Blackmail and the Pink Toilet

My rental is in a 20 year old, fancy neighborhood.  It has HUGE custom homes, wide streets, perfect yards, pretty lamp posts, and we are the only family here, under 60 years old.  We have heard that the home owners association is strict.  I have lived in a neighborhood with a HOA before, and have been in trouble with one before.  I have been in all sorts of trouble, but not because I am devious or evil, just fiery, feisty and dyslexic (I write checks for the wrong amount or put change in the wrong parking meter).  I'll admit that what happen tried my patience and my mouth got away from me.  I am not blameless.

A teen-aged girl at my church has been fundraising for World Vision.  If you don't know what they do, you should find out, but mostly they feed kids around the world.  $1 feeds one kid, for one day.  I feel passionately about World Vision, and about my friend who is fundraising for them.  I love her!

She has raised $1200 so far, the local news paper is doing a story about her, and it has been in the nicest developments in our county, without incident

Here is her plan to earn money:  She purchased a toilet from the Habitat Restore.  She painted it hot pink and put flowers in the tank.  On the seat is a note explaining the project.  It says something like:  If you want the toilet out of your yard, make a check out to World Vision for $15.  Call the number on the lid, and tell us who you would like the toilet delivered to, and they will donate to World Vision, and so on, and so on, yard after yard!  Then it said,  (this is all in good fun, and if it is an inconvenience, we will come and get the toilet right now).

You know that toilet ended up in my yard.  You know my financially well-off, 20 years retired, neighbors weren't very happy.  As soon as the toilet was in my yard, I called the number, wrote a check and put it on the toilet seat in my yard, so everyone who looked, could see I was taking care of it.  I left the toilet in the yard, instead of hiding it in the garage, so that everyone could see it.  I was proud of my friend's creativity and caring.  I wanted to give everyone a chance to support hungry kids around the world.  I guess my faith in human kindness was a bit naive.   Anyway, I went on a long hike and returned about noon to my house.

There in the driveway was the president of the HOA.  I'll call her Lady A.  Her husband was in their high end car, with the engine still running.  Her friend was standing nearby.  Oh, no.....

We got out of the car and were as friendly as we are by nature, which is friendly.  Silas introduced us, again, and asked her name, again.  I observed she seemed upset, aloud.  She was shaking and nearly in tears (because of the toilet).  I asked her several question.
"Could you tell me more about what is going on?"  no real answer
"Could I tell you more about the fundraiser and what it is for?" no real answer, just very upset.

She had been called by several home owners in the development, complaining.  My plan was to ask her questions, until she deflated her own position, which was flimsy.

That was my plan.  What happened was I lost my patience, and my frontal lobes were unable to restrain my tongue.  Then, while I was listening to her fumble on, about the "eye sore", I saw red.

I went to the toilet, and picked up my check.  I held it up for Lady A to read, and pointed with my finger to the recipient of the check, World Vision.  I said, "Do you see who this check is made out to, by me?  That says World Vision.  World Vision feeds hungry children all over the world.  If you are the kind of person who is worried about this toilet being in my yard for a few hours, then you are a very shallow woman!"  I was back to seeing blues and greens, and there was Silas, with his mouth agape and his eyes wide, stepping back.  This woman is clearly my elder, and I should respect her enough to not serve her the honest truth with a fire poker, but I did.

For sure, she huffed off, saying I don't know her.  That is true.  I am hopeful that she is the most caring and generous woman who has lived, but her actions and words were telling me differently.  Maybe we caught her on a bad day?  We asked her not to leave, so that we could resolve it.  She had already called the number on the toilet to complain.

The mother of the sweet girl who is fundraising, told her she was coming to get the toilet, that we had nothing to do with it, and how could she make it right.  She was so nice.  Lady A told her some neighbors were going to call the police, as it was clearly blackmail.  I was hoping they would, to further the silliness of the whole event.   Lady A also said that donating to World Vision is something she might be interested in.

Later that day, I wrote her a letter to apologize for losing my temper.  I told her I felt compassion for her situation as a leader of folks complaining to her, and at the same time, the toilet was actually for a good cause.  I told her I was sad she went away mad, and that I want a friendly relationship with her.  I feel absolution for it, though I don't feel sorry I said, "shallow" to her.

Wouldn't it have been nice if to get rid of the toilet, instead of a lot of angry complaining, there were 20 checks for $15 in the toilet?  Do our worlds get smaller as we age?  I want to have world vision.

• If you haven't thought of donating to World Vision before now, consider it.  You can help someone who needs it, a kid.  You also might broaden your scope!

Glorified Chicken Coop

This is the "real life" portion of this blog.

I would like to preface/blanket, whatever I say next with how much compassion I feel for those who are homeless.  People without a home are in profound trouble, physically, mentally and likely spiritually.  This makes me questions what is useful help.

I have been cooking in homeless shelters and eating with the folks, since I started college (decades ago).  In my experience, seldom do you meet a homeless person who would benefit from owning a glorified chicken coop.  There are so many legitimate wrongs with this idea, I won't bore you with the list.  What isn't wrong is the loving, creative hearts of the people who care for the marginalized.

The reasons are vast why someone is homeless.  I could explain it to you, but you already know why people are homeless.  If you don't, go volunteer at your local soup kitchen or homeless shelter, and sit down with anyone there and just listen to them.

Real estate.  These micro-structures on public property are not real estate.  This is a fundamental problem with being homeless.  I see a man and woman who park their camper at K-mart & Raley's, every-other night.  Not real estate, just real life.  Is 'real estate' just the space you are currently occupying?

These mini structures (though a childhood fantasy) are unsettling.  I am only one (maybe two) events away from the tragedy of being homeless and I am VERY secure.  My mind tells me to take shelter, and prepare for it.  My body and spirit obey.  Any one of those ingredients can vanish, because life is hard.  What is 'real' about where I live, can vanish as well.

That is the tragedy, not that people can live without a house, but without a home.

I can sit at my computer and pontificate about real estate and housing statistics, but this is another side of the story.  When I look at my reflection through this hometown news story, I feel cut down the middle.  I would rather use the $110 to buy the person a sandwich every day for a few weeks.

Dream House

The 1st house we bought

Last night I was talking to a friend, who is in the middle of a housing mess, just a few skips behind us.  She  said something that made my imagination churn.  She wants to plan her life to her desires.  She is a reasonable and loving person, so her desire is to be able to pick her kids up, and drop them off at school every day (not world cruises and plastic surgery).  Her house has made it so that she isn't the mom she dreams and desires to be.  Her life is hard, because of home-ownership, and she is picturing her life the way she wants it.  It isn't selfish, in her case, it is selfless.


I wondered that for myself.  What do I want?  I have only been thinking how relieved I am to have found arsenic in the water, and not bought the house next to my parents.  (who by the way, tested their well water and it is all clear of rat poison, which I took as a favorable sign in our favor)  I realized last night, that without asking myself, "what do you really want?", I have no ambition.  I have no selfish ambition, and no selfless ambition.  I really am in denial.  


Part of getting out of the housing market was a step towards not letting my life, as much as possible, happen to me.  That is how we got into a mess partly,  in the first place.  Some of it was just bad timing, and some just blindly doing what we thought we were supposed to do.  Buy a house,  because that's 'what you do'.


On to my dream.  I would like to live in this house while my kids are growing and going to school.  I would like to clear a patch for a veggie garden, and bust a hole in every southerly facing room, so that light comes into the house from where the sun shines (it has been a long winter, and there are NO windows on the south side, it looks funny).  I would like this house to be ours, which means we would have to buy it, but I would like to buy it for a screamin' deal.  Those are my dreams, at the moment.


I think that is a good marriage of dreaming and denial.  

Homeownership

XKCD  I think this may be me.  I do love power drills!

Homeownership

Double-Dipping

In my last post I noted that there are some fundamental flaws with buying a house now.  The main one is our immediate comfort (which is short-sighted, I get it).  The second is that the housing market continues to plummet.   The value of homes continue to decline.

One reason to stay in our rental, even if it is being foreclosed on, is if we buy something now, it will continue to lose value.  It is true we are nearer the bottom of the trough than before we sold our other house, but there is no end in sight.  If we buy a house now, chances are the house will be worth 10% less by 2012.  If we buy a house for 200K, it is a loss of $20,000 (I babied you and did the math).  I know that loss is for the short-term, but wouldn't I rather buy that same house for 20K less next year? YES, yes I would!  We are sacrificing housing stability for value.

