Miscellaneous Musings on my Little Ones

I haven't had much sitting down time for writing stuff, but really quickly (I hope) I have a moment and wanted to relate some things.

First, my smart, smart little daughter (who is five years old now) and I were playing a little computer game the other day. In it, the main character (PuttPutt, if the name means anything for you) loses several items through a time portal, and is told by his wacky scientist friend (who created the time portal) that the time portal cannot be closed until all items have been returned to their present time.

After a series of age-appropriate obstacles, PuttPutt is able to retrieve all of his items, returns to his own time, and the time portal is closed for good. However, in the course of his travels, PuttPutt acquires an oil can from the Old West that he used for various things. The oil can travels with him to the present, even unto the closing of the portal; and Joanna had the presence of mind to ask why the oil can did not need to be returned to *its* time as well. Personally, I had never given it any thought -the emphasis of the game, after all, was to return the four *original* items lost, and not any that had been acquired along the way. But her question was valid, and I told her so. What a smart girl!

On another matter, little Michael (coming up on twenty months old) is becoming a gadget junkie. We went to New Year's Eve party at a friend's house (which was a beautiful home, by the way!), and Michael was getting into all of the electronic gear he could find. First, we got him away from the upstairs computer, then from the downstairs computer, and then from the phone. But when he walked out of the bathroom holding their bathroom scale - with digital display - I just shook my head and laughed!!

I keep getting the sensation that there was something else that I was going to write, but nothing else is actually bubbling to the surface , so I suppose it will wait for another time. Bye!

Just DO It!!!

Here I am, FINALLY updating my blog again. Think of this as a "Truth in Advertising" testimony (it does, after all, tell you "NOToftenupdated" right there in the title...).

Not that I have anything of earth-shaking importance to say right now. Over the past ten months or so, I have thought about adding a blog entry now and then; and then I would think, "This isn't really important enough to break the silence, is it? I haven't even written about the move or the new house or anything like that." And another potential blog would burn out upon entry into the blogosphere.

So, time passed. And it seemed as if entries would need to be even more spectacular and amazing to merit publication... Well, I finally realized that nothing would ever be as grandiose as it "needed" to be. The only thing for it was to jump in and let the first shock reverberate as it will.

So here it is. Wah-hoo. A new entry. A fresh start. Another day.

Have you noticed how there seem to be two camps of bloggers? There are those who write (and write and write and write...) all their own material, and then there are those who want to send you to some link or other. I'm not saying anything about either one; just making an observation. And of course, there is the rare breed who does both....

I'm a hum-drum writer type, for the most part. I thought momentarily about being a linker, but then I thought about all the trouble it would be to go through all the other stuff out there to find just the right one to link to, the one that expresses just who I am at that moment. I'd rather write; it seems easier to me.

Okay, I have broken the silence, but it's late and I don't want to write too long because I'm tired (I get that way when it gets late; has that ever happened to you? I also get goofy - oh, wait, no.... that's just me anyway).... Hopefully, this will begin a new era in "Kathy blogging." Zippity-doo-dah!!! Good night.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

This morning I was not feeling well. I had gone to Mass last night to cantor, so I stayed home; and since Mark was singing in the choir, he left the children at home. We figured that the kids could watch the EWTN Mass and that would be roughly the same experience for them as attending in a church (from the vocal standpoint, anyway).

In a way, it was a little better from a “teaching moment” perspective, because I was able to talk to the children about the consecration and how the priest acts “in persona Christi.” I was in the process of telling them that when the priest says “This is My Body,” he is speaking for Christ; that the bread doesn’t become Fr. Martell’s body or Fr. Gabe’s body, but Jesus’ Body. The priest is speaking the words of Jesus, who is always the same, so that when His words are said, they make Him present. And they seemed to be getting it…

I was telling them all this as the first part of the Eucharistic prayer was being said, and then came the Moment: the priest got as far as “This is My…” AND THE CABLE COMPANY CUT THE PROGRAM FOR ANOTHER SHOW!!!!!!!!!

I was totally shocked and horrified beyond words!! I realize that the people in Birmingham who were actually attending the “real” Mass were not cut off in this rude manner, but *we* were! I turned off the television and just sat there for a moment; and then I started crying (I have three children – I cry at everything nowadays, I can’t help it). I said, “Poor Jesus!” in what I thought was a very low tone; but Paul and Joanna heard me, and asked me why I said that.

