Wheel in the Sky
Monday, August 23, 2021
It keeps on turnin…
I haven’t been here in a while. I haven’t been able to sit and gather my thoughts because there are so many of them running rampant through my tortured brain. Where do I even begin? Buckle up, loyal readers, this might be a long one….
Health Updates
I guess I’ll start with the health stuff.
It has been worse and worse over the past couple of weeks. With the mounting pressures of going back to work, getting the kids ready, and the upheaval in the world, I have not been sticking to my guns from the standpoint of diet, exercise, and self-care. Now, to be fair, I have not gone back to the midnight habits of stuffing my face with whatever happened to be around, but I have eaten more than usual.
As I’ve gone back to work, I’ve also moved more than I had been; my steps have averaged about 8,000 a day,compared to the 3- or 4,000 I had been getting. But at my last weigh-in, I had not lost. I had gained. Not a lot, and I know that’s part of the way this all works, but that point nine pounds drove me crazy. It is, however, somewhat justified, given all the other things I’m going through.
Work Changes
Back at work, we’ve had lots of uncertainty and lots of change. I’m still teaching seniors, but I have a HUGE percentage of students who require specific, individualized accommodations, and while I’m supposed to have an instructional support person or a certified co-teacher to help out with those students, we have had trouble filling those positions, so I’ve been on my own. Now, to be fair, in the beginning of the year, we aren’t doing much that’s strenuous or difficult. But I’m worried for what’s to come.
Add to that that most of our administrative team is new, and they are only cursorily aware of the issues we’ve had with our illustrious insane co-worker. So far, it hasn’t been much of an issue; she has kept to herself and not spoken to us, but she has also skipped out of department meetings (literally standing up and walking out in the middle of it and not coming back) and whole-staff activities. We have also heard from at least two students who have come back to ask us, “is that lady is okay?”
But the changes don’t stop there.
The community college where I teach has randomly decided to change the textbooks. Clearly some salesperson at Norton got hold of them and dug in hard. We used to have ONE book that went for English 1301 and 1302 following a commitment to simplify made to students a few years ago. The book we used was great, and as far as I know, not a single person ever complained about it. Now, however, they have gone to TWO new books, one for each course.
The first one is an anthology, a reader with essays and short stories, etc. It falls short of being a useful composition handbook, in my opinion. But, as per usual for adjuncts, my opinions were neither sought nor considered. And now, I have a new class starting in two days that I need to adjust for a new textbook. I don’t depend much on a textbook, but with the new book came the admonition that we cannot have the option to tell students they don’t really need it… and if that doesn’t sound like a scam or kickback, I don’t know what ever will.
And now, the biggie….
Life Changes
For several years now, we have rented our home. I got a message from my landlord on the 18th stating that he and his wife are divorcing, and the judge has ordered them to sell the house. My entire universe has been upside down since then. No, not upside down. Let’s try sheer, complete chaos. I fluctuate between incredibly angry and unbearably sad.
You see, when we were young, we didn’t do things "the right way.” We got married very young, and put ourselves through school while raising kids and just trying to survive. When our fourth child was born, we were able to buy a house. At the time, my credit score was 503. But somehow, we found a program and were able to purchase. About five years later, when the entire mortgage industry collapsed, we were part of that trouble. We lost the house and became renters once again.
We moved into a house big enough for all of us—now seven. The rent seemed outrageous at $1250/month, but it was in an area with very good schools, and we worked our butts off to make it work. The second year we were there, it went from a small management company working for a private homeowner, to a large corporation where the property owner was part of a massive portfolio. Any maintenance requests took weeks to complete, but if you were one second late (even within the grace period) on paying rent, they were making calls. We hated it, but didn’t really want to move. The rent went up each year by $50 or $100, but we figured that was basic inflation, and left it at that.
After we’d been there about six years, the company changed hands again. When it was time to renew our lease, they wanted an inspection. They came in and told us that we did not have dogs on our lease, so they charged us back rent and pet deposit to the tune of about $1600 and they wanted to raise the rent up to $1950 if we got rid of the dogs, or $2150 if we kept them. There was no way we wanted to pay that for a 40 year old house that was crumbling around us and despite everyone’s best efforts remained roach- and rat-infested.
