I missed Friday on account of it being errand day, full of doctors and dentists. I tried my best, especially since I swore I wouldn’t miss any more posts, but it didn’t work out for me. Today I am back, and as mediocre as ever. Now, to play catch up.
The appraisal came back on our (hopeful) home. I was concerned about this, just slightly, since this was pretty much the only huge obstacle between us and the loan approval. This is considering that the cash gift doesn’t tank the whole deal. Most people agree we should be fine. Since we had the capabilities for a higher preapproval than we asked for, I hope that means we don’t have to worry so much soon. With our closing date approaching at the end of next week, I’m getting anxious that we haven’t heard anything yet. I’m mastering the deep breathing, since this entire process has caused my anxiety to spike. Soon. Everything with come together. It’s fate. This house would not come back to us twice if it weren’t meant to be. Right?
My comic venture is almost complete. I’ve gotten used to my awesome graphic tablet, and I can draw as successfully on it as I can paper. The next step is figuring how to add text in the program I am using. Currently I am working with Comicado lite, as I’m not sure about going with the full version just yet until I figure out if this venture is worth the time. (Not just monetarily, but enjoyment as well.) July 14, I hope to officially launch my first comic.
Other changes coming in July? My blog, which has mostly been focused on the house hunt, will be changing topics assuming the close happens as planned. It will focus on the obvious next step of the move: the updating and decorating of the home. With pictures included. I also hope to be able to restart my parenting/mom Hubpages, since the setup of the new house allows for double duty of stay-at-home parenting and work from home writer.
There are so many changes coming and I’m glad to have you guys around for this ride. With getting a now steady cash flow from my writing and getting this new home with my family, I feel like I’m living a dream I never thought would happen. I’m a published author (ebooks available on the Kindle, link on the sidebar “To Buy My Work”), blogger, and a contributor on a music website called Musikface. I couldn’t have achieved any of this without my husband pushing me to not give up on my dreams, which was a tough job for him at several points. Thank you guys for continually coming back and sharing this journey with me.
Tag Archives: Miscellaneous
Crime, Police and Little League
I debated long and hard with myself and my greatest critic/business partner/business manager/husband over doing this post. I was emphatically against the post he wanted me to do, but he did have a point that ignoring anything that could help people or inspire change and a call to action would be a disservice to my readers. I waited a few days to really stew on this and decide the best way to approach it. I ultimately decided that I did need to bring this up because there are a few issues that occurred that I really could not ignore.
I’m an avid goer to my oldest son’s baseball games. I get into it, which surprises me because I hate watching the sport and find it boring. But sure enough, when my son is out on short stop I jump high and clap hard with pride. Maybe it’s just because it’s my son and it’s my job to be entirely enthralled and supportive. The coach is fantastic with the kids and that’s hard to find in this overly competitive world. He’s not afraid to stand up for his kids if he feels like they were wronged, which is a great comfort to us parents to leave our children in our care. He shows a passion for the game that rubs off on the kids.
Last Saturday, we arrived at the field in Holyoke (which is the next town over) and found watched the 4 coaches playing with the team. To our eventual shock, we discovered two of them weren’t coaches; they were our umpires hanging out with the other team. Our coach greeted them and received a “we’re not going to have a problem with Chicopee today, are we?” We shrugged it off until pitches proceeded to go over our teams head and calling them strikes, to which we all thought and the coached expressed this thought, that if you are going to be so blatant in handing the game to the other team that it’s completely disrespectful to the game and our kids. In response to this, the ump exchanged some unkind words and then go ahead to toss our coach. Our coach stayed at the parking lot to watch the game and his son. To which he received a greeting from the police which the ump had called on him for “physical threats” which never happened.
Throughout this whole ordeal, even as we expressed that it was a fabrication, we kept getting the same answer: “We take whoever called first word”. This was where I immediately became enraged. If I wasn’t solely responsible for staying home with the kids, I had a list of questions to ask these police officers. “So, you’re a cop in #88 of the 100 most dangerous cities in America and you’re wasting your time on a little league coach who drove his wife and kid to the game and can’t just abandon them?” “So gang bangers and wife beaters are okay to walk the street, but calling bs when he sees it is an arrestable offense?” My final question and probably the most important one: “a man beats his partner bloodied and near death but she gives him a black eye. He calls the cops saying his partner hit him. The cops arrive and see his black eye and her unconscious and bleeding. Will she be hauled off in hand cuffs because he called first?” The cops looked angry that their donut run was interrupted and seemed arrest happy, threatening to haul in the coach and another mom for trying to reason with them. It was a ridiculously embarrassing debacle for them. By them, I mean “the City of Holyoke”. It showed me that the police in that city is useless, which is apparent because it is #88 of 100 dangerous cities in “all” of America. It also showed that those umpires are paid by the Parks and Recreation department to hand games to their teams, not saying that they intend it but they certainly don’t seem to care to stop it.
