let the good times roll!

okay, so remember how I was all ranty and shit about overvaluation of property in somerville and also talking about subprime loans and how my landlady had put the house on the market? (Probably you don't remember, but that's what the link function was made for. Also: in retrospect, we should have moved right then.)

Anyhow.

Chickens have come home to roost, motherfucker! I found out completely by accident on Thursday night that my house (which is still on the market) has actually gone into foreclosure and is going to be sold on Tuesday. As in this Tuesday. Three days from now. February 5th, at 2 pm. Jesus motherfucking christ. I called the bank which currently holds the morgage and verified. I can't believe the landlady didn't mention it to us!

She cashed the rent checks right on time, though. And the first foreclosure notice was published before the hot water pipe in the kitchen burst, so ... there was an opportunity there to say something. I don't know what her deal is or the circumstances behind the foreclosure or what happened on her end, but as a tenant in good standing, this sucks a whole lot for me, too.

Here's what I understand about how it will shake out: our lease will be void in the event of a sale/the event of the property reverting back to the bank and we will become tenants at will. The new owners of the property are most likely to want us to leave as soon as possible so they can do what they want with it, which I'd guess will be sell it to a developer or develop it into condos themselves. Hope no one tells prospective buyers about the dealer down the street - his customers seem to like to break into neighborhood cars and first floor apartments a lot.

So a move is in our immediate future - probably within 30 days. Awe-SOME! Everyone wants to find a new place to live in the middle of winter in Somerville on short notice a couple of months before a wedding, right? Now I can cross that item off my bucket list! Next on the list: skydiving naked into a cactus forest!

Did I also mention that Dave's classes have started up again, and he's in class three nights a week (about 15 hours). He'll probably need to study at least 15 hours a week outside of class, too. Yes, he works full time too.

However. This stuff is completely immutable and out of my control, so Dave and I are trying to be positive about this. We could move to a second-floor apartment where the roof doesn't leak! Where the fuse boxes don't have melted pennies! And a friend pointed out what a really good thing it could be to start a new (married) life in a new place without baggage and memories and stuff. Don't get me wrong, I like this place a lot, but fresh starts are always appealing.

In fact, I am unaccountably perky about this whole deal. I think it's the thought of living in a place which might have ... a dishwasher! or a waste disposal! or laundry! or that doesn't require 300 gallons of oil per month to remain really cold!

Also, thanks to Dave's bouts of mania, we are pretty much ready to move. I mean, we'll need to pack, and I don't know where the hell we'll find the money for the upfront costs of moving (first,last and security - plus money for movers for the king-sized bed, also the oil company will probably get paid in $50 installments over the next 2 years ... grrrr on having just filled that tank though) ... but the basement is perfectly clean and tidy and organized, and our apartment is usually in pretty good shape.

I felt pretty sorry for myself for a while, though, I have to say. And while I think the situation justified a wallow, maybe it's time to try a different tactic. Because this current tactic that Dave and I are both using*, the one where we work really hard all the time at work and then come home and clean up cat barf and make dinner and do dishes and other projects so that when we *finally* sit down at 9:30 or 10 we immediately fall asleep. Then the alarm goes off the next morning and it's time to get up and do it again. Weekends are more of the same - housework and social obligations until by the time Monday rolls around I'm glad to get back to work, because it's easier than the mammoth task list I set for myself at home. No wonder my performance review was less than stellar this year, if I was using work as my down-time (a little bit. I also did my job. But I don't think I excelled at my job, particularly.)

Anyway, that tactic? Not really working. While the end goal - where Dave finishes school and starts working as an RN and we eat pretty healthy and we exercise a lot and we have a clean apartment at all times - the end goal might be a good one, but the thing about life is that you can't really be sure about if you're going to be able to fulfill your goals. Things happen. Car accidents happen. Foreclosures happen. Divorce happens. So you (I) need to make sure that the progress to your (my) goal is just as enjoyable as you (I) imagine life will be after you've (I've) hit whatever your (my) milestone is.

So I think we're going to try this new thing, called Spending Time Together and Remembering Why We Got Along Well In The First Place. We tested it out this morning and, instead of spending the morning cleaning cat barf and de-hairing the couch and de-crudding the fishtank and bathroom, we went shopping for cell phones and ... actually enjoyed ourselves! And didn't squabble the whole time!

Plus, I got a smartphone that has wifi and a web browser so it can go on the internet wherever I can find a wifi connection, without having to sign up for t-mobile's edge network and a data plan. Also it syncs with Outlook (at last! I can have all my appointments in one place!). The Outlook thing is what I really cared about, the interwebs is just a nice bonus. And a qwerty keyboard, which is nice since I text a LOT.

So spending my afternoon and evening at home - Dave has a show in NH which I skipped. I've got a friend who's singing locally, which would be fun and I'm a little sad not to be going, but I'm going to hunker down and wear jammies and clean (SOME cleaning still needs to be done; just not at the expense of couple-time any more) and I have wedding crap to do plus I could, I don't know, maybe RELAX a little bit? And I have a migraine I've been fighting all day anyway so that's another reason not to go out. Midrin works really well for me, thank dog, but I would like this headache to go away rather than continue to hang around in the background and I kind of think forcing myself to go out and be social would not help the headache, much though I would enjoy it. I guess I don't really have to justify taking care of myself, especially not on my own blog, but hell, I typed it all out, I'll leave it. Even knowing that not going out is the right thing for me this evening, I feel guilty for not supporting my friends.

Oh! Actual good news updates:

Zoe's insulin shots seem to be working really well. So far, so good. Diabetic cats are hard to keep stable so I'm not expecting this to last forever, but she's so perky and chatty and happy and affectionate in a way she hasn't been for months, it's completely worth the trouble and expense.

Also, Dave's medicine seems to be working really well. They don't have a blood glucose test for sanity the way they do for diabetes, but there seems to be a big change. He says he feels better and I know he's a lot easier to deal with (another reason to mind this foreclosure-induced move a little less.)

Some tentative reasons for hope, there.




* I guess using is the right verb for a tactic ... something about the sentence seems really awkward, though. Probably if I was less lazy I'd rephrase it, but then if I worried about unimportant things (like grammar and sentence structure and rational trains of thought) I would totally not have a blog. Instead I would have the experience of a bunch of quickly-forgotten ideas in the shower, and a blog is more fun. Mostly because no one comments on your shower ideas.