Stefan & Holly

If a Tree Falls in the Wetlands

Holly — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 20:59:56 +0000

If a tree falls in the wetlands onto a deck, will anyone hear it?

Yes.

Especially at 3am in the morning, as what happened to us early Tuesday during a freak wind storm.

The wetlands on the side and back of our property are full of scrawny dead trees. Despite their proliferation, apparently trees do not agree with wetlands. I use the term scrawny loosely. When you’re eyeball to eyeball with said felled scrawny tree, it has a way of looking not so scrawny.
I am very grateful and thankful that everyone is safe and sound and that our dogs were not outside playing when the tree fell.
I am also very grateful that the tree did not come through the sliding glass window, or break any glass or fencing. I think the obstacles it hit on the way down are large contributors to the fact that little damage was done. First, the tree hit the top of a steel fence right where the gate is, where the steel piping is the thickest. There are twin huge divots in top of the fence and gate, so the gate still actually opens and closes with no problems. From there, the tree bounced away from the house and crashed onto the deck, right onto the steps we’d put in ourselves a few years back. Had the railing still been on the deck in that spot, it is likely the tree would have hit it and broken off, sending wood shards through the sliding glass window. But that didn’t happen.

Stefan fired up the chainsaw yesterday morning while I watched. I have this thing about power tools, especially chainsaws, where I prefer to be around when they are being run. I don’t relish the thought that a kickback could happen and he could bleed out because no one was around to call for help. Fortunately for me, he humors me.
This isn’t the first tree to fall into our yard. In fact, it’s the third tree to fall, and the second one to make a homicidal plunge towards the house. We have yet to deal with the first one, however. It broke over the fence on the side a while back, and once we realized it was covered in poison oak, we erected the metal fencing to keep the dogs away from it until we figured out an attack plan. It’s ironic that the fence we put up actually saved us from this tree. I guess there’s something to be said about procrastination, after all.

Close Encounters of the Strange Kind

Holly — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:42:34 +0000

I took the Hyundai in for a routine oil change and tire rotation. I have been taking my cars to the same mechanic’s shop for around a decade, now. It’s a nice local shop, been in business since 1968. Their prices can’t be beat, their service folks are really nice, and I’ve never felt ripped off because I’m a girl.

When I came in, there was a woman already at the counter. The service guy was writing up her work order and I heard she was getting the tires replaced on her Lexus. Meanwhile, another service guy was writing up my work order. I felt a little weird – disparaged, perhaps? – as I told the guy my car is a Hyundai Accent, while the woman next to me was sporting around town in a Lexus. I estimated her to be slightly older than myself. Just a smidge of peer pressure or something kind of rolled off, but I took one look at her and summarized I would never trade my life for hers. I like my life, and I like my car, and in my heart of hearts, I don’t truly have car envy or status envy. Just sometimes, you know, every now and then, you get reminded of how the other side might be seeing you. My service guy finished my work order and I went over to the waiting area to sit down. It’s your typical waiting area with a window, a television on a rickety stand in the corner, and two hand-me-down sofas sitting opposite each other. There’s room for two people to sit on either sofa. A college-age woman dressed in sweats and her hair pulled back was sitting on one end of a sofa, while a business-type looking woman sat on the other end of the same sofa. I took a seat on the opposite sofa.

Over walks Miss Lexus. Mind you, she garnered my attention when I was up at the counter, because you don’t see women like her every day. You kind of have to pause a moment and take it all in, and then go about your business. I’ll explain in a minute, because it just gets weirder from here.

Instead of taking the only remaining seat on the sofa next to me, Miss Lexus goes around the corner and drags over an office chair, saying to the guys behind the counter, “You don’t mind if I do some furniture rearranging, do you?”

Now, there could be a million reasons why she chose to do that. Maybe she wanted to see the television, and the only empty seat was facing away from it. Maybe she didn’t want to put her purse on the floor, and sitting in the chair by the end table allowed her to plop her purse on it, instead. But the first thing that ran through my mind was “She doesn’t want to sit near any of us.”

And now I can explain why I thought this. When I first saw her at the counter, I noticed right away that her makeup was absolutely flawless. Her skin was tanned, and she was toned and physically, she looked great for her age. She looked every bit the part like someone took care of her, and her only job in life was to keep herself looking good. Her makeup literally looked like she’d just walked off a movie set or a photo shoot. Who knows? Maybe she did. But the thing that really got my attention was her outfit. She was wearing this teeny, tiny, oh-so-short cheap looking black mini-skirt with ruffles. It looked like she’d rifled through her teenaged daughter’s closet. Despite how not there it was, it took center stage.

When she shunned the rest of us and opted to drag a chair over so she could sit alone, she kind of spiked my ire. That’s when I studied her a bit more carefully.

