Something to Say?

The past week or so has been a whirlwind of drama to the nth degree with getting our house purchase squared away.  It was so much drama in fact that at one point I thought my next blog post title would read “The Foreclosure Market Giveth and Bank of America Taketh Away” but it turns out I would have been all wrong.

If anyone was going to be taking away our dream of homeownership it was going to be American Financial Resources with their lack of attention to detail, non-existent care for their clients, and complete lack of urgency in their jobs.  I have 17 months and 29 days until I can refinance out of their company and I fully intend to do just that.

It all started about 2 weeks ago when we were told by our broker that in Arizona we do an escrow close.  Now, forgive me on some of the technical terms because I’m not the mortgage professional in this household, but Matt isn’t the blogger, so you may learn even more about mortgages behind the scenes than you thought possible.  When closing in escrow you actually sign all your paperwork and give the title company the cash to close in advance.  The loan then funds and all the other hoobie-doos happen behind the scenes.

Yes, hoobie-doos is a technical term.

Then you meet with your realtor, get keys, and do a happy dance in your brand new, broom clean living room.

At least it reads great on paper.  In reality it went something more like this…

As of May 6^th we have all paperwork to our broker.

Our broker tells us she’d like to kiss us both because we’re so proactive.

Matt assures her it’s his many years of experience.

We start collecting boxes and packing material.

We are told we’ll have to sign & give money early.

We question this having never bought a house in an escrow situation.

We are told not to worry, paperwork should be coming in a day or so.

We sigh with relief and check the calendar – it is the 15^th.

By the 17^th we still don’t have final figures.

Matt has emailed everyone in creation at least 4 times a day.

Everyone but our lender has emailed him back indicating their attention to the situation.

Our lender finally sends a message that they missed the part where we close on the 23^rd but have to sign early – they say oops.

We hear a rumor that BoA (the seller’s mortgage holder) won’t close this if it isn’t done at least 3 business days in advance.

By the 18^th we still don’t have final figures and I start to panic.

The lender laughs.

I am not comforted by the fact that Matt starts to panic too.

We are forced to agree to a form that says we’re in breach of contract (even though it’s the lender’s fault, it’s on us).

I flip out screaming that our lender has had ALL our paperwork for 2 full weeks and question if anyone at American Financial Resources knows how to read.

The lender says they’ll have everything by Monday the 21^st.

I lose 3 pounds from not eating all weekend.

I gain 5 pounds from drinking all weekend.

I lose all I gained by helping move my sister into her very first house (HOORAY!!).

Monday comes and goes and still no paperwork.

I question where I can get heavier drugs.

The lender has literally said they don’t give a shit if it happens when we want it to or not.

Our broker has not one but about 50 panic attacks and calls in her boss to call their President.

The lender’s President all but laughs at our broker (again) and well over 200 emails go back & forth.

Matt takes the rest of the day off due to extreme overwhelming lack of concentration.

I begin drinking heavily.

We’re assured we’ll have everything Tuesday.

I pour another glass of wine and consider inviting our realtor and broker over to get hammered together.

Matt begins drinking with me and we zone out to crappy television.

Matt says out loud he will NEVER allow this kind of shit to happen to his clients.

Our broker’s President puts American Financial Resources on their black list.

Tuesday morning crawls at a snail’s pace but we arrive to sign docs at the title company at noon.

We hit the bank and withdraw our funds to close.

We shake hands and profusely thank our title company for their diligence in getting this done.

We continue to physically shake as we head to the car, hopeful everything will fund the next day.

Matt takes the entire day off and we both sit around biting off what’s left of our fingernails.

The 30^th call from our realtor comes in and we again commiserate that we’re all in this together.

Our broker contemplates leaving the industry this one has her so stressed out.

We pour ourselves another glass of wine.

Wednesday morning we wake up and know we have until 4:00 when the records office closes to have that deed recorded so we can get our keys.

Minutes tick like hours.

The title company says the lender received paperwork.

We pace frantically.

Another email details the wire has gone through.

