Tea, but No Sympathy

Okay, so maybe, just maybe, I still pay some attention to what's going on in the world. I mean, I do listen to NPR while I'm in the shower and performing my morning ablutions.

And then again while I'm having tea and croissants on china. Mmmmm...a civilized breakfast instead of a bacon biscuit behind the wheel of the car......

So where was I? Oh, yes. Paying attention. Truth is, I still do and boy oh boy thinking about the mighty mess we're in as a nation can send me groping madly for the old fermented grape juice. I would never claim to be the deepest of thinkers, but when forced to consider this or that, I find it necessary to try to find some explanation and then my mind immediately starts imagining solutions. It's like silent brainstorming.

For example, yesterday as I got ready for work, NPR had a story about home foreclosures. Our family just moved on April 1st after MathMan and I made the difficult decision to let Citibank foreclose on our house. We were almost $60k underwater on our mortgage and we knew a move closer to town was necessary before we could ever be able to sell the house in the middle of nowhere. When we contacted Citi to see about renegotiating our mortgage, it became apparent that they were either not interested or able to work with us and so, after many calls and much wasted time, we concluded that the only thing to do was walk away.

After listening to the story on NPR, I think one solution to this problem would be to forbid the large national banks from issuing mortgages. If we were forced to deal with local banks for our loan needs, rather than being steered by mortgage brokers into those hokey big bank loans in the first place, perhaps this mess wouldn't have happened. And I mean that on the micro and the macro level.

When we first contacted Citi about working with us, one of the things we were told was that Citi couldn't work with us because our mortgage wasn't just one single thing on the holder's end. Several entities had pieces of our loan and so to renegotiate would be next to impossible because there were too many stakeholders involved.

It occurs to me that had we been working with a local bank, this kind of thing would be less likely to happen. Local banks are much more integrated into the community. It would be harder for them, I suspect, to avoid dealing with their customers. You've also got word of mouth and local ties to consider. Maybe keeping loans local would be the best way to avoid this kind of problem in the future.

Local banks would still have to be monitored and regulated to make certain that all ethnic groups are being treated fairly, for example, but this is not insurmountable. And letting large national banks do business across state lines hasn't been a full-proof method for eliminating redlining and other unfair loan practices.

The second piece of this mess has been the credit default swap fiasco. The system is so hokey and ridiculous, I can only think that the theives who invented it must have thought they'd become completely invincible after they realized that it was working for them and they were able to rake in huge piles of cash. No one caught on? They were getting away with it? Imagine the conversations they must have had as they swanned about posh settings, acting the peacock for each other with audacious displays of wealth. As BAC writes, there's plenty of blame to be laid at the bankers' and brokers' expensively-shod feet.

The way I understand it, we'd arrived at a place where a large part of the financial game was based on people making their money up front and early, very much like a Ponzi scheme. I'm not an investor and I don't mean to suggest that I understand how the system works, but common sense should tell you that a system based on people collecting huge amounts of money at the front end of their investment would be an incentive for corruption and would also take away from the system that provides its largest payoffs at the back end. Long-term investment would suffer.

It's no so different from parenting. If I tell my kids that they can have some reward after they've completed some task or chore, then they are more likely to complete said task or chore. If I let them have the reward up front, they're much less likely to follow through, or, if they do, they're very likely to do a half-assed job at best.

From the looks of this economic crisis, we are exactly right where I would be if I told my kids that they can have the new cellphone now, but I expect them to clean up the family room later.

Like those preening uber-rich bankers showing off their big-ticket items to their pals, my kids would be fervently texting away to all their friends about their new phone while I stand hip deep in an ocean of dirty clothes, discarded bits of food, the occasional forgotten plate, crumpled candy wrappers, a blizzard of paper bits, the random loose battery, mismatched shoes, a broken off piece of plastic from something I can't quite identify, a bookbag with its guts spilling out, smelly socks stuffed under sofa cushions, someone's half-eaten bagel, and dozens and dozens of open dvd boxes scattered around the room.

Except our financial mess is much, much bigger than that. And it smells much, much worse, too.

On Living Within Our Means

So MathMan and I did a little grown up decision making. We could have chosen the fabulous house with the hardwood floors, outside storage barn and inground swimming pool for $1,450 per month. Nice subdivision, even closer to the nearest biggish town than the house we selected. Garbo would have had to change schools next year, though.

Instead we chose a good enough house with carpet (not my favorite), an okay subdivision, close enough for The Actor to walk to school, Garbo can remain in her school and take the bus. There is no pool, but the rent is $995 per month.

Big difference. We weighed the difference in rent. We considered the associated costs that would come with the pool. We chose prudent. Dare I say it - conservative.

I called the realtor who is handling the more expensive house and told her we thought that the rent would be too much of a stretch, but thank you anyway. Then we finished up the lease signing for the other place and started to handle all the moving things, utilities, collecting of boxes, arranging for movers to help us move that heavy safe full of sex toys.