As soon as she sat down, she pulled out her blackberry and mentally spaced out. She really did not want to be there; that much was obvious. That’s when I started noticing the rest of her outfit, and how odd it was that her makeup was flawless, her brows plucked to perfection, her nails were professionally manicured, her skin was lightly tanned, but her toes were not painted and she was wearing open-toed platform wedge sandals with skinny straps wrapped around the ankles. Okay, even I know that is a cardinal sin in the style bible. If your toes are exposed, they must be painted. Then I noticed her shirt was a form clutching tie-dyed t-shirt and she’d pulled this yellowish mustard colored sweater jacket over it. Her hair, although done, was pulled back in this “just get it out of my way” manner.

She continued to be completely absorbed by her blackberry. Eventually, she got tired of poking at it, and started calling people. And she had the weirdest conversations. At one point, she was talking to someone who at first I thought might have been a therapist – but then she asked how the swallowing was going – like this person was in physical therapy – and….it was just weird, because she was asking these really blunt, insensitive questions, and then almost rolling on by the answer by saying, “You’ll get it. It’ll just take some time.” At the same time, even her voice sounded polished and as flawless as her makeup.

She talked to about four different people, all having very weird conversations with them, and ending all of them with “I love you.” On her last conversation, she mentioned how she was at the mechanic’s shop, getting new tires. She was like, “I’m at some mechanic shop, , down here at the corner of X and Y. I guess they had good prices,” and her tone alluded that she couldn’t believe she was there, and almost like she was there against her will, and more upon the insistence of another.

Maybe she was a Real Housewife in disguise because she’d fallen on hard times (but still in denial) and she couldn’t believe she had to take her Lexus to the corner mechanic and hob-knob with the locals, instead of taking it to the shiny Lexus dealership with their sanitized waiting room. Yet, she was half put-together. She lacked the style sense that even a fashion oaf like myself knows. On one hand, she did look like she would be more comfortable at a Lexus dealership, but then other parts of her didn’t match at all. I take pride in how I seem to be aging well, but even I would not be caught dead in public in a micro mini-skirt.

And a tie-dyed t-shirt? Do they even make those anymore?

Very, very strange.

Luck vs. Opportunity

Holly — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:38:51 +0000

This morning at the gas station, I had to go inside to pay. When I got inside, there were three other people in line before me. The cashier asked me if I was there for lottery tickets. When I said no, she said she could wait on me right away. That’s when it dawned on me that all the other people in line were buying lottery tickets.

The first thought that popped into my head was, “Why would anyone want to spend their money on lotto tickets? There are so many better uses for that money.” I could tell that the folks in line were serial lottery players. They probably take a portion of their paycheck every Friday and invest in tickets.
For people like this, they believe that their only way to a better life is through luck. Every Friday, they bet on luck. Or so they think.

Luck is being in the right place at the right time. But how often does this actually happen?

You would have to go back and look at why the person is in that place at that time. An example of sheer luck would be where for some odd reason, I had to go to a different gas station than I normally would. Meanwhile, someone else has decided that they are going to give $500 to the next person who pulls into the gas station. That next person just so happens to be me. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I ended up being in the right place at the right time.

But how much of life is being in the right place at the right time? Surely it plays a role. And if we looked at it, it could be said that being in the right place at the right time probably happens about as often as being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s a complete crap-shoot.

If I were to pitch all my faith into luck based on this description, I think I would be a very dull person.

I have learned that forcing opportunities is a losing game, too. Every time I have pushed an opportunity, it has ended in disaster. As a child, the pastor of our church would caution us against praying too hard or too much for something to happen, because eventually we would get it, but it wouldn’t be what we wanted after all. At the time, this made no sense to me, but I think I get what he was saying now. I have solid, concrete examples from my own life of how I’ve made this mistake, and let me say, the price you pay for pushing an elephant through a pinhole because you want it on the other side is absolutely enormous. (This is why the pushing the current healthcare reform has me so cringy. I know what waits on the other side. This president wants so badly to be in the history books for having been the one to reform healthcare, and while that will happen, the paragraphs that describe the consequences of his actions will not be anything he wants to read.)

I think you can very passively increase your odds for opportunity without forcing anything. I think we see examples of this every day. Harrison Ford was a wannabe actor who worked on a construction site for a movie. That’s where he was discovered. Another movie starlet was discovered because her friends convinced her to go out to a party. Little did she know the party was held at an executive’s house, and he was so impressed by her energy and personality that she got a call and was offered a starring role the next day.

