"Short" Sale __ The Ultimate Oxymoron

We are on the verge of closing a short sale escrow and how they came up with this term is a wonder. I realize it technically means that the bank agrees to accept less than the seller owes, that's fine. But "short" certainly does not mean short "time".

For example take our short sale from hell. We opened the escrow in October last year. We have been going round and round with them, let's call them bank X, ever since. In another week that will make 8 months.

First it was the asset management company that X hired to clean out these problem mortgages. That experience was agony. Our 'rep' was a bill collector. He harangued, belittled, yelled, and threatened just as if we had defaulted on a car payment. For weeks on end something extra had to be performed before they would agree to close ___ some new form, a "missing" doc (which had been sent three or four times), a new rule the bank had implemented. Everything was our fault, or the buyer, or the seller, or the buyers agent. The asset management rep never erred. This went on for months.

Finally, I gave up screaming at him and called bank X directly.

Despite the encouraging sign of actually speaking to a pleasant human being this did not turn out well. Each person who answered was apparently transferred the next day to a different desk because not only were no calls returned but "that person no longer works here" and "no, I do not know where he/she is now". It even got to the point where, if I got demanding, the person would give out a phone number that when dialed, yielded "we're sorry, the number you dialed is no longer in service."

At the last, just this week, I finally landed a "team leader" at bank X who assured us she had not only the power but the desire to wrap this up. When I asked for her phone number (my caller ID showed 972-526-0000) she explained she was training people and had no assigned desk or phone. And when I called the main number nobody knew where she was or how to leave a message. I did eventually have someone else call us to say that she was out on vacation and that he would be happy to finish what she had begun. Unfortunately however he had reviewed the file and discovered many and several errors in it that prevented him from signing off on it. The entire deal would have to be done over again from the top down.

This is a dark, black hole. Living things get sucked into this and are not seen again, at least in their normal, healthy state of mind. We in the business have heard horror stories about short sales and now we are come to believe them. My hope is that is was just this particular bank in our case. That other banks are organized and actually motivated to sell a home that is in distress.

There is no explanation I can offer to explain why a bank or asset company would intentionally stall and prevaricate as they both did with us. I can imagine the asset rep being on commission and trying to glean every nickle out of the deal but why purposefully delay every single step? It did indeed seem premeditated and to the detriment of every one ___ the sellers, the buyers, the agents, even the bank. I keep seeing our billions in bailout money floating in and out of their windows and wondering why they can be training and no one is learning anything.

Recycling Pickup, Monday June 7

25 May 2010

Your support is appreciated. Thanks to all of you this company can grow. We now have better hauling capacity, and since this service has grown, I made the goal to expand by purchasing a trailer. Thanks to your support that goal has been achieved! So now we can grow bigger! The support has been wonderful, but we need more to get this really working. I will be in the community in the next week (weather permitting) handing out flyers. So if I come knocking it will just be to shake your hand and say thank you personally.

We have grown from the first pick-up of 2 houses to having 45 houses recycling on the sixth pick-up WOW! We need as many people as possible to participate and I encourage you to tell your neighbors. We can make this a true curbside recycling program that all can use.

I have to report all recycled material to the state which goes on the yearly report of GREEN communities to live in. So let’s show the country how green we can be. Soon with your support I will be able to accept more types of reusable items, like the paper, cardboard, etc. So once again thank you all for your support. Also remember that we pick-up the 1st and 3rd Monday of the month so there won’t be any pick-up this coming Monday. The next pick-up will be June 7th, 2010. We accept all aluminum, plastic, and glass. Please rinse food from containers.

Thank you,
Jason Robinson
530-938-9967
wayoutrecycling@yahoo.com
wayoutrecycling@att.net

Day Two. Of Two.

We said goodbye to our son along with 50 or more of his friends on Thursday and now it is done. Some of his ashes will go under the flowering crabapple tree that we planted in our yard in his memory and we will enjoy looking at that for a long, long time.

Sympathy cards are coming in the mail and we are touched. People from all over are taking the trouble to say how sorry they are. Some never even knew Pete but their tenderness and caring warms us.

I still cry a little, like when I write stuff like this, and I don't trust my voice right now. He was such a happy part of our lives, especially when he was at the top of his game. He was a natural __ smooth, conversational, always ready with a good joke. His smile in fact is one of the great memories we and others have of him.

Sally and I feel transformed. Each day feels different now. This may sound stupid but even the colors and smells are new. The "pressing" stuff doesn't seem nearly as urgent somehow and the little beauties seem much more noticeable. We heard from several parents during this experience who had also lost a child and now we feel close to them. There simply does not seem to be anything as sad.

Signing off on this now. He would want us to go on and love the life we have left.

So typical of him.

Writing an Epitaph for a Son

Sometimes parents lose a child . . . war, auto accident, drugs. I don't know if it matters how but if they leave suddenly or violently it simply feels wrong for a child to die at all. Unjust somehow, because parents like everybody else, age and die in their time. It's the natural course of things. But not before our kids. THEY still have years left. Adventures to have, loves to cherish, children to treasure.

Sally's mom for example is 100 years old and needs to die. She has lived a full and exciting life outlasting two husbands and one of her own children yet she lingers on, no longer in command of her body or her mind. If she actually realized the quality of her life right now she would be embarrased and sad, but the dementia and senility prevent that and so she just goes on living because she has no choice.

