The Crunch Continues

We're still in Crunch Mode here at Casa Ché, only now with (minor) injuries!

There's far more to this 'moving out' business than I anticipated (isn't there always?) but the Goodwill down the street is delighted with us and wonders when the donations will stop.

A friend, of course, calls to cheer us on: "Don't forget," he says, "you're Old now, and you can't really do even half of what you think you can." Well, thanks, I say. Thanks a lot. Now sit down before you fall down and break your own hip. Heh.

Onward!

This And That

 

Somewhat overextended I am right now.

The van is still in Atwater; the really very nice people at the repair shop say they have repaired "the big noise," but there's still a "little noise" that they can't diagnose -- may be transmission, may be differential, but they aren't sure. They said they drove it to another shop, had them look at it there, got the information that it is either/or, then drove it back to the first shop and it was driving fine. "Just this little noise..." OK, say I.

Problemo.

I wouldn't be surprised if it is both transmission and differential. Which means it may be time to retire the van -- which, by the way, has been a loyal friend on the road for a long time.

Getting back to Atwater without a vehicle of my own is something of a challenge -- not impossible, but a challenge nonetheless (there's a train to Merced and it's about 8 miles from the Amtrak station to Atwater.) But if, as I suspect, I really can't drive the van back to whence it came, just getting down there is kind of useless. So...Pondering options. I'm kind of inclined to go check out a similar van available out in the suburbs but getting there without a vehicle of my own, I'm finding, takes longer than taking the train to Merced would. Isn't that something? Public transportation: Good luck, sucker!

Meanwhile, at the same time, I'm trying to work through refinancing our mortgage in New Mexico... and what fun that is, given that it is all long distance via phone and email. I'm working with a couple of lenders: Wells Fargo, which holds our current mortgage, and another I'll not name at this point, but which we may be going with. Terms proposed are similar, and though with the new lender the process is more complicated, it will take much less time to complete the refinancing with them than with WF. As the broker says about why it takes so long with WF: "It's Wells Fargo." And when I think about the months it took to get the mortgage financing package from them in the first place (We put a deposit on the house in August of 2005; we did not close on the mortgage until January of 2006) it's not all that surprising that a refinance would take almost as long and conceivably longer. Oh, and the WF horror stories I've read. Heartbreaking. They're almost all the same: promises made; promises broken; paperwork lost, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again; last minute document demands from the bank; last minute denial in processes that stretch out for months and months and months. In some cases, it's a matter of sales taking priority over service (it's a bank, you know), and in others, it's clearly a matter of deliberate cruelty, because WF never intends to provide mortgage refinancing or modification at all. They seem to just want to hold the customer tight and take various fees along the way -- for appraisals primarily, which in some cases are never actually done.

From what I can tell from the testimonies (I've seen hundreds by now), people get lured in by WF sales pitches ("Low Rates! Refinance Now! Mortgage Modifications! We have Programs!") and are sold something they actually can't qualify for. Once they are sold, the loan agent forgets about them, never submits the documents -- which is why they get "lost" over and over again -- until the last minute, knowing that the rubes are going to be declined or get screwed. It seems to be such common practice at the Big Banks that the personnel don't even think about it any more. It's just business as usual for them. Completely vile.

On the other hand, I have found only one complaint about the alternate lender we're working with -- and that complaint was through the BBB which does not disclose details. One complaint. We'll research court cases to make sure that this record is accurate. The broker we're working with is a little harried, but she follows up, seems to be very forthcoming and up front, and is essentially a neighbor in NM (next town over.) Costs are a little higher with that lender than what WF is proposing, but you know what? I tend not to believe much of anything WF says these days...

Meanwhile, the rest of the household at Casa Ché is preparing to retire at the end of the month and we are packing up for the Final Move to New Mexico (prep for which I was headed to NM to take care of when the van broke down).

It's quite a basket of challenges and activity for an old coot and sometime radical like me.

I'm busy and sometimes kind of frantic. But the situation has helped me realize (again) how fundamentally lucky I am to have these challenges to work through as best I can. To learn from. Perhaps to help others from what I've learned. You never know.