You could look at both of these examples and at first say they were lucky. They were in the right place at the right time. But if you look a little closer, you see they were not lucky; they were passive opportunists. Harrison Ford might have been a wee bit more active than the starlet, because he may have specifically chosen that construction site because it was for a movie, and he wanted to be in the movies. But the starlet – that’s the one you could almost, almost say it was luck. The thing that keeps it from being luck is that she chose to go to the party. If for some reason she had no choice but to end up at the executive’s house – say she was driving through the neighborhood when her car broke down – then you could call it luck.

The beauty of being a passive opportunist is that you never know what’s going to happen, but if you do nothing, you guarantee nothing will happen.

They say that 80% of success is showing up. And I think that’s right. But I think the showing up part can be achieved simply by showing up to life. Just show up. You don’t have to be the life of the party. Just make an appearance. Just show up. See what happens. I think you will find that you are an opportunist, and not just lucky.

The Digital 1950’s

Holly — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:18:13 +0000

I just had this thought as I was trolling around on Facebook, looking at photos of people I know. Everyone looks so happy in their photos. People post so many photos of happy memories, pictures of their kids and spouses and pets. You can view their relationship status, too, whether they’re married or divorced or single or in a relationship or other.

It makes me wonder what kind of impact this will have on us socially as a whole. If we continue to publicize our private lives, how will that affect us when things in our private lives sour? If a person gets a divorce, will they feel shame and embarrassment when they change their Facebook status? Will they delete all the public photos depicting happier, married times, and de-friend their ex-spouse? Will they de-friend their ex-spouse’s mutual friends? And what about all the questions that will inevitably come their way? Not everyone possesses perfect etiquette all the time, especially when a tidbit of juicy gossip presents itself.

Will people instead revert back to the times when communities were closer-knit? Will the divorce rate actually go down because people will feel a subtle pressure to keep up appearances, even if it’s just to their electronic circle of friends?

I remember the first time I was spotted in public with Stefan by a mutual friend of my ex-husband’s. Stefan had called me up and managed to convince me to go out to a party with him. I was very newly separated at the time, but not divorced. Keep in mind that the divorce was initiated by me. I was pretty depressed that day but once we got to the party, I began to enjoy myself. Then I spotted her. She used to work with my now ex-husband, and she and her husband and me and my ex-husband went to dinner together once. Although there were a lot of people at the party and I managed to avoid her for most of the evening, we ended up hanging around the bonfire. I didn’t know if she recognized me in the dark or not, but I definitely recognized her. Stefan and I left shortly thereafter, because I didn’t want to be recognized. I figured she probably hadn’t heard the news, and I was afraid she might contact my ex with some idea that I was cheating on him with another man. Things were complicated enough already.

The next day, I got an email from her out of the blue. She had questions. I filled her in on the parts she didn’t know and was relieved she’d reached out to me first to get the story. But it was pretty weird.

If I thought that was weird, what would a divorce over Facebook be like, where you can’t control the flow of misinformation and gossip nearly as well as seeing one person at a party, especially if up ‘til now, your Facebook page tells a story of love and happiness and fairy-tale endings and all things good and sugary? I mean, nobody wants to put up pictures of their unflattering moments. Nobody wants to discuss their problems. How much of this is reminiscent of the 1950’s, I wonder? We are strangely fond of our fair-weather electronic friends. Facebook has the huge potential to be the Gossip Freight Train, much more so than a single busy-body in a small town. And while divorce does not have the same aura of taboo around it as it once had, it still does ring of negativity, which seems to be something to avoid at all costs. All things negative tend to get shunned when a name can be attached to them. I lost a lot of friends when I got divorced. Imagine losing 90% of your digital friends. Imagine that 90% of your social network is comprised of digital friends. You’d feel pretty alone, wouldn’t you? Thus the subtle social pressure to put on the happy shiny face to the world and pretend problems don’t exist, and just find a way to live with them instead of dealing with them.

Blogonality or Blahgonality?

Holly — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:46:32 +0000

I have tried writing a blog post for at least the last 2 weeks, but I can’t seem to bring myself to post anything I write. I’m in a funk. A conundrum. I worry I am too wordy, or too passionate about stupid things I have no control over (like health care and the government and speeding Toyotas). I feel like I have no voice, no personality, no blogonality. I hope you don’t think I write a blahg! (sorry, couldn’t help myself)

I wish I could write more like this:

http://casadefrias.blogspot.com/

Or like this:

http://www.dooce.com/

Sharp, witty, personable, to the point. Then again, they stick to a rotation of regular subjects while I’m kind of all over the place, like a runaway Toyota. Is that okay, though, that I just write whatever comes to mind?

So I’m putting this out there to you. Do you like the blog? Do you like the varied topics? Oh dear, I’m cringing already. Please be nice in your constructive criticism.

What would you like to read more of? How can we do better?