Our coach being punished would be a joke. If he does, on the grounds of “zero tolerance”, then shouldn’t that umpire be punished for his much longer list off offenses? I knew the city was crooked, which is why I avoid it at all costs. But if you’re going to be so consumed by apathetic corruption, could you at least pretend that you’re not watching drug deals go down without caring or not threatening a coach for informing an umpire of rules he should already know before taking the field? And the “whoever called first” rule is just an excuse for laziness and probably the number one reason your city is so dangerous. Just sayin’.
The Week Long Wait
When it comes to a lot of things, I can be patient. What I can’t be patient about are things that are entirely out of my control. I want to, I really want to, be able to sit patiently without obsessively checking my email or asking my husband if he had heard anything new about the house or appraisal. But that isn’t me. I obsess, I want to grasp the ball back into my own court so I can at least be a part of the control. I’m not that lucky, and it’s entirely out of my hands. And this makes me nervous.
By Friday we should know something about the appraisal, if not about the whole answer of whether or not we were approved for the loan. At least my nerves are doing better knowing that someone else I know had the same deal with a cash gift and went through the same company as us and it worked out. That gives me some hope, but I’m still overly cautious because things have a way of just not working out for me. Sometimes I get lucky, but mostly it’s my stubborn determination and cursing a lot at fate that makes things fall into place. You just have a to try a few things and see what works, I suppose.
But for now, I just wait. I have enough to worry about with my son’s baseball and middle school orientation this week to occupy my mind, as well as catch up on some writing projects. I’m glad we’re doing this though. This has been difficult and trying for us as a family and we have yet to argue or yell at each other during this process, which allows us to see how strong of a couple we are. If we can make it through this journey without so much of a scratch, as we did with our baby’s surgery, everything else should be a cake walk. That’s what I keep telling myself anyways.
Mr. Newsman, I Don’t Believe You
It’s a shame that the state of media and politicians are so sad that they have created an equal amount of brainwashed citizens as they have completely apathetic and mistrustful ones. The journalists are supposed to hold all politicians equally accountable for their terribleness, not vary accountability based on whatever channel you watch. Who’s being held accountable for anything if everyone only cares about their own bottom lines? The pundits, the politicians and the so-called journalists are all guilty parties to this.
I constantly talk about this here because it’s true. We should not have to read 6 different articles to figure out one news story. One channel calls Obama the greatest, another says he’s the devil and should be in jail. How about he’s just an incredibly misguided guy that surrounds himself with corrupt fools who then corrupted him. He’s not a devil. He might be a crappy president, but he’s not a terrible human being. And I’m not naïve enough to believe a politician is going to be honest with us. They just want to get elected and sell their beliefs to the highest bidder. Unfortunately for us, we’re not the highest bidder. We’re just the idiots that put them there. Except me, none of the people I’ve ever elected was put in office so I guess I have a clear conscience. Though I usually vote for people based on my agreement on their views, rather than party and my green party candidate didn’t stand a chance. And no, it wasn’t a wasted vote because since this isn’t a true democracy and I live in Massachusetts, the vote would’ve gone to the Democratic party anyways since no Republican president has ever won Massachusetts.
My case in point: Politicians, ignoring the constitution and lying to the American people since 1788. You shouldn’t be shocked by their lying, you should be appalled that no one cares and they get reelected. You should care that the news organizations fight for their own agendas and pockets instead of us, the ones responsible for a portion of their paychecks. Our bosses would fire us for not doing our jobs, why should they get overpaid for theirs?
And for the record, do not confuse this Bergdahl trade as being the biggest controversy with it being the most recent. The NSA thing is more important. The Benghazi thing is more important. This Bergdahl thing is probably the least of my worries in the grand scheme of royal screws ups in recent times. This was just something that was supposed to make people forget the whole VA screw up that blew up in their faces or worked exactly as intended.
Let’s close by admitting our own fault in this. Sitting back and watching awful thing happen is just as guilty as those doing it. Everyone thinks that their political party will be the next coming of Christ to save us and fix all our problems. I’ll let you in on a secret: they’re not. We should vote for people that we believe can do it, even if that means crossing party lines. They are, in general, all the same. Even as a registered Democrat, I cannot think of one Democrat I would want as president. Then again, I can only also think of one Republican I would consider a good candidate and he’s probably too smart to run. The other parties often have decent candidates, but they’d never stand a chance in the general elections. So I plead with you, be the change. Let’s take out putting letters next to the candidate’s name on the ballot box so you force people to make educated decisions. Let’s make sure we are able to pick the right candidate, not the party. We can start our own revolution and fixing our country if the politicians don’t want to.
Sometimes With Houses, You Just Get Lucky
It’s incredible to think that we started searching for our first home at the end of April. If things go well, in 23 days time we will be signing papers and having keys handed to us. Even as short of a journey that we’ve had, it was enough to give me some stubborn grey hairs and stress that raising two boys didn’t even manage to do. If things don’t go well, we’ll have to wait 60 days before reapplying for a loan and hope that our son’s school lets him stay there.
I don’t want to think about that. I would rather focus on positive thoughts. The seller agreed on fixes, which was more than we thought. We lucked out, especially since they added an “as is” clause last-minute on the contract as a “screw you” because they misunderstood how much we wanted for closing costs. I don’t know what our realtor did, but the fact she wiggled out of it for us was amazing. She did hint that she could take the seller’s very obviously newbie to the cleaners, and I think she did just that.
That was a huge weight off our shoulders. Now we have more money to spend on furnishing the household, and I can’t wait to start tag saling and hunting the thrift stores for our stuff. This means we are one step closer to getting into the house. Now we get to wait anxiously as we wait for the appraisal and loan approval. But the bank’s appraisal can’t be too far off from the city’s assessment, right? And we’re paying $30k less than the city’s assessment of the house’s worth. I’m pretty sure one of us is going to have a heart attack over this process.
We worked hard to get to this point in our lives. I want to believe that we deserve this because we’ve earned it. If nothing else, we deserve it because of the long list of things that have gone wrong in our lives and we took it like champs without complaints or asking “why?”. We’re ready to make this huge step in our lives and can’t wait until we can sit in our own living room with our own furniture and enjoying peace after all of this stress.
The Waiting Game and Other Weekend Happenings
Why does it seem this blog is all over the place? Because it is. The tagline does say “random rantings”. That’s not the entire reason. I don’t like being locked into a specific category in my every day life, let alone my career. This is probably why I enjoy freelancing as much as I enjoy my book writing or my blogging. Freelancing allows me to wear as man different hats as I can, with something new daily. Plus, the trick to blogging is to just write something. Anything really. If all I can think of to write about is how I think Asian food is amazing, you will get 300+ words of that. Not because I want to bore you with that but because something needs to be a place holder in case I have a moment of genius. Which leads me to today’s mash-up.
I get to wait anxiously today as we wait to hear if the sellers will fix the more major of the problems in the house. Granted these are fairly inexpensive things as far as home repairs go, but that’s money that can go to a better set of furniture or towards my dream double oven stove. The fact that the most expensive things in the house are brand new and will probably last until we move out makes it hard to walk away over, at most, repairs that will be under a thousand dollars. The only thing will be if the appraisal is affected by those repairs. Either way, we just have to cross our fingers and hope the keys are in our hands at the end of this month.
I’m a fan of television, especially the weirder TLC ones. I have to say that “Sex Sent Me to the ER” is a show that brings me great joy. I know, this makes me look equal parts evil and crazy, but I laugh pretty hard every week during the episode. It’s almost like a comedy show for me. I’m a sick soul. In other television admissions, that episode of “Game of Thrones” was the most disappointing episode I have seen. They made an epic scene into something comedic, and let’s be honest here. The best scene of the show involved a conversation about morons and beetles. This better not be a sign of impending failure of the upcoming last 2 episodes of the season.
The final thing involves a tiny blurb about etiquette at a child’s sports event, whether it be a practice or a game. Coaches volunteer and do not get paid for what they do and you should be grateful to them, not treat them like dirt because you signed them up for a commitment you have difficulties keeping. It’s not only a terrible example to set for your kids, it’s an awful one to set for others. Plus it just makes you look like a sad excuse for a person, because they are their on their own time with our kids. So if you’re “that” parent, just leave and not ruin it for everyone else. /endrant
There is my random mash-up for the day. I hope to see you on Wednesday, where maybe I’ll have a more interesting topic for you.
Houses, Careers… and Toddlers?