Often I find myself in a quandary and dilemma between the vanilla middle-classness of much of my lifestyle and the call to rebellion, challenge and adventure that has characterized so much of my life. I'm face to face with that quandary right now, being pulled in several directions at once, and all sorts of things seeming to be popping out of some alternate universe to claim my attention and say "Hay! What about this! And that! And the other thing!"

One of the class of challenges that we'll be facing once the whole Ché household is retired is that we will be without health insurance for a while -- a few months in the case of one of us, a little over a year in the case of myself. We are not going to use the COBRA option, which is close to $3,000 a month to maintain our current coverage, and there is no paid health care plan included in the retirement package. There are options to purchase, but none are less than $1,100 a month. Even with Medicare, the supplements offered through the retirement system are breathtakingly expensive. So when people start bellyaching about all the benefits public sector retirees get, they need to check some facts rather than succumb to the propaganda of the media. Most pensions are based on years of service and contributions by employer and employee; there has never been a free ride for most public employees; they have always been contributing to their pensions. Furthermore, they have voluntarily -- in recent years involuntarily -- taken significant pay cuts and/or foregone scheduled increases, thanks to generous Union Bosses who always seem to see their own nests feathered very nicely indeed. Yes, indeed. (Their argument: "It could be worse, yanno.")

Many public employees never work long enough to reach the point where they qualify for a pension at all, or they work in categories that aren't covered. This has become more commonplace as budgets are cut and most new hires are temps -- some of which remain temps for years and years. And years. They might not even qualify for healthcare coverage or have to pay huge premiums once they do qualify. And this out of salaries that are being constantly reduced. I have been a public employee or contractor from time to time over my working career. My longest stretch as a public employee was 11 years. I decided to take my retirement in a lump sum when I left. I received -- let me look it up, they sent me a 1099-R -- $632.73. From which they withheld $126.55 in taxes. To assert -- as the propagandists constantly do -- that public employees are all somehow privileged over private sector employees is to be deliberately deceptive or obtuse. And the idea that it is somehow "just" to cut anyone's salary or benefits in this economy is akin to economic suicide.

Yes, there are a few people who are doing very well in the public sector, oh my yes. And they will retire with 6 figure incomes, in some cases higher than their base pay was, and they'll get full health care coverage on top of it and probably all kinds of other perks as well. Whether or not they deserve it is beside the point. They negotiated whatever it is they receive in salary and perks and benefits, and whatever it is, it is much less than that of those at the top of the private sector pyramid. In the areas I'm most familiar with, salaries top out at a little over $100,000; most workers think they are doing well if they get $35,000. Many earn much less. Starting salaries are pitiful, not much higher than minimum wage. If they work long enough to get a pension at all, it will amount to no more than 60% or so of their final wage, and in some categories, they won't get Social Security. We're not talking Big Bucks except at the very top of the public sector pyramid, and even those bucks aren't that big when compared to the retirement packages of CEOs.

On the other hand, just the fact that public employees still have any kind of defined benefit retirement packages at all is enough to set off the claxons of the propaganda machine every few minutes. I know this since I am in a capital city, and the local (McClatchy) paper has had a never-ending propaganda campaign against public employees, their unions and especially their pensions. It's relentless and every day. It's been going on for years, through good times and bad; and why not? They broke their own unions and decimated their pension funds years ago. Why not go after the public sector, too? While they like to yammer ad infinitum over the Big Ticket public pension "scandals" what they are really going after -- it's obvious -- is the pittance the lowly long-time employee might get after 30 years. They cannot stand the notion that a lowly state or local government worker who has been drudging all these years -- often berated and thanklessly -- might get 50% or 60% of their salary when they retire.

Since private sector workers get nothing -- even if they put money by in their worthless 401ks or looted IRAs -- why should public employees get anything?

This is completely backwards thinking.

And that kind of thinking has characterized the whole economic policy discussion since well before the crash. It only intensified afterwards.