If You Think You Have Nothing Left to Live For

Holly — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:09:08 +0000

If you have nothing left to live for, then you should keep on living just to see what happens next. Never give up; never stop searching; never stop exploring, questioning, or adventuring.

Here is a story of epic proportions. This is the stuff movies are made of, but it’s all real. Unbelievable and horrifying, yet astoundingly beautiful because it is real.

Here is the link to the story, and I’m going to copy its contents so you can read it below. Credentials go to Michael Warren, Associated Press Writer for this story. I do not mean to plagiarize or otherwise infringe, but I do not wish to re-tell the story, because I am afraid I will muck it up. So without further adieu, here I present Reason Number One to Continue Living Despite Everything Else.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – The search is finally over for Abel Madariaga, whose pregnant wife was kidnapped by Argentine security forces 33 years ago.

After decades of doubt and loneliness, of searching faces in the street in hopes they might be related, Madariaga has found his son. "I never stopped thinking I would find him," the 59-year-old father said, squeezing his son's arm during a packed news conference Tuesday. "For the first time, I know who I was. Who I am," the young man said, still marveling at his new identity: Francisco Madariaga Quintela, a name he only learned last week. The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo rights group believes about 400 children were stolen at birth from women who were kidnapped and killed as part of the 1976-1983 dictatorship's "dirty war" against political dissidents, which killed as many as 30,000 people. Madariaga and his wife, Silvia Quintela, were members of the Montoneros, a leftist group targeted for elimination by government death squads. He last saw his wife — a 28-year-old surgeon who treated the poor in a Buenos Aires suburb — being pushed into a Ford Falcon by army officers dressed as civilians as she walked to a train on Jan. 17, 1977. Madariaga managed to flee into exile to avoid the same fate. Ever since, he has made finding the children of those who disappeared his life's cause. Returning to a democratic Argentina in 1983, he became the grandmothers group's secretary and first male member. He lobbied the government to create a DNA database and dedicate judicial resources to the effort, and developed strategies for persuading young people with doubts about their identities to come forward and get DNA tests. All the while, his own son's fate remained a mystery. As it turned out, Quintela gave birth to the son the couple had planned to name Francisco in July 1977 while imprisoned in one of Argentina's largest and most notorious clandestine torture centers, the Campo de Mayo in suburban Buenos Aires. Surviving prisoners later reported that the newborn was taken from her the next day, and she disappeared shortly thereafter. A military intelligence officer, Victor Alejandro Gallo, brought the baby, his umbilical cord still attached, home to his wife, Ines Susana Colombo. They named him Alejandro Ramiro Gallo and never told him he was adopted. The marriage didn't last — Gallo was a violent man, Francisco Madariaga said — and he never felt like he belonged, looking nothing like his brother and sister. While the Gallo family fell apart, the younger Madariaga escaped in his own way, twice touring Europe as a professional juggler. Meanwhile, Gallo was convicted of murdering a couple and their child during a robbery in 1994 and served a 10-year prison term. Francisco Madariaga's doubts increased, until finally he confronted his adoptive mother. "She broke down and was able to tell me the truth," he recalled, adding that he can't say he blames her. "There was so much violence — physical and mental — and she suffered. She also was a victim." On Feb. 3, encouraged by his friends, the young man and Colombo approached the grandmothers group to tell their story. Fearful of Gallo, they rushed to take a blood test the next day, and DNA results arrived last week. Father and son finally met on Friday — the same day Gallo was arrested on suspicion of illegal adoption. Colombo also has been detained and questioned, according to an attorney for the grandmothers group, Alan Iud. Colombo and Gallo are represented by public defenders who didn't respond to calls after hours Tuesday. Trembling before the cameras, Abel Madariaga recalled his reunion with his son. "When he came through the door that night, we recognized each other totally, and the hug that brought us together was spectacular," he said. Over the years, the grandmothers group has succeeded in identifying 100 children of the disappeared. Madariaga has organized many news conferences announcing such victories. This time, his chest heaved as he presented his own son to the world. "At times I wondered what the hell I was living for. I had to find a way to continue, thinking about everyday things, hoping for this moment of happiness," the elder Madariaga said. "Hugging him that first time, it was as if I filled a hole in my soul."

Francisco Madariaga stopped smiling only at the mention of the name he was given by the Gallos.

This is Why You Never Look Back

Holly — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:17:18 +0000

Ugh, I made a terrible mistake. I looked at the site’s stat page and saw someone had recently viewed a post from over two years ago. I went back and read it. It was about week 2 when we were doing Body for Life.

Damn, I sure used to be optimistic! I sounded happy, too!

