Staying calm

I have two major appliances being delivered sometime between 1030 and 1230 (should be three, but the dryer had an unfortunate incident and will arrive Monday).

Of course, the Title Twit of earlier fame is not yet in the office, and the lenders are hiding from my calls. I assume that's because, since the Title Woman works banker's hours, she has not yet sent them whatever they require.

But I'm calm. I have no choice - at 1015 I have to leave here, go over to the house, and let the appliance people in. Whether or not anything has been "funded." I shall, it appears, become a squatter. In a house I have shelled out a significant amount of money for.

How's that work, anyway?

Note to self: People involved in the home/property buying process are not actual professionals. They seem to be people who completed some correspondence courses or a long weekend seminar at the Sheraton out by the airport. Thus, one should not expect a level of ability equal to that expected of medical personnel, accountants, or union carpenters.

In happy news, there will be electricity at the house, because I most definitely got that locked on. And phone service tomorrow. No phones until the Pack shows up, but phone service.

Freakin' Outstanding

I'm giggling down deep inside.

Y'all need to head over to Chris' place, and see the results of his family's what-do-guns-do-to-a-refrigerator experiment.

There's a video. Watch it.

I felt as though I'd gotten vengeance, if only vicariously, for every wrong done to me by a shitful refrigerator in the past three years.

That's good shit. Wonder if it's too late to have Mr. Abby bring the fridge from Florida?

Did you know

that if you're closing on a house, and using a power of attorney, on the space provided for your spouse (or whoever) you write "[Mr. Abby] by Abigail B. [Last name]," and the title agent will say that's what you're supposed to do.

Then you'll leave, assuming you'll get the call saing the closing has been "funded" in two or three hours.

Instead, however, you will get a call at 1647 during which you will be told that every time you signed for your husband, the words "attorney in fact" should have followed. That, it will be explained, is very important.

It is, in fact, so important, that the lenders will not "fund" the closing until those words have been appended to every single page.

Thus motivated, you drive around Fort Worth like a bat out of hell (after more or less just jumping up and leaving your desk at work) to get to the title place by 1713.

"We close at 5!," they had chirped.

Only if you want me to burn your fucking business down, kill your pets and slash your tires, you explain. So they stay open for you.

You write "attorney in fact" 7,492 times. Then, as you leave the title place, you call your lender and explain about the place of business, the pets and the tires. It would be best, you explain, if "funding" this transaction is the first thing that happens in the morning.

Then you drive back up to North Fort Worth and check in to yet another motel. Where you sit, and you smoke, and you hate.

It's here!

Or, rather, it's THERE!

Phone calls we love involve Mr. Abby opening a box-o-carbine for us. Of course, it arrived as the movers are at the Crackhouse collecting our stuff, so they must have thought that was odd.

(Then again, the movers already think we're nuts. They called me this morning, trying to get ahold of the Mister. When the phone rang, I assumed it was Mr. Abby, and answered, "hey, baby!" The moving guy, it seems, does not normally get addressed that way. "Uhhh..." he responded.)

For all his expertise, my husband is not very helpful with this. I asked him to open it and ensure the wood was intact, since apparently there's an occasional cracked stock. So he did.

[sounds of box opening, etc]

"Hey, it looks great," he said.

"Great?"

"Well, about like your other one."

[sigh]

So apparently it's intact, and the stock isn't an utter dog. But the movers have taken his computer, and so it will remain a mystery until they show up out here.

Question for my relationship experts - how bad is it, when your family and pets roll up to your new house, to simply nod and say, "hey" to them, then shove past and burrow through the truck to find and fondle your new gun?

What? You want MORE HORROR?

I got your horror RIGHT HERE, folks. The kitchen wallpaper is bad, but I don't know if it can hold a candle to the Death of A Zillion Red Flowers.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...the guest bathroom.



These two locations are the only offensive wallpaper areas in the house. We have paper in the Grownup Bathroom, but it's normal.

Worst about the wallpaper situation is this - it's very well done. See, I know about these things.