I start chewing on random pen caps.

Another email that they’re standing in line at the records office.

Finally at about 3:30 we get word that the deed is literally done and we can meet our realtor at 4:30 to get our keys.

My excitement at the fact that we actually have purchased our very first home in Arizona is so overshadowed by all the stress and drama we dealt with that I can hardly get excited.  That is until our realtor opens the lock box and hands us our key.

Our key.  To our house.

I then proceed to do a happy dance in the middle of the living room.  Of course I have to avoid all the crap the seller left behind including piles of trash all over, a garage full of random crap, a backyard full of random crap, and 2 bedrooms full of her kid’s random crap.  Our realtor leaves us at our new house with a couple hugs and handshakes and we sigh in relief.

I start looking through all the stuff left behind.  This includes, but is not limited to, a chaise chair, a huge cooler, a shed full of screens and beach chairs, 2 patio chairs (score!), an entertainment center, her son’s baseball trophies and uniforms.  And then I poke through his closet.

There, in a far back corner of a shelf is the kid’s bong.

Oh how I wish I were kidding.  The trophies, her recipe box, and family photos at Disney were odd enough to find left behind but really kid?  I mean as a teenager isn’t that the first thing you pack?  Maybe he’ll swing by to fish it out of the dumpster.  Because that’s right where it will be.

Needless to say we spent a couple hours picking up new lock sets at Home Depot, installed them and a padlock for the backyard gate (for pool safety), swept out the crap from the house and skimmed the leaves out of the pool.

We drove away from our house last night at about 8:30, got Subway, and came back to our apartment ready to start our clean out, painting and pool maintenance the next day after work.  I’m counting the hours until the end of the day today.

And last night we celebrated the downshift in stress with the last of our magnum of wine.

It’s finally ours now. And no one can take it away.

This Is Serious So I’m Compelled to Post it Twice

A lot of you don’t know but I write another blog, its one I share with a very select number of people and is where I vent about all the shit that really irritates me.

This morning I read an email that seriously touched a nerve and it forced me to write a post that came together in about thirty minutes. After I posted it I reread the words I had put out there and suddenly had wished I had posted it here so more people would know how I feel.

But because it was so perfectly suited to the theme of my other blog I decided not to delete it. Instead I apologize to the few of you who will see this twice but I feel compelled to share it with all of you.

“Chapter Eight -- Outsourcing All the Men with Women?

This morning I tucked in to read my email and opened one from my sister with the subject line “FW: The End of Men”. I assumed it was an internet joke. I was wrong and it turns out, the real joke is going to be on all of us women if we don’t slow this train of alleged progress way down.

As women, we have fought with dignity and pride to claim our equal rights in this world and nothing makes me happier that I am just as likely as a man now to get fired, hold office, go bankrupt or make a million dollars. I personally, in conjunction with my entire gender, am smart, funny, ambitious and headstrong; going after everything I want.

But have I left the men in my life behind as a result?

The article she sent put it out there plainly -- what people are looking for, as far as qualities go, is the ability to communicate and openness, not to mention stillness and focus. Apparently men do not possess these qualities as it further went on to share that, not only are women the predominant gender in the working world now, but that scientists are working on a way to sort sperm for gender selection.

Everyone get out your paint, we’re coloring the world pink. Either that or we're turning it into Gattaca. There really is a fine line and I think we've started to cross it.

I started seeing this trend take hold years ago when a friend and I noticed how many women treated their men like dogs. They assumed he would cheat, so she beat him to the punch. They presumed he would lie, so she lied better. They were tired of being treated as a “lesser” gender, so she dumped his sorry ass, got a job making six figures, a sperm donor, a big house, and a full time nanny to raise her kid.

Can someone please explain to me what the men of this generation did so wrong? I have seen them embrace our ambition and encourage us to make the most of ourselves. I have seen them stay home with the children and be full time dads when their women have gone back to work. I have watched them hold a purse in a store, cook dinner, clean the house, work hard, prioritize the women in their life beyond anything else.