This month is going to be an overload of changes for my family. I’m lucky that I enjoy unpredictability and thrive in unknown situations, because I am trekking onward at full speed. I feel as though I’m being too calm about everything, which I’m not sure if the cause is my usual logical collective self or because my husband is anxious enough for the both of us. It’s probably the first choice since I do face major life decisions in a logical manner and not emotionally. I did only agree to actually get married, rather than be that forever engaged couple, by having my husband reason that it was wise financially to take the plunge as health insurance would be cheaper than two separate policies. I’m such a romantic.
The first major change in our lives this month is the graduation of our oldest child. Granted it’s a 5th grade graduation, but it’s a sad reminder that the cute years are over and now the stormy teenage years are quickly approaching. It’s amazing to see the young man he is becoming and I feel that I gave him a good set of values to start with and instilled at least a good work ethic in school and sports. I just have to cross my fingers that I did enough to make sure that he makes it through middle school and high school remembering everything we taught him. It’s scary to send him off with a school full of hundreds of hormonally imbalanced preteens and teens, but I’m trying to remain confident that he’s ready. He’s confident in his abilities and stubborn to remain himself no matter what. That eases my mind a little, at least.
The next major change is (hopefully) the move. From all the recent posts, you all know this journey wasn’t an easy one on my sanity. The inspection was no exception to this. If you recall Wednesday’s post, the inspection was supposed to take place yesterday which was a Thursday. Now I know you’re thinking, “oh no, the inspector didn’t show again?” Rest assured, the inspection did take place. On Wednesday. Not Thursday, but Wednesday. As in I get a call from my husband saying “The inspection started 20 minutes ago, how quickly can you get there?” But, isn’t it tomorrow? Nope, a miscommunication occurred and we were unprepared. After rushing anxiously, we arrived and luckily there was nothing majorly wrong with the house. There are a few support beams that need to be fixed, treatment of termites, and non-grounded outlets that need to be fixed. Though the fixes seem easy and cheap enough, we’ll still make an attempt to get the seller to take care of it for us. The asbestos tiles in the kitchen will need to be torn up and replaced, and the stove they were kind enough to leave doesn’t work. It was a no brainer that we are still moving forward, because that neighborhood and schools at that price was unbeatable. Now, we wait nervously for the appraisal and home that everything moves forward without anymore hiccups. The underwriter scares me because of the whole “cash gift” thing, but we deserve a break after everything that has gone wrong for us during this process. Hopefully we still close on the 28th, in only 21 short days.
Finally, I upgraded my Wacom Bamboo to the Intuos. I’ve decided to go ahead with plans to launch a web comic. I know that with a toddler at home and this process of home buying and moving and my other writing obligations, I’m over-filling my plate. This is especially considering my hubpages site remains untouched due to time constraints. I’m hopeful that the new home will be more conducive for working, especially working while staying at home with a very “active” toddler, so I can accomplish everything and keep up with my freelancing contracts. The only reason I can maintain this blog is because my Note II is large enough to work on and WordPress’ app is easy enough to use while running laps chasing said toddler. My estimations also count that setting up the comic and website will probably take over a month, which is perfect timing to launch another new site while fixing up a house and moving. Right? I will be sure to keep everyone up to date on the comic as I move forward with it.
Taking life in stride is important. You can’t control scheduling errors or anything else. My realtor told my inspector that I was a “that’s okay kinda gal” when I showed up frantically as she apologized. It’s true, but because life is way too short to stress over everything, not for a lack of care. And I was saving that for something going wrong with the inspection. The next chapter of this saga will be our journey fixing up the house and moving, assuming the appraisal and loan approval go through as they should. I hope you’ll continue to join me on this train and most importantly, I hope that I helped readers through their experiences.
The Saga Continues
I just have to keep saying to myself that things will work as intended. In a month, we’ll be living in our well deserved and hard-earned home that we worked hard to get. I don’t just mean “hard work” as in the work put in to provide a paycheck to provide a better life for our family. I also mean the hard work to get to the point we are now, after the grueling process of finding a home we love. Getting married wasn’t half the stress this is.
After the fiascos of last week, things seem to be taking a more positive turn this week since Friday. On Friday, we received more paperwork from the loan officer to sign our lives away. We’re hoping this is a positive sign that the cash gift wasn’t going to screw us over. On Saturday we handed over our deposit and signed the Purchase agreement for the house. The inspection has been rescheduled until tomorrow with hopefully better results than last week. And the house is no longer on Realtor.com, so maybe things are starting to turn around for us.
