Bear by my side. He really is a fierce-looking dog, after all. Although, of course, if it weren't for the Bear I wouldn't be here...

Ah, la vie. Elle est tres magnifique, il n'est pas vrai?

But wait! Rough-looking dude's not a junkie! He's gone rushing to the corner in a crouch to catch his dog! I don't know if he let the beast off-leash on purpose and is only catching him because I came along, or if the bugger somehow managed to get away, but I suspect the answer's A. This is still Townville, after all. And if you're paying attention, how can a dog possibly just "get away"?

Still, though, like I said: life is always easier if Charlie gets a chance to sniff hello. He is a very sociable dog, after all. So as we approached one another I chose not to rein him in. I was still on the roadway, Junkie Dog and Man were practically in the woods, and as Charlie rapidly crossed over the three or four graves between us, I called out to Junkie Man "Is he okay?"

"He's not that friendly, actually."

Oh.

How do you work this button thing again?

I hit something that jerked Charlie to a stop, which sent Junkie Dog into paroxysms of rage, and Charlie went all monkey-see on his ass -- leaping and barking and bristling the I'm-gonna-git-you-squirrel hairs on his withers ("withers" would be "between the shoulder blades," for all you non-Russian Empresses-y types). Thankfully the Junkie pair kept right on moving -- which really was the smartest thing to do -- except for the small fact that Charlie just kept right on moving, too. And soon he'd wrapped his Brand New Extend-a-Leash around Somebody's Grave. From which position he kept right on monkey-doing, in an attempt to launch himself into the air.

You know what a thin nylon rope does when you jump it up and down a few times along the weather-beaten edge of a 400-year-old piece of slate?

It snaps.

And now I see how how a dog can possibly just "get away"...

I wasn't worried about what Charlie'd do -- I knew that, for all his swagger, he'd just doofus up to the new guy and say hello. He really is a friendly dog, after all. But Junkie Dude had said his Junkie Dog was not nice, and what that meant I had no way to know. So, despite the fact that he was officially off-leash on consecrated ground, I put on my where's-the-stick voice to say "I'm gonna get you, Charlie!," and I lunged.

What fun!

We're off the leash! And playing tag! This is a brand-new you-know-place! And what's over here? A pinecone!? Oh my god!

He's really not a very smart dog, after all.

But thankfully Junkie Dog was just as easily distracted, and in a minute both he and Junkie Man had moved along. When they had, I donned my on-your-bed voice, gave the order, and Charlie hung his head and quit the game and sat right down. I grabbed the two-foot length of nylon that was still hanging from his collar, explained that we had to go now even though the fun had barely started -- and, since this was all the leash we had, he wasn't going to be able to sniff things on the way.

"O-kay," he sighed. And then he brightened.

"But when we get there, I still get to poop?"

He really is a very good dog, after all.

But Wait!

2009-10-09T07:30:00.006-04:00

Reports of my demise may have been marginally overspoken...

Tune in tomorrow...

And Now the Cat's Puking in the Corner

2009-10-08T08:11:00.000-04:00

So last week my cat threw up on my down comforter. My white, king-sized, Ralph Lauren down comforter that was a hand-me-down from My Lady.

Kitty's not the first one to throw up on the comforter. The first one to throw up on the comforter was Football Buddy. She was two. We'd just finished construction on the Bedroom From Hell when Johnny's mother died and he went home to bury her (well, he didn't bury her, but "went home to burn her body and toss her ashes in the woods" sounds downright criminal). While he was there, my sister and brother-in-law came to help me set up the bedroom so it would be ready upon his return, and as soon as the bed was made Football Buddy ran straight over to it and yuked up blueberry bagel. It was hysterical. You know I'm telling that story at her wedding.

This isn't the first time the cat yacked on it, either. This isn't even the first time kitty hurled on it this week. But it was particularly lavish, it was brown, I was running out of still-white corners, and it wasn't getting any warmer in the nighttime around here.

Just for the record, I have never spewed on the down comforter. Not the Ralph Lauren one, anyway.