And we somehow find fault in that? Fault enough to all but tell them they are useless? Um, yeah.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a traitor to progress or anything and I am fully grateful for the right to vote, work, plus all the other stuff that men tried to hold us back from for so long, and we were able to finally take control of our own lives just a few short decades ago. But I think we are letting the power that comes with that very control go right to our heads and using it for evil, not good.

I get it. Men did it too. Way back in the day it was generally men who were screaming ‘Witch!’, ‘Off with her head!’, ‘Woman, go make me a chicken pot pie!’. We were, according to the powers that be (mostly men at the time) inferior and not much more than common help and a baby machine. So believe me, I get why some of us would be a little bit, let’s just say, anxious to put our own needs first.

But I think we missed the point of balance and now everything is tipping way too far over the edge.

There are machines to do heavy lifting, which women can drive. Vibrators for pleasure, which are so realistic these days it is almost scary. Exterminators can kill the bugs, which women are taking on as a career more frequently than ever. The local sperm bank or adoption agency will be more than happy to provide a gal with a baby. Self betterment books teach all of us how to treat ourselves with the utmost respect.

Wow. The more I think about it, the more I realize we are just a gender full of promise. A gender full of possibility for what the future could hold. If women could not only run the home but industry as well, we could surely run the planet, and since we wouldn’t even need men to procreate anymore, we could go right ahead and phase them out completely. And in such a short span of time.

A world full of nothing but women. Just the thought scares the ever loving shit out of me. Women in power? Right on. Women in prominent roles and industries? Absolutely. But women as the only necessary gender? I’m not sorry to say an emphatic no.

There is nothing, not even the love of myself, that can take the place of my husband’s arms around me when he says I love you. I respect men both in and out of power because when it all boils down to it, each of us is just human, regardless of the body parts.

And humans should all be afforded the same rights. Isn’t that what we women spouted back then? Now we are taking back everything we supposedly stood for by rolling right over the other gender that we fought to take it back from.

We are no better than they were back then. Shame on us.

I am an ambitious woman who is trying to make a place and name for myself in this big world and perhaps there are times when I will be doing a lot of that on my own, but to think that means I don’t need the man I married, my male relatives, friends and acquaintances along my journey is just lunacy.

Be careful what you wish for ladies or some day all of us will be sitting around a lonely table, wondering where all the “good” men went, very likely blaming them for their own disappearance.”

Let Us Weigh In On Performance Enhancements

Yesterday a document was leaked (or more likely outright released) that included the names of 103 - 104 baseball players who allegedly tested positive for steroid use in 2003. Rotoinfo.com is, in my opinion, hungry for amping up their Sitemeter stats because I am quite sure after this “oops” occurred yesterday more people visited their site than mlb.com. I mean their website tag line is: “All fantasy news all the time”; there are definitely two ways to interpret that one.

Now as pretty much all of you know I am a Red Sox fan. No, I am not a fan of baseball per se, just the Red Sox. (For the remainder of this paragraph the words “us” and “we” will refer to the collective known in these parts as Red Sox Nation) I do not follow stats and frankly could care less about what any other team is doing, short of us kicking the proverbial asses of the Evil Empire. If you know anything about us then you know exactly who that is. Since we won the World Series in 2004, and a whole bunch of the players on this list were members of that team, well, you can imagine what was being yelled out in the Cask’n Flagon last night.

This really got me thinking a lot about so called performance enhancements and I suddenly became extremely defensive of any athlete who uses anything (especially Michael Phelps). Why the hell should athletes be deprived of any and all advantages to do the best they can possibly do? No other profession stops its workers from using.

Don’t believe me?

OK then here is what I suggest you do. Hop in your vehicle of choice and head on down to your local purveyor of Adult Entertainment, purchase (or rent if you don’t feel like having it in your collection past my requested research period) a film of your choice, just make sure it has at least one guy in it. Next, hit the local convenience store and pick up a stop watch. Come home and toss in the flick. Pay no mind to the plot, because, you know, that is not the important part here. What I want you to do is keep that watch running for as long as the guy is.