I told them that it was such a shame that here Jesus is, trying so hard to reach us – making us out of nothing; holding us in existence moment by moment; dying to save us; and all He asks of us is to once in a while tell Him “thank You” (OK, maybe that’s not *all,* but I was in the moment). And what do some people do? Cut Him out of their lives at the very moment of His greatest gift to the world, His Real Presence in the Eucharist!!

The children sat for a minute in silence, and then Paul suggested, “Well, we could still think about Jesus and the Mass, couldn’t we?” I told him that would be a great idea. Joanna chimed in, “Let’s try it right now!” And both of them closed their eyes and began to imagine the Mass. Paul said, “I see the pews!” And Joanna said, “Mommy, there’s Jesus!! There’s Jesus!!”

It was such a beautiful moment, and I am writing it down so that I will be able to read it again and remember it someday when I am feeling low. But since I feel weird writing things down like this if I am not sharing them with someone, I thought I would share it with you, too. Have a wonderful day!

It's Good To Be Homeless!

We did it!!!!

We are officially moved out of our old house and staying with my husband's parents while we look for another home. Whew!

Thank you, Lord!!! :^)

What Lifts Us Up

This accounting is actually about two different dreams from the same night. I even feel that I was given to understand their meaning, so I consider them especially important.

In the first dream, I was at a house with my extended family for some happy gathering, and – this is where dream special effects comes in so handy – even though the windows were closed, a wind started blowing through the house. Riding on the wind were several thousand balloons, each about two feet in diameter, and several thousand birds, about the size of pigeons. They arrived in sets, e.g., two hundred blue balloons followed by two hundred blue birds; then two hundred red balloons followed by two hundred red birds; 200 green balloons, 200 green birds; etc. They were all moving remarkably fast, and it was a testament to dream technology that none of the balloons popped in the little house, even though they were flying through the walls and lamps and couches. None of them flew through people, however. We were trying to catch the balloons, naturally (who wouldn’t want a big shiny balloon?) while trying to stay out of “poop range” of all those birds (not that any of the birds did anything, but how were we to know the capabilities of birds who could fly through walls?).

I don’t remember who it was, but someone standing near me caught one of the balloons; but not me. After all the balloons and birds had gone, which only took about a minute’s time, we all began to hear this strange sound: sort of like a warning siren, only higher pitched and all over the place all at once. Other than the fact that it sounded irritating and a little eerie, it didn’t bother me. But other people around me (NOT the one with the balloon, though) all faced the same direction and stood at attention while the sound was going on. Once it stopped, they stood still for another moment, and then they all turned toward the person with the balloon, and the few of us standing nearby who also did not seem to be affected. Everyone’s eyes now glowed with a red fire, and they began to come toward us. I “knew” in that way of dreams that we were going to be eaten alive – literally – by these creatures who until recently had been the people that I loved.

Fortunately, my brain decided that this was not where it wanted to be, and woke me up. Or perhaps it was the baby crying – it’s hard to say. In any event, the baby was crying when I awoke; Mark had already gone back to see which part of the baby might need attention, so I got his bottle ready just in case. That turned out to be the problem, so I spent several minutes holding the baby and propping up his bottle for him.

After he had finished and was sleepily ensconced in his crib once again, I returned to my bed and fell asleep again. At first, I didn’t think the second dream had anything to do with the other one because I was watching my older son play in a sporting event (it was either football or soccer, but for the life of me now I cannot recall which – it may have even switched back and forth in the dream or been some wacky combination of the two).

At the halftime, the wind began to blow and over the horizon came these thousands of balloons and birds again, in the same pattern as before. We thought that it was just a halftime show at first – albeit a rather spectacular one, especially for an elementary school game. The balloons came from a different direction each time the colors changed, sometimes even having one color beginning before the other had ended. Being the perpetual engineer, even in my sleep, I was wondering how they were able to get the wind to do that without the slightest hint of turbulence. Then I started to get a vague feeling that I had seen this balloon stunt in another dream (I realized that I was dreaming, but at the same time everything in the dream seemed “real”), although I did not remember what happened afterward at this point.

There was a playground near the playing field, with a free-standing slide – one of the neat tall ones. A friend and I had the idea to run to the top of the slide and catch a few balloons as we slid down. I caught two as I went down, but my friend didn’t catch any. There was also a reporter near me, and her photographer, who wanted to get a picture of me with the two balloons for the local paper to report the phenomenon. Just as I turned to give my second balloon to my friend, that strange sound began in this dream as well, and everyone (except for me, my friend, the reporter, and the photographer) turned in the same direction and stood at attention again.

For some reason that I no longer recall, my friend ran over to a trashcan to look for something she had lost, and by the time I got over to her, the balloon that I was going to give her had withered. The sound had stopped, and everyone turned to look at us. I tried to get my friend and the other two to run away with me, and thought they were behind me. I ran over to the slide again, and went up to the top. But when I looked back, some of the newly demonized people were converging on my friend and the other two, while another mob was heading toward me.

The wind began to pick up again, and it finally occurred to me that these balloons represented the gift of faith. Several other conclusions were also brought to my mind:
- Each person has to have his or her own portion of faith. Being around someone who has faith may protect you for a short time, but it will not save you in the end.
- Each person has to reach out for his or her faith while the “wind” of the Spirit is blowing. Once it stops I can’t give my faith to someone else by myself – it is for the Holy Spirit to give, not me.
- Each person has to hold on tightly to his or her faith. If I let go at any time, I will be dead – or worse.

As the people-things began climbing up the slide where I had conveniently trapped myself (duhr!), I “knew” that God wanted me to rely on my faith and let Him take over. I closed my eyes and jumped so that the wind could carry me, not really knowing (or even believing) whether it would. I don’t know where I went, but I knew that I was out of danger. I had a vision of several places in a fast-sequence sort of thing; places where I was taken by my faith, to be sheltered for a time before moving on to another spot.

I was allowed to wake up at that point, before finding out what happened to the rest of the poor world (I never found out what the birds were all about either, unless they were just another manifestation of the Holy Spirit). But it was clear to me that now I must tell all those I love – all those I can – PLEASE reach out for your faith while the wind is still blowing. God sends *so* many opportunities to find Him, in ways that are easy for us to grasp. Look for Him; He is waiting for you.

Realty Bites

Wow. I guess I really should update the site more often… it wouldn't take so long. Here is the latest house saga, Act III.

A buyer (Annie) tendered a contract on our house (the third contract on our house) at the beginning of October, with a closing date of October 31st. Things looked very positive: she had a checking account (pronounced “verifiable income”) and there were supposedly not one but two lenders willing to give her a loan.

On or around the middle of the month, our realtor (Kathy) got a call from the buyer’s realtor (Robert) asking if the closing date could be moved up to the 23rd. Great, we said, go for it! Well, the 23rd came and went – with no closing. The mortgage broker (Jay, from a company in Texas), with whom Robert and Annie had been dealing, said that the closing needed to be pushed back a day or two. Then we found out that the appraisal, which we had been told was not an issue for the loan, became a problem, because the contract price was $1750 over the appraisal price. We agreed to reset the price of the house to match the appraisal price, and thought that took care of the problem.

The “day or two” stretched out to become “back to the original date” of the 31st. The 31st came and went – with no closing. We found out that Annie was told on the 27th that she needed to have a certain amount of funds in her checking account for a certain number of consecutive days (7). She deposited the funds into her account that day, beginning the seven-day period. I found that particularly galling – they knew before the weekend that there was no way to close on the 31st, but didn’t bother to tell us about it until the supposed closing day.

Now the NEW closing date was going to be Monday the 6th of November. In the meantime, Jay admitted to Robert that what had happened was that there were (as previously mentioned) two lenders. The first lender was the one that had asked for a closing on the 23rd, but was only able to qualify Annie for a 95% loan. Since Annie needs a 100% loan, this was a problem. But now he was trying to go with the second lender, who was going to offer a 100% loan, which was why the appraisal became an issue so late in the game, and why they “only just” found out about the seven-day funds thing. They were trying to work up a whole new loan without telling anyone, including Annie!