There's a dry cleaner I walk by every morning (or I used to), about halfway between where I park my car (back when I used to) and the T. They have a sign in the window saying they clean down comforters, so last ... Wednesday, I think it was? ... I brought it in. They said it wouldn't be ready until Tuesday, so I hauled off and punched 'em in the nose.

No. No, I didn't. That was just a little private joke there for my friend Marie. She lived in Allston in the eighties, see, and---

Never mind.

I'm generally uncomfortable requesting favors (though I know some of you are reading this and thinking whaaaa???) and besides, haven't I had enough to deal with lately? On a cosmic level, I hardly think it would be wise to ask someone to take me to the cleaners. So when Chuck (TFT) bought the farm on Monday, I already knew I'd be fetching the down comforter myself.

I took the bus to the train and walked the mile from the station. If I'd thought ahead I'd've realized that the mile back with a king-sized down comforter under my arm would be uncomfortable, considering it was 80 degrees outside and I was dressed for 60. But oh well. The whole reason I was dressed for 60 was that I'm not thinking ahead. With my new zen attitude, remember, I'm only thinking about Now. And by the time Ahead was Now it didn't matter anyway.

Because what's happening Now is that the girl behind the counter's asking if I can come back for the down comforter tomorrow. And Now I'm explaining about the car and the bus and the train and the mile-long walk. And Now the girl's getting the manager, and Now he's explaining to me that my comforter was Very Messy (yes, you are a Cleaner), lots of stains (yes, I pointed them out to you and apologized, but once again: that is Your Job), he has to bleach it (bleach? Is that the Ancient Chinese Secret? Shit, I could have bleached it -- and it wouldn't have cost a week or $35, either), and he had to wait until someone brought in another one to balance the machine.

And Now I'm thinking about how on M*A*S*H, when there was just one wounded body, they'd put a dummy on the other stretcher to balance the helicopter. And Now I'm wondering if the manager would fit in the machine.

And Now he's asking me if I can please come back tomorrow, and Now I'm allowing as how I really have no choice. And Now, because I'm having a very hard time not thinking ahead to how I have to do this all again, I'm pointing out that he could have saved us both an awful lot of trouble if he'd called. And Now he's staring blankly at my chin, wishing I'd stop bugging him and go away.

And Now I do.

And Now, for the record and for the FTC, I would like to publicly state that I have received no goods or services in exchange for writing about the dry cleaners between the car park and the T. This is not a compensated endorsement -- in fact, it should not be considered an endorsement at all. But it's not an admonition, either. I can hardly risk a public insult, after all, considering that they're still in possession of my down.

Because oh, yeah, if that Manager thought I was bus/train/walking back the next day at his convenience, then I've got a little Ancient Chinese Secret of my own:

Goosefeathers!

And Right Now I Am Writing a Blog

2009-10-06T20:09:00.113-04:00

Oh, hell. I put this up last night and took it down because it isn't narky-snarky like I try to be. But it's what I'm living now, and I've come to realize that if I'm to post at all it's this or nothing. I'm going to try to write through it, to find my narky-snarky voice inside it, somehow -- and I will. I know I will. In the meantime, though, it just might be a train wreck. But train wrecks are fun, aren't they? And anyone who says they're not a rubbernecker is a lie. So let's make a deal: you promise to slap me upside the head if I get mawkish, and I promise to cheat toward the camera if I bleed.

It was the pile of sawdust under Chuck (TFT) that convinced me to eat the fucking strawberry.

I was out in Worcester for yet another meeting with Mom’s liver doctor. These things are starting to get old, but I wasn’t really worried about this one. At her last appointment (which I wasn’t at, and which was with her GP and not the liver doc, but still) the news was that she’s not sick enough to qualify for a transplant – either from me or from some random dead guy. So never mind that she doesn’t eat or drink or really even move: if she’s not that sick, then (I’m extrapolating now, but I think my logic’s sound) she isn’t dying. And not to be all me-me-me or anything, but it also means I won't be trying to finish my Really Big Project while I'm on a morphine drip. Although -- hoo, boy, talk about rubbernecking! That one would probably be worth the ride.