My mother is a Wallpaper Woman. And she's always had a pack of Wallpaper Friends. Whenever there was a redecoration or a new house, I was dragged to Kid Hell. Kid Hell is any store that sells nothing but wallpaper. And they exist. Anyway, I'd get dragged to Kid Hell, often several times, while she plotted the exact paper and border the situation required.

Then the Wallpaper Ladies would descend with their dipping trays, and there would much swearing and use of razor blades.

And when all was said and done? What did you have?

Fucking wallpaper. That's what I thought even as a kid. All that effort and you end up with wallpaper. Bummer deal.

But I did learn enough to know that whoever put this crap up did a good job. Images meet neatly enough at the seams that they're hard to see. Even the switchplates are sharply done. Too bad it sucks.

I just don't get it. But one of the great things about being a grownup is...I don't have to. That wallpaper is on borrowed time.

Through the storm

we occasionally catch a little ray of sunshine.

I was slogging through another day in the Salt Mine of Stupid, field phone calls as surreptitiously as possible and darting into the bathroom to get updates and give feedback.

(We'll keep it short tonight - thank God they accepted the power of attorney because they did NOT get their shit together in a timely manner. Bastards)

Then I sat through a meeting.

Then I real quick and sneaky pulled up the CMP E-store.

SHIPPED! Hitting Tampa tomorrow! Little ol' 5,107,518, made in '44.

It actually got me through the rest of the workday, past the part where I had to find a place to stay near the closing place, and past the part where the underwriters suddenly decided they needed more documentation of what was apparently a questionably large deposit (which was, actually, a CD that matured). This required me to bring the printer in from El Jeepo (which I really did not want to do), hook it up, print pages of bank records, scan them, and send them off.

Of course, would any of that have been remotely possible ten years ago?

But, more importantly, who gives a shit if it may have been possible? My M1 carbine shipped!

Now excuse me, I must go do the Happy Gun Dance.

By the way...

0801 CST - I receive a cc of an email from Mr. Abby with scans of the power of attorney sent by the lender, and of your standard gov'mint "special" power of attorney for redundency.

Then I got a phone call as he was on his way to the FedEx drop box with the originals.

The potential rage level is high today. It's probably a good thing I tend to let any calls that come in on my cell at work roll over to voicemail, or you guys might catch me on the evening news.

Packin'

and no - not the kind that involves any sweet shootin' irons.

The kind that involved schlepping all my shit back out to the Jeep. Mostly done in the wee hours of the morning, my shit has migrated out of Ye Olde Cheape Motel. I'm outta here. Since they only charge a weekly rate here, the next night (or, god forbid, two), will be spent in an equally cheap normal motel.

I did not get enough sleep last night - might have had something to do with the pot of coffee and bottomless pit of boiling rage about this whole closing thing.

Am I going to be a treat at work today or what?

Off to load the last of the Great Pile of Crap.

Huh?

So my new job...well, it is involving the serving of the customers. You buy things from my company, we screw up, and I fix it.

It's dull as hell, but provides the occasional moment of levity. I am, however, not comfortable enough there yet to start sharing stories. Perhaps when we have a minimal acceptable amount of furniture and getting fired would anything but financial suicide...

But we do have a company inbox. And since it's a public address, just hangin' out there on the web, we get spam.

Today I got one titled lumberjack untangle. Although I was a little concerned it would contain naked picture of my Dad playing Twister (pardon me a second while I go boil my eyes), I opened it.

I'm married to your cousin, so . I'd be delighted to attack it all from a different direction...

Huh? Well, I guess being married to any of my cousins would be enough to make anyone think about a different direction. I skimmed on.

What are the physicians doing or saying that you are thinking of as resistance? There are a few reasons that could be argued against as being a bit disingenuous, but for the most part, the reasons seems believable, even if some would be relatively short term problems.

Okay. Sorry. You lost me again. Let's try one more paragraph.

As a result of the simulation, participants learn to apply the principles of visibility, feedback, communication, and collaboration to increase their rate of delivery. A flexible reporting tool has been implemented to provide the information needed by decision makers and with unprecedented levels of grannularity.