That was what we had heard as of Wednesday, November 1st. That was the last day anyone ever heard from Jay, the mortgage broker. Robert could not get hold of him; Kathy could not get hold of him (even though, as the seller’s realtor and not the buyer’s realtor, Jay didn’t *have* to talk to Kathy anyway; but he had been talking to her because at first Robert was not telling us anything and we were having to find everything out through other sources); the title company could not get hold of him; etc.

On November 6th, we found out that – would you believe it? – we weren’t going to close… again. Kathy got the idea of getting the lending company’s name from the title company and calling them directly to find out what was happening. This company (located in California) told us that the loan was still in underwriting (Jay had been telling us all along that it was out of underwriting and that he had no idea what the hold-up was), and that they were waiting on a bank statement from last year from Annie. Kathy called Robert and told him about it, which was also news to him, and Annie faxed her statement within an hour of finding out this latest tidbit of news. I really feel sorry for Annie; she has been trying so hard to be prompt and do everything that needs to be done, and these jerks aren’t even telling her what she needs to get done. Anyway, we were told that – with this document – they would be able to wrap things up and we would close on Friday, November 10th.

Today is the 9th, of course, and Kathy called the lender to make sure that everything was set to close tomorrow as scheduled. I have to warn you to hold on to your hats - you only THOUGHT things were complicated before. Just wait. The “lender” told Kathy that since Annie was only able to provide one bank statement from 2005, and not all 12, she was only going to be offered a 95% loan, so they were trying another lender….

Now, just a minute, said Kathy, I thought that you told me that *you* were the lenders; what’s this about going to another lender? As it turns out, this company is really another brokerage firm, and that the reason no one was hearing from Jay was because he had given Annie’s loan to another company without telling anyone!!!

When Robert and Annie heard this, they finally decided that there are probably lenders right here in town that will be just fine, and have been pursuing that option. And I have to admit that I am even leaving out details that might get too confusing, if that tells you anything...

In the meantime, we are still waiting: still trusting that somehow this is what God wants for us, and still hopeful that everything will turn out for the best. But I have to say that the uncertainty of this situation is really not pleasant, and there are times when I would prefer for God’s timetable to speed up a bit.

I’ll post a nice BIG entry when we are finally homeless!! :^)

There was an old lady who tried to sell her house

Let’s see – where to begin? Once upon a time, there was an old lady who wanted to sell her house… well, actually that would be me. (Okay, it was really my family and I that wanted to sell the house, but that didn't FLOW poetically, you see?)

There was an offer put on the house, tendered with earnest money and a letter of commitment from a lending institution (one that our realtor had heard of, but not heard good things). We accepted the offer, since we were told that a letter of commitment was a guarantee of secured funds for a loan. We began to pack up the house, and we began to call the utility company, and the home security company, and the phone company, and the cable company, and the insurance company, and the moving company, and the babysitters for the kids, and so on.

The night before we were going to close, we got a call from our realtor that the other realtor had just called her because the lender had just called *her* to say that there were not, in fact, secured funds for a loan for the buyer. Now, this was especially frustrating news since this particular lender had been in possession of the loan application for this buyer for three weeks, but had not bothered to make sure that he could secure a loan until four business days before we were set to close. And when he found out three days before we were set to close that the buyer did not have a loan forthcoming, he decided to wait until the day before the closing to tell the buyer’s realtor. So here we were with a completely packed house, and we had to re-call the utility company, and the home security company, and the phone company, and the cable company, and the insurance company, and the moving company, and the babysitters for the kids, and so on.

This lender told the buyer the next day that, instead of the 30-year conventional loan that he had promised her, he could instead get her a 40-year interest only loan… Mark and I thought that sounded pretty scary for the buyer, but if she wanted to pursue it – well, it was her decision. In the meantime, the buyer’s realtor told us that they were going to try another lender (this one our realtor had never heard of). Lender #2 told the buyer that they could get her a 90% loan, which we were told would mean that the buyer would want to re-negotiate the price of the house to fit the 90% cost. We said that wasn’t a good deal for us, and to try another lender. (Apparently, this "90% loan" was really supposed to be a 90% loan paid to the lender, and another 10% paid to the seller. The buyer was trying to get out of paying us the additional 10% by having us lower the price of the house instead. But we didn’t find out about that part until later.)