So we found another place, and we moved. This new place was like night and day to the last one, and we really could see it being a forever home for us. The rent was $1900/month, but it was only a 10-year-old house, and it was bright and open and clean and frankly, gorgeous. We counted ourselves lucky. However, that luck soon ran out, as about 8 months later, the landlord was getting back together with her husband, and she let us know she would not be renewing the lease, as they would be moving back into that property together. She was very kind to give us a great reference and several months notice so we could plan and make the necessary changes.
Our next home was another newer property, very well maintained, and quite large.
It was in a great location with easy access to the freeway and a huge yard. The owners were hunters, so the backyard had three large dog kennels for their hounds—they were not only okay with our pets, they actively encouraged a family who had them. All of the paperwork and legalities were handled through a real estate agent, but the owners lived in town, and were very active, well-known members of the community. We loved this house. Sure, it had a few small issues—any house will—but it was a great property.
We lived there when Hurricane Harvey hit our area, leaving much of the Houston metroplex underwater and without power for days. We never flooded, even out on the street, and we were only without power during the heaviest part of the storm for about 30 minutes. My best friend and her family stayed with us during that time because their area tends to flood easily, and it was almost like a vacation. (Incidentally, the water at her house came up to her front stoop but didn’t’ get into her home, so she was lucky, too.)
Then, a similar thing happened. The owners were facing some family issues and decided they needed to sell the house. They gave us about a month and a half to find a place and move out. We ended up having to make a major compromise to get in where we are now, but it worked out okay. The house we’re in now is a four bedroom, and the bedrooms are small. We needed another room for my youngest daughter, so we sort of turned the loft area into a room for her by adding temporary dividers. We could have moved her into the room with her sister, but that may have led to murder and mayhem, so a “fake” room was the better option.
For the privilege of a quick move-in and staying in this school district, we began in this home with a rent of $2095/month. However, in January, the landlord notified me that the value of the home went up on the tax roles, so he had to raise the rent. It moved to $2400, and because we didn’t want the hassle and expense of moving, we agreed to pay it.
Just a month ago, there were exciting changes afoot. My middle daughter was moving out to go to college, which meant the youngest could take over that bedroom. She would finally have a real room with a real door, and my computer/office area could move from the breakfast nook to the game room area upstairs. But two days before my daughter moved out to go to college, we got this message from the landlord:
So What Now?
Now we have to find a new house. I have no idea how we are going to pay for all of this. We want to buy one, very very badly. We don’t ever want to be told again that we can’t stay somewhere because someone else is deciding to sell for whatever reason. We don’t want to be told, oh, well, the value of the home went up so I have to raise the rent. We don’t want to be beholden to others in that way anymore. But there are problems with that idea.
First, of course, is money. We have not saved a down payment for a new place. Even if we qualify for only 3% down, if we’re looking at a $300k home, that’s still $9,000 we would have to come up with somehow. My co-worker mentioned that one of the local credit unions does a zero down payment program for teachers, so we contacted them to get more information. That leads to my second problem: credit.
Most mortgage companies are here to tell me that I “cannot afford” a home of my own. Regardless of my years of rental history, and my current rate of paying $2400/month (for a house whose mortgage would be about $1600-$1700 for a PITI payment). Because my credit is… let’s just say “strained,” I cannot buy a home. I have student loan debt in the triple-digits (and the first number is not a 1), so they count 1% of that amount, around $2100, as a payment I’m making each month—even though I’m not. My actual student loan payments are about $160/month based on income-based repayment. That means that if my income goes up, so will my payments, but since it’s a ratio, that still shouldn’t prohibit me from paying my mortgage. The last time I had a late payment on anything was in October of 2019, when my employer changed how they were paying us, so I had to go nearly 45 days without pay while my husband wasn’t working. Before that, I had about 2 to 3 solid years of on-time payments on everything. Since then, I have had on-time payments of everything. But that apparently doesn’t matter as much as missing that one month of payments. Credit drops so fast, but takes forever to recover.