Now I can't tell if we're dealing with some sort of hippie shit or something involving spreadsheets. And WTF is "granularity," if we're not talking about making Jell-o?

I totally fail to get it. But it did provide me with about 20 minutes of entertainment in my otherwise boring-as-shit day.

And I promise I'll never subject y'all to my spam again.

It's been a long time

since I've said, on the phone, "that is fucking unacceptable."

And to a civilian, no less.

Even I am aware that one of the things you need to close on a house is a survey. A current survey, really, since I don't know anyone who's ever gotten a house without getting a new one.

It seemed, however, to come as a surprise to our title agency (that would be Land America Title Co., for all my Google monkeys). Which is how I found out today that our closing was in trouble because the survey - which the title people had ordered Thursday - was "not in."

Ordered Thursday? Like four days ago? When we set this closing date like two weeks ago?

It was not a happy discussion that I had with ol' Title Lady when I got out of work today and headed to the walkthrough.

"We can push it back a day," she sniveled.

"No. That's not an option. We are going to close Wednesday, and I don't give a shit what you have to do to make that happen."

You gotta understand, people, I'm not a rude person. I've worked with and for folks with a lot of different styles and, Parris Island aside, confrontational, browbeating interactions really have a limited role in getting things done.

However...Mr. Abby is a very nice man. Cheerful, happy and always looking for ways that he can help you help him. Heck, hint that you can't do your job and he'll probably find a way to do it for you.

Occasionally, I am therefore required to be the member of our household you don't want to talk to. Perhaps after a couple of conversations with Abby the Raging Bitch, you'll be a little more amenable to dealing with Mr. Abby the Very Reasonable.

It's worked before.

But now, since our immediate situation is being theatened by blinding incompetance, we've had to be proactive.

The big problem here is there's FedExing involved. Let's reverse-plan. In order for the documents to be here for a 1030 closing on Wednesday, Mr. Abby needs to send them out of Tampa by around 1800 Tuesday night. Which means he should probably get them by 1400 on Tuesday. Which means they need to be sent...well, see? That already doesn't work.

I didn't get a warm fuzzy from Title Twit about the whole 21st century thing either.

"But emailing is harder," she whined. "He might not sign in all the right spots..."

I was not entirely polite when I pointed out that my husband is phenomenally more competant than the title people, and thus I trusted him to do his part if they could do theirs.

So there I stood, in the driveway of Target House, with the realtor. We'd concluded the walkthrough, during which I had been required to low-crawl through insulation in the attic.

We traded remarks about the level of distrust we had in the Title Agency of Satan. Then a light came on...

"Hey," said I. "Just curious, but can Texas people deal with a power of attorney?"

Her face lit up, and she got on the phone with the lender (who, because it's a good, professional company, was still at her desk not making excuses, but trying to find a solution). Conversation ensued.

Long story slightly less long - yes. It appears they can. Which simplifies things greatly. I immediately received a PDF of the appropriate document, forwarded it to Mr. Abby, and followed it with a phone call. Seeing as he is a pretty bright guy (entirely capable, I remain convinced, of signing in the right places on emailed documents), it will be no problem for him to sign it, get it notarized and return it via FedEx in time for the scheduled closing.

I feel much better when the slippery bits are in the hands of those I know won't fumble.

Fucking idiots.

Anyway. I felt y'all deserved a picture of what was distracting me from the normal posting. And, just because I think it's funny, I have a picture for you.

You know how no matter how much you like a house, there's always something that makes you wonder what the hell was up with the previous owner. Well, in this one, it's the kitchen wallpaper.

Ladies and Gentlemen, you'll laugh, you'll cry. May I present...the Most Hideous Wallpaper in Texas!

Blah.

Sorry for the weekend silence - I had a bit of the melancholy, so I just picked up a stack of paperbacks and read.

I think it's all related to the fact that I did not receive a tracking number from CMP on Friday. [sigh]

But! Onward and upward - there are many things to do this week and many moving parts. The potenital for hilarity and/or disaster is high.