To verify that the oozing optimism was indeed a mistake, I went and read another past blog post. This one was a summary of how I thought the year 2007 went. Holy hell, that post was overly optimistic, too. And filled with big, fluffy, optimistic plans and goals for 2008. For some asinine reason, I thought I was taking a step up by working for the electric company, despite the 12-hour days that started at 3am if I wanted to work out, and left me with a mere 3 waking hours to spend with my husband. Not to mention that one of our dogs killed our cat that year.

Crap.

Now I have to admit that we are depressed, because in comparison to 2009, 2007 was a pretty good year.

Here, let me give a re-cap of how 2009 went.

It started out with suckage because we knew Stefan would probably be losing his job. The suckage continued when he finally did lose his job in April and we got whalloped with a $5,000 tax bill. This completely blew all financial plans out of the water, along with our optimism for the near future. Suckage turned into crappage as the economy plummeted off a cliff and more people lost their jobs. Our house lost value, making it virtually impossible to get out, and then in December after the unemployment ran out, we hit financial Ground Zero. Oh yeah, and we got kicked out of the credit union because our financial life hit the ground in huge, fiery blasts. Sorry, that last one really burns me up. Ten years of outstanding patronage with them, and this is what I get in return for my loyalty.

What have I learned here? I think what made 2007 mildly tolerable, thus triggering my boundless enthusiasm, is that we took some heavy hits, whereas in 2009, we experienced an ongoing, long-standing seepage of sucky-ness. Perhaps, and I say this timidly and humbly, I have an easier time taking some heavy blows that knock me down completely, as opposed to the life-draining, knee-weakening wearing down of optimism over a long period of time.

Hmm, yeah, if I were a WoW boss, I do think I’d prefer a good skull cracking blow to the head to bring me down rather than me bumbling about with a Warlock’s Drain Soul sucking away my power. A couple of good whacks and I’d be out cold. I wouldn’t know what hit me. Literally.

But damn it all if all this still can’t keep my optimism down for long. I’m already thinking about how we’re going to be better off now that we’ve hit Ground Zero. Once you hit the bottom, there’s not a lot further you can go, and I’m not stupid enough to pick up a shovel and start digging a hole to bring us down further. We can do the post-mortem now, and say gee, yeah, we’ve learned a ton from all this. We’ve learned more about ourselves than anything else, and mostly stuff that doesn’t translate well into a blog.

Even though I have no clue what direction to go in now, I am still unwilling to write off 2009 as a loss. If you learn something, it’s not a loss. I’m trying to look at this as a clean slate. And what better time than a brand new decade? I may be down, but I am not out!

Thinking Out Loud about the Economy and Other Stuff

Holly — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:43:54 +0000

I recently read an article that said there is a shift in a fundamental belief that Americans have long held near and dear to their hearts. In the past, when times got tough, Americans paid their mortgages while not paying their credit cards. It used to be that home ownership was the Holy Grail. People would go through hell and high water to keep their house.

Not so anymore. According to this article, for the first time in history, more people are paying their credit cards first and not paying their mortgages when times get tough. This is indeed a very tough time for a great many people.

The reason for this shift is that people are finding they need to keep current with their credit card payments or get cut off. When the belt is tighter than ever, people are using their cards for basic necessities: paying bills with them, buying food and gas with them. If you get behind, the repercussions are swift and severe. Meanwhile, the mortgage goes unpaid for several different reasons. One is that the repercussions are typically a long way off. The foreclosure process is usually a long one, sometimes even taking a year and a half after someone stops paying the mortgage. Fortunes can be made and lost in that span of time, and a person could potentially get themselves caught up in that time. Secondly, due to the subprime mortgage business, many people have not invested personal money into their house. You can get a no-money down loan, making a traditional mortgage requiring 20% down a dinosaur. When people don’t have a personal vested interest in something, it’s easier to walk away when times get tough. Thirdly, during the subprime mortgage heyday, houses were heavily marketed as investments. People were encouraged to tap into their equity, because it was advertised as an easy way to skim a little off the top, and that little bit would soon be refilled as the house increased in value. Mix a subprimer stuck with a house losing value, and it’s easy to see why a person would pay credit cards before their mortgage. It’s a recipe for disaster.

I read a statistic that said one in three homeowners nationwide is upside down on their mortgage. People are purposely letting their homes go to foreclosure.

Amazing. I’ll bet nobody thought this would happen as a result of changing the rules to make it too easy to become a homeowner. Stefan found this amazing quote by Einstein that said:

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Yet, I’m afraid we will try to solve this problem using the same minds as those who created it.

This definitely makes me look at houses differently. I cannot look at a house as an investment anymore. At least, not in the same way I used to. While it’s acceptable to buy a car and pay back the loan even though the value of the car is expected to decrease, it’s very hard to look at a house the same way. It feels unnatural. Homes are supposed to increase in value. They aren’t supposed to lose value. And while it’s okay to owe thousands on a car that isn’t worth the amount financed, it’s not okay for a house, where the amount owed is in the hundreds of thousands.

This is where we were tricked. It seems wildly unfair that a bank is unwilling to lower the amount owed on a house that isn’t worth nearly as much as the amount financed. Would you continue to pay a loan amount of $500,000 when what you bought is worth only $250,000? How long would it take you to rebuild the value back to what it was when you bought it? How long would you have to stay in that house because you couldn’t sell it because you’re woefully upside down? What if it never came back up in value? Why continue paying on a house when you know you won’t be able to sell it in a few years because it’s worth so much less than what you owe?

Tack onto that the fact that a 30-year mortgage is steeped towards favoring the bank. You spend years upon years paying huge chunks of interest, with very little going towards principal. Case in point: on our $1,400/month mortgage, only $200 of our monthly payment goes towards principal. And that’s after almost 5 years of paying. When we first got the house, only about $97 was going towards principal. We’re paying roughly $200 more a month now than when we started out too, and that is going to escrow to pay for increased property taxes – even though an appraisal of our house says we can’t sell it anywhere near what the county says it’s worth. Now that I am paying the mortgage by physically going to the credit union and paying it, I’m taking a closer look at the break-down and it sours my stomach. (Note: I’m paying in person because after our fiasco with the credit union, I don’t trust them one itty bitty bit. I’m still leery that they might try and pull a fast one on us, but that’s a story for another time.)

Where is the incentive to stick with it? Nobody likes feeling trapped, and so many of us feel backed into a corner on this one.

A car can only lose so much value and we plan on replacing it when it gets too worn out. A house is different, because the devaluing can be in the hundreds of thousands versus a couple of thousand. Additionally, houses were marketed as long-term investments whereas cars are not. You put in your 30 years and after that time the house and all the accrued equity is yours. You typically don’t replace a house when it gets worn out, although in our very mobile society, only a small number of us actually ever stay in a house long enough to own it outright, so we could be fooling ourselves here. Is it our perspective that makes cars and houses seem so different from each other? Or are they actually different and should be subject to different rules?

Stefan posed this little gem last night when we were discussing this topic. This one scares the living crap outta’ me, I gotta’ admit. So there you are, going along, paying your mortgage like a good little do-bee. You’re in your 29^th year of house payments and the end is in sight. You can practically taste it. Freedom is so sweet. When BAM! You lose your job. You can’t make your mortgage payments anymore. The bank comes along and demands payment or you face foreclosure. You can’t pay them so THEY TAKE YOUR HOUSE. 29 years’ worth of mortgage payments, sweat and pride, built-up equity, and your house is POOF! Gone. How is it fair that you’ve made 99% of the payments on the loan and they can still take your house? Where then, did all your money all those years go? (hint: you see all those fat cats in Washington?) You certainly don’t get it back. AND…and then the bank can turn around and SELL YOUR HOUSE!!! For a profit!!! So they make all that money on someone else all over again!! I mean, don’t you own 99% of that house by now and the bank only owns 1%? But it doesn’t work that way.

When I look at it this way, I do not see the bank as being friends with consumers. Not at all. Ownership, clear and outright ownership, is the ONLY way to protect our assets.

Just some food for thought.

Anyway, on to lighter things! There is a woman named Heather Armstrong, who is the creator of www.dooce.com. Years ago, maybe in the late ‘90s or so, she created this blog and she blogged about her job and how much she hated her co-workers and bosses and made fun of the company and the people who worked there. Well, turns out some people she worked with read her blog and they weren’t exactly thrilled with her opinions of them, so she got fired.

Somehow or another, as she continued to blog, her plight got picked up by the media and before she knew it, hundreds and thousands of people were reading her blog. She eventually was able to support herself solely through her blog via all the companies who wanted sponsorship. (Sponsorship is a fancy way of saying, “I’ll pay you xxx amount of dollars if you showcase my product/company somewhere on your blog,” i.e., advertising).

Her writing style, by the way, is absolutely whip-smart. She’s succinct, personal, clever and very funny. Intense, too! She’s very honest and open. I don’t know that I could do what she does, mostly because that’s a really intense spotlight to keep on personal relationships, because that is what her blog is about: her life, the people in it, and her thoughts about all of it. I love writing, don’t get me wrong, and I love writing on this blog. But I am not comfortable enough to write about the things she does. I feel it’s too vulnerable of a position in which to put myself and others in my life.

A few years later, she wrote a book and it did very well. So she wrote another. Meanwhile, she kept blogging, and her husband eventually quit his job to work with her. She blogs, and he maintains the technical stuff.

Now, as of last month, she just landed a spot on HGTV. She’s going to be a host, or get her own show (I’m not sure on the details) on HGTV! She’ll still keep her blog, and her husband will still work with her. And she’ll keep selling books.

I am amazed by all this. I think it is absolutely wonderful. And I’m sure never in a hundred million years did she ever picture her life taking this turn. All because she got fired over her blog. Had it not been for that, I wonder if any of the rest would have happened.

Frankly, that is why I love her story. It’s a testament to the wild and wonderful, zany and unexpected world we live in. No amount of goal-setting, or “what ifs” could have produced what happened. It’s stories like these that I love most, for they give me hope when I feel I can’t see myself out of a situation.

Buffet of Random Thoughts

Holly — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:11:11 +0000

I want to write a post, but I can’t think of any one topic to stick with, so this is just kind of a buffet of half-baked thoughts.

Stefan is still out of work and we are still waiting to hear anything from my workplace about the job posting he applied to back before November. This is week three since the holidays and mum’s the word. I’ve gone back and forth as to whether or not I should ask anyone about what’s going on with the position and the main reason I don’t ask is because I am afraid of the answer. I am afraid I am going to hear an answer that will crush the last shred of hope I have left. Now, that may not be a bad thing, because I know I’ll move on. I’m just not ready to get to the moving on part yet; therefore I dare not ask.

Meanwhile, we’ve been playing lots of WoW. It’s cheap, we can play all we want, and it keeps our mind off the heavy stuff that’s going on in our lives. I would classify it as an addiction of convenience. It definitely serves a purpose right now, so I’m not sweating it.

I am convinced beyond belief that there is something strange going on with our house. We are investigating the possibility of Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) exposure from the utility lines that sandwich the house. We have them running behind and in front of the house. Studies run the gamut of the spectrum, from people saying there is no harm at all, to others saying it’s the underlying cause for a prolific host of health problems we see today. The only thing I am sure of is that something is wrong, it is not made up in my head, and we may never have the concrete proof that’s needed for any study. Either way, there is an energy leak in the house, much like the always fabled but never proven memory leaks that some software applications have.

I was so excited to get Stefan out of the house this weekend. I’d found an IMAX theater that was playing Avatar in 3D. My hope was crushed on Friday due to the discovery that the IMAX theater is actually one of those LIEMAX theaters. When you think of IMAX, you think of a dome-shaped whole-body sensory immersive movie experience, yes? Well, IMAX these days just means taking out the first couple of rows of seats and expanding the screen a little bit and charging people a butt-ton to get in. I was actually willing to splurge on this little luxury. We have to make every experience worth the money these days. $9.50 per ticket for a regular movie is just a tad too rich for my blood, but apparently not for everyone who’s in the theater texting their friends during the movie. Seriously, for $9.50, I’m going to have an experience I can’t get at home! Who are these people and how do they have so much disposable money?

I suppose it worked out anyway, because I got a live paycheck on Friday, which due to today being a holiday, won’t be available in the new checking account until Wednesday, so we wouldn’t have been able to afford the excursion as planned. I got a live paycheck because we’re switching banks and they did a dry run before the direct deposit becomes effective next pay period. Did you know you can get kicked out of a credit union? Neither did I, until a month ago! Apparently if you have a credit card with them and you stop making payments because you have to choose between making credit card payments and buying groceries, they can restrict your DEBIT card from use. Then, when they force you to visit a credit union bank to withdraw money from your own checking account (because your DEBIT card is restricted), the teller corners you and calls Collections and you have to speak to a nasty Collections representative before you’re allowed to withdraw money. You have to have this uncomfortable conversation in front of all the other customers waiting in line behind you. Let’s just say that the customer/credit union relationship goes downhill from there.

I think I’m being forced into becoming a laid-back person. A don’t-take-life-so-seriously kind of person. An “it’s-okay-to-break-some-of-these-rules” person. Because if I were to stay tightly wound due to the financial crisis, the energy-sucking home in which we live, the ridiculous fight just to gain access to my own hard-earned money, I think I’d blow a gasket. But now I know a few things. This too shall pass. If we get out of the house, the energy-suckiness diminishes, and if we can’t get out, WoW makes a great substitute for escaping our lives, and not paying bills does not equal the Spanish Inquisition barreling in and lopping off your head. It just means you have to show them who really has the power. They can yell and scream and bully you all they want, but ultimately, they can’t touch your money and they can’t keep you from your own money. Collections folk are just pitbulls with no teeth.

Please note: there are some caveats to the above paragraph. If you find yourself in big trouble, I suggest you contact an attorney versed in the laws of bankruptcy and get the facts before acting hastily, because there are some instances in which they can take things from you. Educate yourself. It’s really your only defense.

Speaking of which, the law is a funny thing, as are lawyers. I learned a lot. I think the thing that stuck out most is that lawyers view the law as a challenge, while regular Joes view the law as the backhand of God.

I also wonder what is going to happen with all this digital communication. IM’s, emails, texting, tweeting, facebooking. Nobody calls each other anymore. Yet, we are more disconnected than before. When you can’t go to a single meeting without somebody whipping out their phone and tapping buttons on it, there is something wrong. The person texting is not connecting with those in the room, nor are they connecting with the person on the other end of their text. I am one of the very few people who does not bring my phone to meetings. I’ll have to pay more attention, but I might be the only one. I don’t even bring my laptop. In some ways, I am so old-fashioned!

At the same time, we get disproportionately bent out of shape over snide comments people leave on articles and blogs. People say the most horrible, disgusting, vile things when they think they’re being anonymous. They would never say those things to your face, largely because they don’t really mean them but they think it’s somehow okay to say them on the Internet.

Digital technology is definitely bringing out the worst in us, yet it’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest, inventions ever. It is so powerful. I do wish we come to our senses soon, though, and start respecting it. Right now we’re struggling to assign its place in our life.

New Thoughts for a New Decade

Holly — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:28:44 +0000

Wow, what a difference between the way in which we welcomed 2000 and 2010! I can hardly believe the 00’s are history. Seems like they were here just yesterday! Back in 1999, I was working at Capital One. We were all frantically busy on setting into place mitigations for the potential big world computer clock melt-down that never happened. Everybody was singing Prince’s song, humming quietly to themselves about how they were going to party because it WAS 1999.

And now this decade has been ushered in almost in stealth mode. No big fanfare, no big hoopla, no big scares. I think everyone is more focused on economic problems to even notice the turnover in the mileage. 2010 just sneaked in the backdoor.

In some ways, the 00’s were the drama decade, at least on a personal level. It’s to be expected, I guess. I entered 2000 as a twenty-something and left as a thirty-something. The twenties are always fraught with adult drama. We’re like puppies on the brink of adulthood. Sometimes we have too much energy than we know what to do with, so we create drama for ourselves.

I’ve always been one to go against the flow, to swim upstream when everyone was going downstream. Stefan’s the same in that regard. We were both talking about this the other night, and both of us are getting tired, and we thought maybe it’s not so bad if we went with the flow. So, we might try it. Can we learn how to do that, and what exactly does going with the flow mean?

For me, going with the flow means relaxing and not trying to control fate or destiny or the direction of my life. I’ve watched enough 48 Hour Mystery and other such shows to pick up on the subtle cue that none of these people, whether they were victim or perpetrator, ever planned their lives going the direction they ended up going in. They all had, for the most part, plans for their lives, directions they were moving towards. How did it end up going so terribly wrong?

At the same time, going with the flow does not mean just bumbling along completely and utterly directionless and without motivation or purpose, as I have believed for many years. For so long, I’ve swum along with purposeful strokes, pulling myself forward against a moving current. Now I’m tired so I’m treading water. When you tread water, you move a lot, but you don’t get anywhere, and you get even more tired. I’m about ready to just float along, to just lie on my back in the water, stop moving and just float. However, if I let go that much, I may not recognize my surroundings when I decide it’s time to look around.

So, I need to be tethered to something so I can float in peace. That way I can drift a little and relax, but still be relatively close to familiar surroundings when it’s time to look around.

I think a lot of people do this. They tether themselves to something, most often family, it seems, and it gives them a grounding point. But I kind of missed all that. I’ve never been close to my family. At least not in a way that gives me peace to drift in safety. Some people aren’t close to their family for a variety of reasons, and then when they marry, they tether themselves to their spouse’s family. Again, though, in our situation, Stefan isn’t close with his family, either. We were each kind of silently hoping we’d inherit a family from the other when we married.

That probably sounds harsh, and it hurts a bit to admit it, but it is what it is, and not everything can change, so I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m going to have to get over it and accept that we might never be close to our families. We might never achieve the closeness we’ve envied and craved. Time to move on, and accept the relationships as they are. That, in itself, could be a goal of a lifetime.

My goal this year, if I am so bold as to aim for something, is to find a tethering point so we can go with the flow a bit more, in the comfort and safety that we will never drift too far into unfamiliar waters. I don’t know how or when or what this tether might look like, be, or where. That is yet to be determined by the currents flowing into our lives. (When I say “find,” I don’t mean we’re going to go out and purposely search for it. “Find” means more of awareness, or an open mind towards the things that enter our lives of their own volition.) Once we find it though, I believe our lives are going to look a lot different. That sparkle and shine that is so unique to us, the thing that makes us who we are, will return because we won’t be treading water. We can focus on the funness of life, the adventures of life and this big, beautiful world in which we live. After all, what’s the point of living if you aren’t having fun?