Anyway, so I pulled into the garage 45 minutes early and sat there listening to the end of an interview with Rosanne Cash on NPR. At first I worried poor old Rosie'd bought the farm, what with Terry Gross’s side job as the Crypt Keeper and all. But she’s alive. She just has a new album coming out. Golly, but I love that woman’s voice. And good old Terry did make sure to send me off into the bowels of the GI clinic at UMASS Memorial with Rosanne’s version of “Motherless Children” ringing in my ears, just so I wouldn’t think she’d gotten soft.

Well, I’ll give you motherless children, Terry. I thought I damn near was one when Dad finally pushed Mom’s wheelchair through the door. She looked like a fetus. All curled up against herself, protecting her soft core. She was trying not to hurl, is what she was doing, and for the entire hour they made us wait past the appointed time, she won. But as soon as they put us in the room and shut the door, she let it fly.

youuuuuu… hhhh…youuuuuuu…hhhh…youuuuu…hhhh…

“This is not good,” the Liver Doctor said.

No, Doc, it isn’t.

“How long has this been going on?”

Well, Doc, since a little before we first told you about it? Back in June?

“Do you think she ought to be admitted?”

Yes, Doc, please.

“Susan?”

youuuuuu… hhhh…youuuuuuu…hhhh…youuuuu…what

“We can’t admit you against your will. Will you allow it?”

youuu… hh…fine

Oh, thank god. Because, Mom, if you're in the hospital maybe they can get you to eat and drink things, and if you eat and drink things maybe you’ll get stronger, and if you get stronger maybe you can move again. Plus once you’ve been re-admitted your insurance plan reboots, which means you can go back to rehab, which means you can get physical therapy, which means maybe you can even walk and talk like in the old days. Wouldn’t that be great? To be strong enough to pat your dog again? Strong enough to possibly receive the better half of my hopefully-not-yet-too-booze-or-bile-damaged gut? And then go back to Maine? And tend your garden?

“Let’s take one thing at a time,” said Liver Doctor.

Okay, Mister Liver Doctor. Fine.

It took a few more minutes to hit me on a conscious level, but right there, for the first time, I understood the existential genius of that neuvo-Zen, live-for-the-now idea. It isn't about yoga teachers smoothing chakras and getting the ultimate enjoyment from their morning chai. It's about keeping your head down and inching yourself through the worst circles of hell as painlessly as possible and, if you're lucky, coming out the other side.

So.

The Now to Live For: getting Mom admitted.

After that, the next will be whatever it is. But that is next. And this is now.

Right now we have to wait right here till there’s a bed. Which can take hours. Even days. The last time we did this, Mom was in the emergency room from Friday night till Sunday evening. So Mom's Now for right now is to wait. And mine, as selfish as I hope it doesn’t sound, is to go home. Dad says he’ll wait here with her, and what good would I be doing, anyway?

I hugged both of them, twice, and then I left.

I stopped on my way out and bought a large, black coffee for the road. They really do make the best cup of coffee in that little lobby shop.

I used the one bar I had left on my cell phone to call Johnny and tell him I had not left Worcester yet. I was still on with him when I stepped up to Chuck (TFT) and saw the sawdust. Which I was positive had not been down there when I left.

It was quite pretty, actually. Cedar, I think. In a sort of paisley pattern. Or paisley shape, I should say. Just one blob. And reddish-yellow. Not yet soaked in whatever viscous liquid had at long last become emancipated from my car.

Although that "whatever"'s disingenuous. I knew it was transmission juice. I knew.

But right Now I had a job to do, and that job was to go home. The car was finally dying – well, let's be real here and admit the car was dead. This was at long last the morbid moment I’ve been waiting for, and there was nothing left that could be done for poor old Chuck. But if I had any hope of being any use to anybody in the short term, then I still had a mess of duties left to do. And the #1 one, at this moment, was: Get Home. So I turned the key in the ignition, and I put poor old Chuck (TFT) in gear.

He moved.

So I kept driving.

The big blue ox kept right on breathing till I got off the expressway at Neponset Circle, which is just about five miles from my home. In fact, it's possible that if I hadn’t taken that detour at Route 140 in Marlboro for that Angus 1/3-pounder, we might have even made it all the way.

But you know what?

That Angus burger tasted pretty sweet.