The realtor called back. The owners thought we'd make great tenants and did we think we could do $1,200 per month? Screeeeeeeeeech! Think. Think. Think. Oh the pool! The pool!!!!!! Hardwood floors! The wraparound porch! The master on the main floor away from the kids rooms!

My inner accountant wagged her finger. It's still $205 more per month plus whatever the added costs of pool care and electricity would be. My father the pessimist's voice became very pronounced in my head. "You just know something will go wrong with the pool anyway and you'll spend half the summer with it out of commission." Shut up, Dad. Go to hell, Inner Accountant.

But. But! But!!!!!! Oh, fuckery. They're both right.

"Thanks, all the same, the house is lovely, but we really must keep our rental expenses as low as possible," I tell the nice realtor lady. Then I hang up the phone and sob like the spoiled child I once was.

Speaking of the house.....for one of the other lisas, (there seems to be a growing army of us) here's a whole mess of pictures of our current location. And here are a couple of pictures of the new place...

The curb appeal shot. Or not.
See, in this here part of Georgia, we don't dig basements, we raise our houses.

The party deck. As if.
Okay - the place where I'll most often be freaked out by wasps who love the wood.
Needs flowers. Stat!

The living room trying to be more posh than is reasonably necessary.
Bets on where the first cat hurl stain will be?

The RED kitchen. I'll bet if we put a radio in there, it will turn itself on in the middle of the night and broadcast recent episodes of Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.
It's that red.

More photos to come! Including:

• The love tub.

• The bathroom that will never match any of our towels.

• The Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs. (Note to MathMan - will that be the tornado shelter? We'd better not cram it full of the suitcases and the sex toy safe like we'd discussed, if that's the case.)

• The fight to the death over the basement bedroom with its own half bath.

• New blogging ops.

And with the money we save, maybe we can stimulate a little bit of the economy with a couple of day trips somewhere fun this summer or by purchasing more sex toys. The safe isn't quite full. Yet.

Good News Sprinkled with Sick

Oh for Cliff's sake. I've been infected by some mysterious bug that's left me achy, feverish and exhausted to the point where I'm so tired I don't even want to surf porn even though I'm home alone. People of the Internets, this is serious.

I'm no doctor, but I know it's not the influenza. I didn't get the shot for it this year because I thought I'd take a pass on that illness this year. I've never quite understood the appeal of the flu anyway, but whatever. If all those people want to get it, let them have the shots. Me? Not interested.

I could also be suffering from an adverse reaction to cleaning supplies since we went to the new house and gave it a middling scrub down before we start moving in. It was actually in great shape, but you know me - if I haven't doused it with bleach, scrubbed it with something abrasive and made it shine with the bluey ammonia goodness of Target's version of Windex, I'm not satisfied that it's clean.

So yes, there is good news and more good news. As MathMan puts it, we have new digs. There will be a new Golden Manor. Details coming shortly.

The second bit of good news is that on Friday I discovered the power of fucking around. Truly, I did. I'd made that arduous climb once again across the gear shift and console to climb out of my car's passenger's side door because the driver's side door was still mysteriously stuck. I'd become quite inured to the stares of strangers so as I did my quick moves up, over, across and out so I just ignored the astonished stares of the woman across from me at the gas station. She smirked a little as I sighingly flicked my hair out of my eyes and went about the business of pumping gas.

I stood there silently cursing the sloooooow pump and decided that I'd had enough of this car door nonsense. I fished the ignition key out of my jeans pocket and inserted into the lock. I turned, jiggled and wiggled it while tugging on the door handle. When the door actually gave way and opened with a pop, I jumped back and let out a little yelp of surprise. Now I didn't care who was looking as I did "Door goes open, door goes shut. Door goes open, door goes shut." and clapped by hands with glee.

After the gas finished it's slow dribble into my car's tank and the meter read "full," I happily got into the car using the driver's side door, closing it behind me and opening and shutting it three or four times in astonished wonder.

As MathMan so indelicately put it, though, it seems as if I've broken up with my gear shift. Oh, well. I'm overjoyed at not having to contort myself wildly each time I get in and out of the wretched vehicle. Oh, the simple pleasures in life.

So for now, I'll just sit here fighting the crud or ague or whatever it is. While the laptop burns vent marks into my legs, I'm testing out the healing properties of DVR recordings of British murder mysteries, copious pots of tea (PG Tips - thank you, my friend!) and those delightful lemon biscuits sent by Bee. I may be sick and tired, but I can manage to munch a few biscuits to keep up my strength. I'm also enjoying the companionship of a couple of cats who think that having cat butt in my face is a tonic for whatever ails me. They are dead wrong.

Will be posting nauseatingly boring pictures of the new Golden Manor soon. We're handling all the necessaries now - transferring utilities, getting television and telephone services sorted out and making sure that we'll actually have high-speed internet for a lovely change.

As for you lot, be well. Really. Because this thing, though an excuse to blog in bed, just sucks.
That's why.