EVERYONE should receive a decent retirement income; it shouldn't even be a controversial topic. EVERYONE should receive healthcare coverage automatically -- yes, of course they would pay for it through taxes. That shouldn't be controversial, either.

The correct way to address the banking and financial crisis was to provide household debt relief from the first, so that creditors could be paid off from the bottom up. Instead all the relief went directly to the banks; oops, nothing left for the people!

It's all so screwed up thanks to the perverse ideologies of the few that have been sold to the many like cotton candy.

But I ramble and I'm late for an appointment...
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UPDATE: Had a long chat with the Wells Fargo loan agent soon after posting this; she was almost abject about Wells Fargo's horrendous reputation for bad customer service. Of course she said Bank of America is worse! Yes, well, that's not exactly an endorsement is it?

The "problem" she said is in Modifications, not Refinance (I disputed this), and she said that she would NEVER ask us for documents we had already submitted if something went missing during underwriting, because she would have copies of everything, and if there was a need for something we had already submitted, she would produce and provide it from her files.

She said it would not take more than 90 days if we act now (there is another program on the horizon, she said, for FHA loans, and that's going to cause another backlog in the Refinance Department... ) It would probably be much less than 90 days, and she'd try to get it done much quicker by "pushing" the Underwriters and Processors. I asked her where they were. She said she thinks they're in Arizona but she's not sure.

In addition, she pointed out that having Wells Fargo do the refinancing is much simpler than doing it through another lender because they already have the mortgage file and don't have to create a new one. She almost claimed that another lender couldn't do it at all. I said, "Yes, it is so simple, it literally takes only a few minutes to complete the required forms." She disputed that, saying that they have to get an appraisal (actually, it may not be necessary, but they want one anyway) and they have to do the usual due diligence to confirm sources of income and such, so it takes longer than "a few minutes" to complete the underwriting. But yes, she agreed, it is "simple" for the originating bank. The only reason it takes so long to close a refinance is that there are so many of them to be done. Another lender essentially has to start from the ground up, and may wind up unable to do the refinance in the end.

She was she said determined to demonstrate to us that Wells Fargo's refinancing customer service was among the best in the business, and promised to stay on top of our loan through the entire process. I pointed out that we got the same promises when we originally financed through Wells Fargo and it took 5 months to close and the interest rate was 2% higher than we had been told it would be. When we questioned the loan officer about it, she claimed it was the going rate for that kind of loan (purchase and renovation), regardless of what we had been told when we first applied for the mortgage. So I wasn't really going to take anything that Wells Fargo had to say at face value.

LATER: I got a call from the other lender's broker. And we talked for a long time. During the day, we'd been emailing about retirement and other issues, and finally she sent an email saying that she couldn't "start" the process until after the last day of the month because of the retirement income issue. Whoa. This actually would amount to a one month delay in "starting" the process. I was stunned and said so.

She said even if she "started" now -- by submitting full documentation to the extent we have it -- everything would stop as soon as the underwriters made contact with the employer because there would be confirmation not of employment for the next six months but of retirement at the end of the June. In order to get past that roadblock, we would need to submit an Award Letter, which we can't get until at least the end of June, so there really wasn't any point in submitting the other documents now since underwriting can't proceed without confirmation of retirement income and it will still take the same length of time to get the loan underwritten once the Award Letter is submitted as it would if we started now. She says once we have all required documentation in place (the only thing missing is the Award Letter so far as we know) then the process will take just about 24 days to closing. She said that if something required for underwriting is missing, the process stops, and the application has to go through Underwriting again.

Rather than take that risk, she said it would be better to gather all the required docs and submit them all at once.

During the day, I'd been researching the HARP refinance guidelines and Freddie Mac "Seller's Guide," and sure enough, it is more difficult for another lender to do the refinancing because they have to create a whole new mortgage file and have to follow much stricter underwriting rules to get it approved for purchase -- in this case by Freddie Mac. With Wells Fargo, they and we have already met most of the underwriting requirements and don't have to go through the whole process again (for example, we're assumed to be creditworthy, and as the house already has an appraisal from the first mortgage it isn't absolutely necessary to get one again -- though Wells Fargo wants one anyway.)  But in the case of either Wells Fargo or a new lender, they must verify source of income. In other words, the process cannot go forward for either lender without an Award Letter. So that's going to be the sticking point no matter what.

 Also, we did some more extensive court searches for complaints against our alternative lender, and there were literally none. Zero. Nada. This contrasts with HUNDREDS of complaints against Wells Fargo. They're practically every day.

It's all fascinating...

Critters

Last year we had 11 skunks taken out from under our house in New Mexico. This year, despite our best efforts, I know there are at least two who have moved in and a neighbor thinks there might be a whole family of them. This time, I got some traps of my own, as the cost of calling Critter Control to come back again and again was getting out of hand. Daniel, who did the job for us last year, was very friendly and efficient, but there were so many skunks, and he usually only set one trap at a time. Consequently, removing them all of them cost a pretty penny.

After they were gone, what I called a Guard Kitty -- a big bruising male tabby -- took up residence and chased away any skunk that tried to make its way under the house. He was very good at his job! One time I was there and a skunk got by him; he went after it under the house and there was a War. I could hear them fighting quite loudly under the floor, and then after a bit I could smell (OMG!) the struggle. I had never encountered such a strong and pungent skunk smell. It seemed to permeate everything, and I had an intense physical/emotional reaction to it. It was really very much a fight or flight reaction. The brain gets into a very strange and almost trance-like state. I was aware of how strongly I was responding, but at the same time I was able to function sufficiently to take steps to counter the stink. It's fairly easy.

Vinegar. Just place bowls of it or spray it wherever the skunks smell is, and within minutes, the smell is gone.

The War continued under the house for a while, so even though I was using vinegar to counteract the skunk's determined efforts to make the Guard Kitty leave it alone, the animal kept spraying for some time. I wound up using a whole bottle of vinegar. Ran out! Ultimately, the struggle stopped with the skunk being chased out by the cat never to return. And by that time all the vinegar -- and the smell -- was gone.

The Guard Kitty (a feral that just showed up one day) got plenty of praise, of course, and he was great at keeping all skunks out for the entire winter. Then he disappeared. I think he may have moved down the street, as I saw a cat that looked remarkably like him crossing the street a block and a half away from our house this spring, but I'm not sure.

I've repeatedly blocked up the likely entrance holes, and I set up a one-way door so that if there are animals under the house they can get out, but the creatures are strong and clever. They have found many ways to dig under and around all my efforts to close up the entrances they have created for themselves. This will be an ongoing project. And as soon as I get back to New Mexico, the traps will have to be employed.

Daniel would take his captives out to Otero Canyon outside of Tijeras to drop them off. It's 27-30 miles or so. A neighbor just sort of shrugged and said, "They'll come back." Sure enough. Daniel claimed that once trapped, the skunks were very docile, and he had never been sprayed by one in all the time he had been handling them. We'll see... I dunno about that docile thing, but the catch and release traps are mighty cool. The skunks, it is said, cannot resist Little Debbie snack bait. So. That's one of the projects for my next trip out to the High Desert.

Meanwhile, the menagerie around our house in California has been growing. Our longtime companion cat, Mao, had kept all other animals off his property. He was extraordinarily territorial; he would not allow any cat or any other large creature to come close. He would fight them off, sometimes the struggles were fatal for the other creature. When Mao died, though, the others started showing up around here after a few months, and one, The Girl Cat, just waltzed right in the house and took up a position on Gramma Betty's lap. She loved it. Betty passed away a year ago in July, and the menagerie keeps growing. There are now seven or eight neighborhood cats that love to hang around -- and get fed -- at our place, but only two are genuinely "ours," plus there are assorted squirrels and birds and occasional rodentia, and now raccoons and (we're told, though I haven't seen them) opossums. Whoo-hoo!

We have a statue of St. Francis in New Mexico. I've seen one -- life-size -- at one of the specialty/antique stores nearby that I'm thinking of getting for our house here in California.

One of the raccoons has been really appealing since his arrival, so much so, I wonder if he is someone's pet. He comes over from the neighbor's yard across the street. They used to have a yippie dog, but they don't have any pets now. I'm wondering if they know they have a 'coon?

Anyway, the creature waddles across the rather busy street just around sunset, waddles up our driveway, greets the assorted cats that are hanging around, and looks for some food to eat. Usually it can find something, and it will chow down for a while, as the cats look on. Typically, the 'coon will take a break in its munching, particularly if it is hot, and get something to drink or just go into the backyard to rest. It will turn over on its back and sprawl belly-up, with its face looking -- well, smiling -- right at you. It's done this numerous times. But the other day, it found a garden hose with a trigger sprayer on the end. I think it must have used the trigger to sprinkle part of the driveway, for I found it on its back, belly up, in a fresh puddle of water, the hose and the trigger beside it, the animal grinning from ear to ear. It was a very hot day. The 'coon was cooling off. I tried to get a picture, but the batteries in my camera died.

We have all kinds of birds at both houses, too, something that surprises most people when they know there are all sorts of outdoor cats around. The birds seem pretty capable of defending themselves, though, and some of them, like the blue-jays, love the catfood and they will harass any cat that dares to get in its way.

While this is an OT post, it does relate to the problem of predators that I brought up in an earlier post. Cats, of course, are predators. Yet their prey seems to be very happy and healthy and not particularly subject to predation, though one of the cats caught a mouse for me the other day.

I'll try to get into the topic more over the next week or so.

(I have some short movies of the raccoon's antics, and if I can get them edited and uploaded, I'll try to post them here as an Update. No guarantees...!)

OT: The Cat

This is Mao:



He hated having his picture taken, always expressing his supreme annoyance by cutting his eyes and turning away.

He was 16 1/2 years old, been at Casa Ché since he was born, and he died this afternoon and was buried in the back yard with his favorite red bird and yellow squeaker mouse toys, and with a stick, for nothing at all made him happier than playing "Stick!" any time of the day or night all the way up to nearly his last days.

He was the smartest cat I think I've ever known, and one of the most loving. Whenever I picked him up, he would wrap his arms around my neck, rub my cheek with his, and proudly pose there like I was his trophy, and wait for others to admire his prowess.

He knew many words in English and could say some of them. "No!" for example. And "Out!" He would query carefully if he wasn't sure of something or someone, and chat almost mindlessly when the spirit moved him.

His mother was purebred Siamese; his father was a drunkard and a brawler from the alley, but who's to complain. He ran off and we didn't hear any more of him. His mother wound up going back to San Francisco when her "owner" decided he wouldn't be a reliable caregiver.

Mao was truly the friend of nearly everyone -- except other cats, who he would drive off his property with a furious outrage that was a wonder to behold. He was the best friend the residents of Casa Ché.

As I mentioned, home hospice care has been under way here since October for an elderly relative, a woman who adored Mao. When she was in the hospital this last time going through constant torments, she said one night when she was feeling particularly horrible, she heard a voice, not a human voice, a cat's voice, and she said, "Is that you?" The cat responded softly, "Mao..." She said, "Are you here? How did you get in here? They don't let cats in the hospital!" She heard him say, very softly, "Mao..." She said, "Let me touch you to be sure." She said she thought he was on the bed, but she felt all over and couldn't find him. She's blind so she couldn't see him. She heard him say, "Mao..." softly, and she said she reached over the side of the bed and she said she touched him. He was on the floor, and he rubbed her hand and she could feel him purring. She said she heard him say, just as plain as day, "You're going to be all right, and you're coming home. I'm going to make sure. I'll stay with you tonight, but don't tell anyone. It's a secret. Just you and me." And she said she broke down crying, because he'd come to visit her and promised she would come home again.

And he was right there when she arrived home from the hospital, so weak she couldn't hold her head up. And he stayed with her for day after day, drawing the illness out of her, giving her strength. If she needed anything, he would call out or go get someone to help. He slept with her, stroked her with his own paw, and he "helped" when she was strong enough to stand, and "helped" some more when she took her first few steps after coming home. She's been devastated today, disconsolate -- like everyone else around here -- but she said she was so grateful he had been so determined to get her to come home and had done so much to help her get better.