Impressive huh?

Now try to tell me there are no little blue pills hanging around. No one seems to give a crap that all those guys are possibly using some kind of performance enhancer. Nothing kills an adult film faster than a sorry case of ED. If I was the director of one of those films it would probably be something I encouraged since it might even boost sales.

My landscaper puts on sun screen. That’s a chemical and enhances his performance because he can stay out in the sun longer to really pull those weeds like the pro he is.

Stay at home moms might imbibe a cocktail or two in the evening although their job is technically never done. A drink certainly lowers the level of stress and reduces their feelings of inadequacy or pressure to perform.

I can not honestly say that I have never partaken in a mind freeing substance now and again when the words were just not flowing. Then again most of the time I simply fall back on the all time favorite performance enhancing crutches of every writer -- the dictionary and thesaurus.

Someone should fine me 3,000 words and make me sit and watch all my fellow writers type away their own lunacy for the next ten articles, but totally ban me from participating. I will just call it a vacation; I mean at least my carpel tunnel can take a rest while I sit these next few out.

If doctors can use them to help treat their patients who suffer certain ailments then why should we begrudge an athlete from learning all the facts about them and saying yea or nay on their own to using them?

I say make them legal in sports, let them all use them and finally just level the playing field back to zero. After all, if everyone is on them it will provide no real advantage over another player.

Just like when mom said nothing about the guy you were dating simply to spite her and so it came back to bite you in your own ass, if one random hitter will be just as awesome as the next there is no fun in doing it anymore. All the players can then just quit and go back to the good old days of only winning or losing when a bookie says to.

Photo credit, click picture to be taken directly to Photobucket site.

Move the Car

Yesterday I watched as the rain poured down off and on all day, lightening was striking all over and I got zippo work done because I booted and shut down the computer so many times I finally just decided to forget it and chalked it up to an extra vacation day. When Matt got home from work we were supposed to go pick up my Mom so she could take us out to dinner for my upcoming birthday. There was another pouring soaker that started a few minutes after he got here so we decided to wait for the rain to subside before venturing out. Since we are weather freaks we went to the balcony door to watch the lightning cross the sky and check out the “river” flowing down the side of the curb.

A car drove up the street and we watched in disbelief as a wake of white caps followed it. The majority of our street view is blocked by trees and the building next door but seeing the swishing water this far up we knew the street must be flooded. The journalist in me grabbed a camera and flip-flops and ran outside to see the action.


Our street runs perpendicular to a creek known as Mill Brook. The town was incorporated back in the 1600’s and a mill known as the Old Schwamb Mill was built on the Brook in 1650. That mill is still working today and I have no doubt it was double time yesterday.

In the photo above the orange barriers were blocking off a part of the street under construction for the past couple months. The ironic part is that two of them floated all the way down to the bridge and became stranded right in the middle of the road; a perfect location to block traffic from driving through the flood. The little red house and the white house next door had residents home at the time and they all came to their doors laughing because, what else could they do.


I have no patience for idiots as most of you know. I wish no harm to come to anyone but when there is actual moving water flowing across the road at a fairly rapid pace, and a left turn that could have been taken in lieu of driving through that water, my only wish is that your car stalls out and the fire department charges you to come and rescue you from your own stupidity.

In order to get away from the morons who thought they were invincible enough to drive through this raging rapid I decided to walk down through the parking lot of the building next door which borders along side the brook. This little guy came and stood not 2 feet from me. I think he was a bit shaken by the incident too because he kept looking up at me with eyes that said ‘I was not even born when this happened the last time ten years ago so this is kind of freaking me out’. I decided to call him Quack.


Finally I will leave you all with some video I took while down in the parking lot with my buddy Quack. He enters the frame right at the end of the video, our first encounter with each other. We both watched for a while but then my grumbling tummy and full camera card got the best of me so we took off for dinner hoping the fat rain drops beginning to fall again let up before we got back home.