But we lost our son last week and like all parents who suffer this, we are changed forever by the sudden loss. Pete was 48 years old and had battled depression for the last two or three years (like his wife Pamela we didn't spot it at first, it took time to reveal itself). Before, Pete had a productive and exciting 16 year sales career and he was on top of the world . . . traveling to trade shows, going to high-end training classes in far-away places, golfing with business associates, and of course, fishing.

Pete loved to fish. He even owed a Bayliner at one point but even near the end of his sales career he would go out on Lake Siskiyou almost every day after work. He would bring fresh trout or bass home and he was a master at the barbeque, his specialty being brined chicken or turkey.

But then an old neck injury raised up from his past and serious pain became a part of Pete's daily life. At the same time pressures from new work responsibilities suddenly grew hard to the point where his work career began to turn from fulfilling and challenging to overwhelming and impossible. That's when his emotional health began sliding downhill. He grew distant and troubled, often missing family events and showing increased signs of unhappiness. And his physical health deteriorated at the same time . . . the neck pain grew steadily harder to endure, he was diagnosed with mild emphysema, and even contracted MRSA.

The demons in his mind created unbearable anxiety and fear to the point where he became a danger to himself and he went three times to the mental health floor at Rogue Valley Medical Center. Each was a frantic drive to Medford which probably saved his life at the time. Electro-shock treatments, psychotropic drugs, intense psychiatric therapy, even acupuncture. He tried them all.

I honestly do not believe that the system failed Pete, though many think that when it comes to a loved one who did not respond to treatment. The doctors did what they could but the fact is that medical science still cannot define the true causes of depression and anxiety disorder and therefore they are limited in how it can be treated.

In the end nothing worked. None of the anti-depressants, the therapy, the family support. It now seems inevitable but none of us wanted to admit that possibility. How could we? He was our son.

But he did. He left a note asking our forgiveness and explaining that he just could not continue the suffering anymore.

If you knew Pete or share a loss like this you are warmly invited to a celebration of his life beginning at 12 noon Thursday May 20 at our home at 5225 Muskrat Road in Lake Shastina.

Getting Antsy About This

Most of us here have ants and
there is probably widespread agreement that they are challenging adversaries. Some of them seem to be attracted to the sugar water that is in the hummingbird feeders as you can see in this photo and the feeder soon becomes overrun to the point where the humbirds just don't frequent the place anymore. How hard can it be to avoid this? They're ants for godsake.

So here they are trying to climb down the chain we use to hang the humbird feeder. The red cup-like device is full of water and intended to be a moat. Ants can't swim so therefore the path to the food is broken. The concept is simple and involves no chemicals. What could be easier?

Until it freezes at night. I spotted the little eskimos creeping across the circular ice field and down to the bonanza the next frozen morning. So out with the ice, refill the cup and wait for the next move like you do in chess.

Note the tiny raft of dead ants to the left side of the moat. The next development was that a mat of drowned ants forms and the living ones cross the moat to savage the sugar water again. This is not going to be as easy as I thought. Maybe I should take up chess.

Beginning to feel a little like the gopher-obsessed caddy in Caddy Shack I figure I will divert the deadly swarm BEFORE they reach the chain by parking a cap full of liquid Terro (poison they drink and carry back to the nest WHICH IS IN OUR ROOF !) and kill all the young. Here is what this clever idea looks like in action:
Note the pine needle connecting the chain to the CUP OF DEATH. This needle was soaked with Terro and intended to do just what you see . . . the little devils are going to drink their way to eternity!

Later I noticed a trail of ants moseying along our lawn border wood. They were coming from the house and the trail ended at a pine tree in our yard. So there is another colony in a different part of the house because right below where they enter there is a small accumulation of debris that appeared to be ground-up insulation. After a little checking it seems that they might be a velvet tree ant which either nests in the tree and vacations inside the walls of the house or vice-versa.

But once again the trail is the key so when I followed it to the tree it was a simple thing to encircle it with ant powder. Ortho, Terro and others all make it and the idea is that it clings to the ant and when they rub antenna to greet eachother and share directions to the food, it contaminates the rubee as well and the two spread the good news until everybody is feeling poorly. There was in fact a pile of bodies right where I had dusted before but the stuff must wear off and allowed more to come in.

Standard treatment is to sprinkle all around the perimeter of a home and if you find a trail to a tree, encircle the tree as well.

Barbie Rehab

We bought our barbeque in 2002 for $200 on sale. I thought it was a good deal too, because we had gone through others and I knew what to look for. The cooking grill was porcelain-coated cast iron, not chrome steel which can rust, for example. There was a cast iron cooking pot for beans and the like, a vented cast iron box to put wood chips in for smoking, a cast iron burner unit (these guys were big on cast iron), as well as a wok and a cover for the whole thing. Pretty good deal we thought at the time, especially when you look at what you can spend on the stainless hot rods that are popular now (see photo).

Of course we cleaned it from time to time and covered it when not in use but winter this year seemed like a longer one than usual so I decided to strip it down and give it a good look. The round cooking grill was pretty caked-up on the underside so it got a few coats of that spray stuff that warns you to wear a mask, gloves, and a HEPA suit. Then I spent an hour or so painstakingly scraping off what was left with a screwdriver. Turned out just about new, you can't do much hurt to porcelain.

The flame diffuser disk was shot, though. Its job is to spread the flame and heat outward, around the circular grill more uniformly but it was made of regular steel and it had rusted badly. The company charged me $17 for a new one(and another $17 to ship it) which I thought was a bargain. I was halfway expecting the company would be long out of business so it was a surprise to even find the parts. And to find them here in America by the way, instead of Taiwan or India or someplace.

So last night we had hamburgers and they tasted great.