I said, "If Mao had been a person, he would have been a doctor. As a cat, he was a natural healer."

During his last illness, he made clear what his wishes were. He didn't want to see the vet unless there was no other choice. He wanted to feel feline to the end and he wanted to be warm and he wanted to be with the people who loved him. The last couple of days, weak as could be, he wanted to go outside, and go next door to Joe's house. Joe was our neighbor until three years ago in January, when at the age of 100, he fell and broke his hip and had to be placed in a residential care facility. He and Mao were good buddies, and Mao used to sit on his porch and watch the clouds roll by while Joe trimmed the hedges or puttered with his flowers. Joe died a year after he went to the home, and Mao seemed to sense his passing. He didn't go over to Joe's house very often, and when new people moved in, with their own cats, he stayed well away. But he decided he wanted to go back and sit on Joe's porch and watch the clouds again, and he did for a little bit. And then he gave me a look that said, "I want to see Joe again."

And I said, "You will, you will." And I held him so close, tears rolling down my cheeks and I took him back home, where he was warm and with the people who loved him, and this morning, he went outside one more time, and he came in and lay down and said his good byes, so softly, and he did not get up again.

I hope he's with Joe now, and I hope they're sitting on a porch watching clouds roll by and listening to the mocking birds and thinking about playing "Stick!"

You're both missed, buddies.

OT: The Plumbing

[Note: I started this post a while back but got side tracked, as is so often the case these days... there is much more to come some day]

Well. After all the trauma, the plumbing and wall-restoration is essentially complete. A few minor details -- finding some tiles to replace the ones broken in the bathroom, some escutcheons for the pipes under the sinks, etc. -- and that part's done.

For the time being, the Floors are on hold, carpets and rugs will do just fine to cover a multitude of horrors.

Things have settled down to a more or less acceptable routine, the inspectors are satisfied, and breath can be caught. For now, anyway.

OT!

When the Water Heater Goes....

Dateline: Casa Ché, Yesterday -- Was just getting up, getting ready to prepare a post on MLK and the Progressive Ideal when, ay carumba, heard this strange hissing noise coming out of the laundry room. Paid little attention at first, made some coffee, was thinking about toast and jam, and a little tapping in the back of my mind kept saying, hmm, something's not right, and I went to check the hissing again and discovered a growing flood of hot water on the floor of the laundry room. Uh oh. Better turn off the water to the water heater. OK. Sure. Fine. The valve is stuck. Casa Ché is not one of your newer suburban residences, oh no, we're talking Late Depression American Home, mostly in original condition. No remodeling over the years. Even vague Moderne touches here and there.

So. What do you do? Hot water is spreading and getting deeper, the flood growing. Can't budge the valve. Start sweeping it out the door is what I did, and when it seemed like most was gone but more was still coming out, I ran around looking for the main valve, found it finally, and turned the water off to the house. Spent the next several hours mopping up the flood, which had spread to the kitchen and a little bit into the hall. Plus taking everything out of the laundry room and finding someplace to store it while repairs are made. WD-40'd the water heater valve, see if it would work. Finally got it closed (with the help of leverage provided by a 16" screwdriver). So could turn the water to the house back on. Then the whole arrangements to get a new water heater in. Not so easy. Codes have changed since 1940, and gas water heaters have to be on stands, which means all the piping currently there is in the wrong place, many intricate extensions and whatnot, a whole new chimney assembly, endless bits and pieces, takes up the rest of the day, and even then, there's something wrong with the hot water line, nothing is coming out of the faucets on a test run except rust. Uh oh. Maybe have to have new hot water pipes? Oh great.

So, that's today's project. We'll have to get back to our Topic anon, but for the moment, Casa Ché is without hot water -- except what we boil on the stove -- and except for short breaks now and then, your interlocutor will not have much opportunity to post anything.

Such is Life.

Hope the stockmarket meltdown isn't ruining your day!