So off they went to Lender #3: this time they went to someone who both our realtor and our lawyer recommended. The third lender was having trouble getting the loan application data, credit report, and appraisal information from the first lender. She would call Lender #1, and he would *say* that it had been sent, but the day would come to a close and no information would arrive. She was finally able to get the credit report information after a week of run-around, but it was so garbled as to be practically incoherent. She had been told that the credit report had been “repaired” by a subsidiary company of the first lender, and tried to contact the person who had done the repair to make sense of what she was trying to read. One point that she made was surprise that the buyer had been told that she could qualify for a loan at all, considering that she had filed for bankruptcy.

In the meantime, a little investigating was going on to determine what had happened with this first lender. It turns out that the company that he *said* he worked for does not, in fact, employ him. He was working under someone else’s name for that company, and is now apparently being sued by them for using their name without their consent. Oh, and the letter of commitment? It turns out that it is illegal to give one of those unless you have truly secured funds for them. That was why our realtor thought it was a firm offer, because it never occurred to her that someone was perpetrating fraud.

Our realtor actually called Lender #1 to see why he did that, and he said that he never would have done it except that the other realtor begged him to since the buyer was her sister. Apparently, that’s another law that was circumvented: a realtor is required to disclose if he or she has a special tie or relationship to the buyer, which this realtor did not do. And I would think that Crye-Lieke – who was the realtor’s company – had probably told her about that disclosure notice, and that she just ignored it.

Getting back to the main plot, at this point our realtor ran into an old friend who had recently been promoted to vice-president of the bank where she worked. Kathy (our realtor) told her friend about the situation, and her friend suggested letting one of her loan officers have a look at it. After all, there are supposed to be loans out there these days for just about anybody. Kathy told the other realtor to check out this avenue, as well, and so entered Lender #4 into the fray. They also thought that this woman should never have been counseled to buy a house at this time, and was getting iffy about being able to find an underwriter for a loan.

We found this out while we were at our attorney’s office, signing a power of attorney statement because we were going out of town. Just in case some miracle occurred and we were able to close on the house while we were gone, we gave power of attorney to Mark’s parents to sign for us and close the deal.

While we were on our way to our lawyer’s office, Kathy called and said that the other realtor had asked if her buyer could go with Lender #2’s offer for the 90% loan. We were seriously considering it, if only to get away from this mess and be done with it.

Kathy called again and said that Lender #1 had called her and asked if he could have another chance at securing a loan. He told her that he wanted to try for an FHA loan. Kathy said that we had had a previous offer, and those buyers had wanted to use an FHA loan, but the appraisal had specified repairs to the house that we were unable to take on the cost of repair for, so the deal had fallen through. Lender #1 told Kathy that he could get an FHA appraisal that would show no repairs needed…. Now, Kathy happens to know that once an FHA appraisal has been made on a house for sale, it is binding for any FHA offer on that house until it sells. So here he was again, offering to commit fraud for the benefit of a sale.

Meanwhile, Lender #4’s loan officer, too, was having trouble getting the needed information from Lender #1, and decided to pull his own credit report – an “unrepaired” credit report. That was when we found out that the “repaired” credit report had somehow erased not one but TWO court-ordered collection judgments against her for failure to pay a loan in a timely fashion. This meant that – from a legal standpoint – she *could not* apply for another loan until she had paid off these other two loans.

And then our attorney did a little checking of his own and found out that Lender #2 was an assumed name for Lender #1 – as in, it was the same company running under two different names!! That’s when we said that enough was enough, thanks but no thanks, don’t let the door hit you on the way out, the deal is off.

So, while I would like to say we are back to “square one” on the house, we are really minus several squares. As I mentioned earlier, we were completely packed and ready to go. So now we were being told to go back on “active” status with a house full of boxes! We have decided to be optimistic that another buyer will be coming soon, and have put almost everything into storage, to try to make the house more presentable.

No one has come by to see the house since it went back on the market – which is probably just as well since it is still quite a mess. I am hopeful that God is just giving us a little time to “tidy up” before sending our real and true buyer.

On a happier note, I mentioned that we went out of town; we went to visit my brother’s family in California for a week. It was so beautiful and peaceful there; it was the perfect antidote for all the insanity happening here. But would you believe that while we were visiting, my brother had to work for several of the days we were there because – can you guess? – their company was moving!!!! :^)

Have a great day!