We probably won’t hear whether or not we’ll be approved for the loan until the appraisal, so we get to wait nervously for that. But first, we have to pass this inspection before we can even worry about how picky our loan underwriter is. After that, we can pace around hoping everything just works out. People do less and get more, so this should work out for us. At least, I hope so…
Until then, my body seems to be caving into this stress. The feeling of heart attacks and the pain of muscle knots in my back have sidelined my work out routine at a time I find myself stress eating. Luckily my metabolism seems to have kicked itself up so this hasn’t hindered anything too much. Just a month. I just need to last this month. Then I can start stressing about staying in the house without living off ramen for the rest of our lives. I’m hopeful that we will be okay. It’s exciting to get close to the end of this journey.
From Here We Can Only Go Up?
This is becoming such a roller coaster of emotions. First, we bid and lost the house. Then we and won the house. Then there was everything in between of conflicts and arguments. We thought it was going to be a smooth road after winning the bid but as Wednesday’s post showed, we hit a bump in the road with the down payment gift.
We have documentation that makes everyone but my husband and I more confident that our loan will be approved. We are very cautious about getting as confident as they are because it has been our experience that whatever can go wrong probably will. We’ll wait patiently but nervously until we hear back. Whatever will happen, will happen. Until then, we can at least make sure that the inspection can go well.
Wrong. We arrived to the inspection about 5 minutes late but we figured that the inspector would start outside. When we got to the house, we discovered that only the realtor was there with a look of anger. She was making phone calls, and informed us the inspector had yet to show up. After the realtor made several phone calls, she called the seller’s agent to get us the contracts to sign so maybe it wasn’t a waste. After 2 tried to email it, our realtor decided the inspector stood us up. We all agreed to go back to the office to sign our contracts. Easy enough, right?
Again, you would be wrong. The seller’s agent, who was apparently too inept to email the contracts to begin with, sent the contract in such a way that even my computer technician husband couldn’t figure out how to print it out. After nearly an hour of attempting this contract thing, we decided to call this waste of a day. My realtor looked as frustrated as we did and felt terrible that nothing worked out and offered to buy us dinner.
All these things are compiling into either a huge list of bad omens or making us go crazy to really appreciate the house when we get it. I suppose I do always say that anything worthwhile never comes easy. Maybe things will work out. Maybe not. But until we find out, we can cross our fingers and hope for the best. What’s meant to be, will be.
Just When Things Were Going So Well
I told my husband that things were going too well for us. We’re not the world’s luckiest people, and we’ve decided long ago that fate wasn’t exactly on our side. Whenever good things happened to us, it was like driving a car with failing brakes. For a while you’re happy and things go well, and then suddenly everything gives out and crashes and all you can hope for is to survive it. We are survivors, and more importantly, we are fighters. We fight to get what we want in life and we’re willing to put whatever effort in that we need to do so. For us, nothing good comes easy. The weird thing is that we’re entirely okay with this. Nothing is worth it if you just have it handed to you. What’s the fun in not being able to put up a fight for yourself?
And so it happened with this house. It will be a sign if we come out of this ahead but a bad omen for the inspection this afternoon. We were given a gift of $5000 for the down payment of the house. We were told we were going to get this and informed everyone we spoke to that this was happening. You would they would mention something like “don’t accept cash”, right? Or in that first time home buyers class maybe? Or in any of the information that was given to us? Maybe we’re not as intelligent as we thought we were. For anyone else out there who might get a gift to help with your down payment: get a check or you might get your loan denied on account you might be a drug dealer or terrorist. It’s too late to fix this so we just have to hope for the best when the underwriter gets his or her hand on our application. It was going so well with everything coming in under budget and all…
There’s still the inspection hurdle to also get over. I’m not afraid of the appraisal because I can’t imagine the city assessing the house that much higher than it’s worth. The inspection is a little worrisome, as the section we’re moving to has very sandy dirt which is ideal for termites. This worries me because if there is damage, it might be a deal breaker. Everything that was in the eyesight of my very capable “handyman” brother, was seen to be in excellent condition. That makes me feel confident things will be okay today, just the ideal of spending $1000 on termite repairs and spray isn’t something that makes me very hopeful this will work out.
I’ve taken a stance on this: if it was meant to happen, it will. It worked out for when I said it about my husband, so we’ll see how it works out now. The house already came back to us once, so that has to be a sign. If not, it’s a cosmic joke and we’ll see it’s a sign that there is something better out there. At least, I hope that this is what it means, otherwise it means that whatever entity that is out there that controls whatever hates me. We will see how this works out, and cross our fingers to hope for the best.
bluishoblivion 