We talked with other people and have been in touch with a lender who specializes in unusual cases like ours. Through a credit analyzer program, we found my current score to be at 572, and it needs to be 580 to qualify for their programs. They told me a few smaller/older accounts I could pay off to make a change in my report, and I have done so. However, I’m still waiting on the re-score to see if we got those 8 points and if we can qualify for a mortgage.
That means that in the meantime, while I’m waiting on the whims of others who have not nearly enough of a sense of urgency, there’s not much I can do. I don’t really want to look at houses much—either to buy or to rent—because I don’t know which direction we will be able to go. I have hope, big hope, but that fine line between optimism and realistic expectations just doesn’t hold a lot of weight.
I can’t stand uncertainty. Especially when it comes to my family’s future.
I feel like I should be doing something. In fact, I know a thing I could be doing either way, but I’m too tired/lazy/distraught to really do it. I could be packing, but I just have absolutely zero motivation to do anything like that at all. I am sad and tired and heartbroken and angry and just a giant ball of emotions. It’s hard to work through that. And I don’t want to pack too much because we don’t know when we will be able to actually leave.
I also don’t know what my rights are here, and I don’t want to pay some lawyer hundreds of dollars for a consultation. I don’t know if I have the right to refuse to allow an agent into the home. After all, it is the times of the dreaded Covid, and I do have small children and a dog. I don’t have anywhere to put the dog for someone to come in in the middle of the day when no one is home.
Oh, and speaking of “Covid times,” right now, due to a federally mandated moratorium, landlords cannot evict their tenants due to non-payment of rent. I have been paying my rent, faithfully, but somehow, I can still be forced out? That doesn’t seem fair in the slightest! This is where the anger part comes in. I am, frankly, pissed off that this is happening and that I am being backed into a financial corner because the landlord couldn’t keep his marriage together. I am irritated that I have to go through the whole hassle of finding somewhere new, paying application fees, deposits, etc., scheduling time off to deal with paperwork and do the moving… This is through no fault of my own. I’ve done nothing wrong here…
The other thing I worry about is the state of the house. It needs help. I don’t expect to get my deposit back, and I’m not looking forward to his visit with me about the house. I don’t want to see him at all, really. I just want to be gone from his property, never to be seen or heard from again. I don’t want to explain that it’s not my fault that the leak (which I told him about, in writing) in the garage got so bad that the garage door hanger literally fell out of the sheetrock and rendered the door unusable. I don’t want to explain the hole in the wall in the laundry room from when we tried to put up a shelf and accidentally tapped a pipe. I don’t want to explain that somehow, the little plastic sprayer arm at the bottom of the dishwasher popped loose from its moorings and landed on the heating element, thus melting the plastic of the sprayer arm. There’s just too much, and the more “little” things there are, the more it looks like abuse or neglect, when it was not at all either of those things.
So, now, I sit here to hurry up and wait. I know nothing, can’t figure anything out, can’t take any more action than what I’ve already done…. Everyone is looking to me for answers. The kids know what’s happening, that we ahve to move, so they keep asking if I’ve found anything yet. No, I haven’t. I don’t even know if I’m going to be buying or renting….
Stress ╪ Sleep
So, all of this, and all of this stress, combined with my new schedule have just made the past few weeks awful for keeping up with anything to do with health. I haven’t been sleeping well, either. My watch tracks my sleep patterns, and a few days ago (Friday, when I started trying to write this), I had ONE MINUTE of deep sleep. I have been exhausted ever since.
I guess I can do nothing but wait now. Until I hear from the mortgage people. I really want to know something. I sent in all the required paperwork (and more) last week, so I hope the process is underway. I don’t like that it’s so far out of my control. I guess that’s another aspect of my personality that I need to work on, huh?
And finally….
Dear reader, if you are out there, and if you exist, I ask that you do your thing. By that, I mean that if you pray, please pray for us. If you meditate, please send your positive vibes our way. If you have any ideas or solutions to this situation, don’t be afraid to reach out. I know there’s not much most people can do—hell, there’s not much I can do—but I appreciate good thoughts, well wishes, and anything else you have to offer.
Now, for the record, since I’ve not posted in a bit, the obligatory weight tracker chart: