TC Larson

Stories and Mischief

No Nutshell Here

30
Nov

I know I am not alone in this strange housing crisis, and there are those on the news that tell us we are coming out of the housing crisis, but I sure feel like I am still in the deep deep dark dark deep dark pit of the housing crisis. Allow me to elaborate…

At the end of September of 2009, my husband and I put our house on the market. Ah, what high hopes we had then. My hubby started his new job in January, which meant that he spent much of the week staying about an hour away, and came home only one day during the week and on the weekends. Did I mention that we have three young children? We did the long distance thing until the school year was done, then the kids and I packed up a bunch of stuff and we all moved into my in-laws house. We stayed there all summer, with nary a nibble on our house, which was still on the market. As the summer drew to a close, we finally had our first offer on the house. Of course, it was a…creative offer. It was complicated, but it involved the buyer moving in early and securing financing after a special date further into the fall. I know, I know, you’re saying that it sounds dicey, and I agree, but we hadn’t had any other possibilities, so we decided to gamble and accept the offer.

Now we come to present day. We discovered last week that it is extremely unlikely that the buyer will be able to secure financing and qualify for a loan to buy our house. But she is living there currently. We are definitely in a pickle. We technically aren’t due to close on the so-called offer until mid-January, so we have a little time to wait it out and see what is going to play out. But the chance of actually selling our house to the current “buyer” is very small.

It’s a tricky business. Do we get rid of her and hope to find someone else to rent the house? Do we rent a place ourselves now that we know we won’t be able to buy a house of our own? Do we go back to the long-distance scenario that we did last year? And since the current arrangement is all under the guise of an “early move-in agreement” as part of a purchase agreement, once that purchase agreement expires, so do the terms of the situation with the buyer. How should we go forward with any of this? Are you getting a headache yet, Gentle Reader? ‘Cause I certain have felt sick about it all. Unfortunately, there’s no resolution to this story, no denouement or unravelling of all the twisty strings. I wish I could tell you that it all ends up great, everybody wins, and things are even better than we could have imagined. And in my head, I know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, but I gotta tell ya, if He would just work those things out a little faster, that would make it a lot easier. That probably sounds whiney, and I am trying to adjust my attitude, I just don’t have it there quite yet. It is hard to see the way God is going to work this all out, even though I know He is active in the world and in my life. Patience is something I have to keep on learning, over and over again, my entire stinkin’ life. And here I thought I had already learned a lot about it from having kids. Sheeshkabobs. Guess I’ve got further to go than I thought I did.

I am keenly aware of the ways my situation could be immeasureably more dificult than it is. I hesitate to be honest about how hard this is for us, especially knowing how dire other people’s lives are. There are many people who don’t have family to crash with, who don’t have a supportive husband to help share the burden, and who don’t have a group of friends who sympathize and try to help as much as they can. I do have those things. So should I shut up and quit feeling sorry for myself? Probably. And I will. But I just had to have a week of being down-in-the-dumps. I will do my best to rally, Indulgent Reader, and I hope that future posts will be highly optimistic and generally uplifting and positive. *Here you must imagine the sound of someone blowing an enthusiastic raspberry.*

Can I Just Say Ufda?

3
Nov

Has anyone else tried looking for a house to buy lately? Holy shnikes, it can become all consuming! The possibility that there might be a new listing, that your online search might not have had the right parameters, that you’ve used the mailing address rather than the city address, that you’ve limited yourself to a specific area and if you just went one mile out from those parameters…well, it can drive you to your computer for endless hours of research. Then when you tag on the actual showings you might arrange, and since no one has come up with a real-life version of the Star Trek transporter unit that I’ve been made aware of, you have to allow some time to get between houses. It can easily cost you weeks of your life, maybe even more.

And then there’s the mental games you can play with yourself about downpayment options (have any of you Gentle Readers ever heard of someone coming in with 20% down who was not independently wealthy? Just wondering.), percentage rates, closing costs and the like. You could spend more weeks trying to compare costs and rates in any of those areas too. That’s why I’m proposing a change.

I think there should be live-in realtors. Doctors used to make house calls, I think realtors should come with a blow-up airbed and hunker down on the floor of your living room for a week. It would be much more efficient, especially for those who are truly ready to make a decision about a place. Between the realtor and the buyer there would be better communication, more dedicated efficient energy expended, and some real friendships could even grow. Some people meet their spouses in stressful situations and are bonded for life by the experience, why couldn’t your new best buddy be your former realtor?

It seems like it would work for everyone. The realtor is motivated because they don’t want to spend any more time at your house than they have to, so they can dedicate all of their time to finding the right house for you and closing the deal. Meanwhile, you can squeeze every last drop of real estate knowledge from them, examine the various subtleties of short sales vs. foreclosures, and even send them out for Chinese food, should the opportunity arise.

Admitedly, this could also cause quite a bit of tension. What if your realtor snores terribly and keeps you up at night? Or what if your realtor is deathly afraid or allergic to dogs and you have two of them? Then there’s the possible sharing of a bathroom and that comes with obvious potential for awkward situations. I’ve seen many of the Glamour Shots photos of realtors, and I’m guessing they take a lot of time to get ready for the day each morning. You could really use a second bathroom. But maybe that’s why you’re moving in the first place! Ah, what a circle we’ve drawn here.

I hope that you are comfy in your cozy home right now and don’t have to do any selling or buying. Or maybe if you must buy, I hope you don’t have to sell. It can be so discouraging, especially if you like the house you live in. When other people don’t want to buy your house, it is hard not to take it personally.

So to any of you who are buying or selling a home, stay strong, my comrades, stay strong.

2+2=19

7
Oct

2+2=19

Ooo, I just got a new phone. Well, when I say “new” I more accurately mean “new to me” since it has been used by another individual, a lovely friend with beautiful hair who gave me a great deal. Anyhoo, it is a Blackberry (and no, I am not a paid spokesperson so there is no need for any full disclosure or anything so I just tell you so you know what we’re working with here – don’t you have to be some kind of super-something in order to be a spokesperson? How could I get in on that gig??) and quite different than my previous phone. And I am very unfamiliar with how to work it. I think I might be able to call someone, and I did figure out how to play solitaire, always essential, right? But here’s the question I’ve got: why oh why do I have to pay for two lines individually rather than getting to add a line for $10 or whatever? And if, technically, one could add another line for the aforementioned $10, why wouldn’t a bunch of friends and family get together, get a plan with unlimited minutes, and then just pay $10 plus chip in for the initial line in order to have super cheap phone service??

I actually have friends who banded together with their neighbors and went in on a dumpster for their alley rather than each family paying for their own individual trashcans and garbage service. True story. And what a great idea! It makes so much sense; why pay more separately than you would collectively? For the convenience of walking to your own driveway rather than an extra fifteen feet to the dumpster location a couple doors down? Certainly that can’t be the deal. I think it is because we as Americans in general think we are flying solo. It’s the whole bootstrap idea of doing a thing on your own without help from anyone else. Like that somehow makes you stronger than someone else. But what if that’s your natural bent? Wouldn’t it be stronger of you to receive assistance of some sort? But I digress. I’m more interested in the concept of community and working together to make us stronger than we would be individually. It’s like the groupon idea.

There is a growing movement for people to work together to negotiate better prices on services or merchandise. So in China, apparently, people show up to the store that sells siding for your house, for example. You, gentle Reader, probably know more about this than I do! But these people go somewhere together and say, “Look, we all want siding, and we’re willing to buy it in bulk from you, but you better get us a good deal.” Then the employee/manager comes up with a certain price. And if it’s not good enough, the people demand a better price. Maybe the manager throws in some fascia (you would never know what fascia is unless you’re in the industry or you’ve had to fix it on your home! The word gives no hint as to its identity!). And the people decide if that deal is good enough or not. If it isn’t, they stage what amounts to a sort of sit-in to get a better price. “No, no, we won’t go!” And they hang around, taking up space and applying pressure for the store to give them what they want. It’s not like the store loses out in the deal – think of the sales they’ll generate if they lower their price but give that price to tons of people instead of giving a higher price to only a couple people. How cool is that?

And I’ve seen advertisements for a similar idea here in the United States. Some company contacts a retailer and works out a group coupon, or “groupon”, for that day only, and anybody who wants to can use that discount. Now, if that coupon was on milk, bread, bananas or graham crackers, I would jump on it in a heartbeat. I can’t keep those things stocked in the house. Or diapers? Hook me up! I do hope we’ll be done with them at our house soon, but until then, I’d love to pay half as much! Maybe I could arrange a groupon for Christmas presents this year instead of trying to make mittens out of old sweaters (didn’t work) or knit hats for family (ended up being more of what can only be described as a tea cozy or toaster cover of sorts). I think everyone would thank me. Power to the collective people!

http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2010/09/29/7-things-you-should-know-about-groupons.html

Helpful for Learning an Aussie Accent

1
Oct

My kids have been without fancy cable TV for most of their lives, but this summer they’ve discovered the merits of the Sprout channel. It has clean programming without violence or sassy language and they can watch it without much editing or channel flipping from me. But Dirt Girl World has got to be one of the weirdest programs that’s been on during our limited TV time.

When we watch it I regularly experience the heebbiejeebies. The animation is baffling to me — it is part regular film, part animation, part puppet or something kooky. I can’t take my eyes off it, but not because I think it is so great. It is mostly because I keep trying to figure out which parts are real and which are drawn and how did they do that??

And then there is the matter of the Australian accent. The main character, called, appropriately, Dirt Girl, has a mystifying accent that no one else on the show shares. It’s just her. And when I try to copy it my kids all yell for me to stop immediately. It even drives them to anger! They’ve rushed me at least twice, trying to silence me! Why, how could you deprive your dear mother of the enjoyment of trying to copy a dificult Australian accent?? When I try it without the help of a recent episode of Dirt Girl, it usually lapses into a terrible Irish/Cockney hybrid that wouldn’t order my a Guiness in any pub worth it’s … Guiness.

Take a look and see what you think!
http://www.dirtgirlworld.com/

P.S. This woman does an amazing samping of accents. She does a couple Australian accents around 1 min 18 seconds. You’ll think you can do it too…until you try!

Oooh, This is Surreal

1
Oct

After months of hemming and hawing about it, here we are folks. We’ve got ourselves a baby blog. Cigars for all my friends! Aw, idden it cute? Well, we shall see. It may look more like your great-granpappy Mortimer right now, but time will tell. It may grow out of those big ears and end up looking like quite the hunk.

My dad often asks the clarifying question: “Do you want affirmation or feedback?” which I think is a great distinction. I want both, doggone it! and heavy on the affirmation! But as I try on this blog thing for size, I would value feedback. Just go easy on me.

The plan is to do one of the things that I love best: read, and then tell you what I thought of what I read, thereby saving you, Dear Reader, time and energy that would have been wasted on reading time-suckers rather than books that are worth it. I know you’re busy. I’m here to help. There may be other things that I experiment with, and I will let you know how that turns out, again, trying to save you, Dear Reader, from making the same mistakes as I have had to muddle through.

I’m sure there will be some books I review that you have already chewed through, but there are bound to be a few you missed. And if you’ve got suggestions, let’s hear ’em!

Time to get out of the virtual world and go read one of those books we’ve been talking about. I’m in a bit of a drought, so it may end up being the back of a box of Toasty O Rings with Colored-Sugar Drizzle, but it will have to do!