The way I look at housing and jobs have changed from the way I was raised.  My grandparents and parents all had nearly the same jobs and same houses for all of their adult lives, and certainly all of my life.  I have lived in 4 states, 6 houses, and my husband has had 3 jobs, and we are in our mid-30's (I have had the same job: 2 kids, but even they are growing, and then I'll get a paying job).   Instability is the new normal.  At first all the unsettledness was scary, but you can't really scare me now.  Holding on, when things are unsettled is hard, but not scary.

That brings me to the title of the blog: Double-Dipping.  When I think of this term, I see my 9 year old nephew devouring ranch dip with one carrot.  For some reason I don't think that is what the term means for real-estate.  The news today was bad for people who use their home value as a means of provision.  Prices are going down again, or double-dipping.  Values went down a few years again, and are going down more, which seems more like a steady decline, than dipping, to me, but I don't make up the terms.

The news is good for those of us holding on, and saving money by renting until our credit gets better, or we've saved the cash to buy a house in toto.  My savings account goes up, housing prices go down.  It might not be as long as you might think if things keep going the way they are going.

Arsenic and a New Place

The story continues.  We did find a house that would be good for our family.  

Good enough. 

There are several fundamental problems with looking for a house, for us.  The main one is, the house we live in is huge, well kept, right in town, beautiful and cheap.  If we look at other houses, I just want to stay here.  It isn't an option to stay here, so mostly I'm in denial that we need to move. 

I HATE MOVING.  

Moving here, we knew we would have to move, so again, I am in denial. 

We made an offer on the good-enough-house.  It has a beautiful perennial garden, roses, clematis and daphne. It has enough room for us, a wood stove, a 2 car garage, a studio/office/workshop and is next door to my parents.  Those are all reasons to move there.  

Here are the reasons not to move there, some are very superficial, but humor me:  

• The neighbors (besides my parents) have big problems, which require visits from the sheriff. 
• The inside requires, in my opinion, updating.  There is gross carpet, and patches of wood flooring.
• There are only 2 bedrooms, and we have 2 kids, who are different genders, so we were going to have to put in a wall in the super-large second bedroom.
• The architecture isn't ideal.  It is 80's Creative, or that is my name for the style.
• Finally, there is arsenic in the water.

Some of the concessions we were making by moving/buying this house, we could live with.  Updating a house is just uncomfortable for a while, then it is over.  The inside of a house is where we live, and the outside was not terrible, just 'unique'.  We have lived in neighborhoods where the authorities visited often, and we were safe, and were happy.

The last inspection we had was the well inspection.  Of course it was the last one, after paying for all the others.  The poison in the well was a deal-breaker.  There are expensive filters we can install, and then every-other year we can spend a mortgage payment to have the filter cleaned.  I decided I didn't want to lay in bed at night wondering if my expensive filter was actually cleaning the water, and my 8 year old's bath wasn't full of rat poison/remnants from the Gold Rush.

We canceled escrow last Monday.  The only loss was the cash we spent on inspections.  It is a tiny loss, and after short-selling our other house, the magnitude of loss is irrelevant.  Escrow is like kissing a girl to see if you like her, you don't have to marry her.  

Also, escrow has nothing to do with crows.

*On a tangent, if you have never seen Arsenic and Old Lace, you should.  It is one of my favorite comedies.

Definition of Insanity

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

I think I might be crazy.  The heart/pocket book ache of last year, and selling our house still smarts.  Who in their right mind would willingly walk into another situation again?  Committed again to a house?  Silas would.   That is Silas' hand signing his name, with a date!

We have to move, it's the whole truth.  We can fudge the 'when' of moving, but we have to do it.  We decided that we would keep a tentative-eye on what is for sale.  Last week we found a modest house, at a modest price.  

It has a shop and an office for Silas' small business.  I would want nicer flooring, and appliances, but the price is right, that isn't such an issue.  The real selling point is the location.  The three acres touch the land that I grew up on.  My parents are a simple walk through the trees, past an orchard.  What a fun childhood, running over to grandma's.

There are many things that might not work out.  We only made an offer.  There might be termites, there might be bad water.  If those are problems, we can stay in house in purgatory.  The pool sure helps!