We brought home our first official farm implement this week. I hope this means we’re getting this farm because we don’t have room to store it in our garage among the 14 bicycles. It’s an open bed trailer.
Now, we could’ve used a trailer, like say, ten years ago when my husband began plunking down huge amounts of cash at our local Home Depot. Don’t think I’m sounding sarcastic or anything, because really, I love it that my husband’s hobby totally benefits our family—unlike baseball card collecting or other stuff I just don’t understand. He builds furniture, fixes stuff, and remodels 80’s looking faux wood paneling. He can build anything—even rockets. I’m so in love.
We’re riding in style now. You’d think so too if it was you who had to ride on bags of compost flanked by PVC piping all these years. Now it all goes in the trailer.
We’ve used it three times already in the first week we’ve had it. The real purpose in buying it, though, is to bring a large load with us when we drive up to close on our farm. Renting a trailer wasn’t economical; this way, two trips up and it pays for itself.
In the future, we can haul animals, mulch, wood, dirt, and all kinds of stuff. It’s also a huge playpen for the toddlers when you’re outside. I imagine a trailer is a handy farm tool, and so it made a lot of sense to buy one. Just think what I was missing all these years…
Greg is building removable sides that fit into welded brackets
to increase the versatility.
I’m adding a category titled, “The Move”, to my archiving system. It’s not that I think the subject is entirely exciting to most, just that the purpose of my writing here doesn’t have to do much with changing the world or being reader-driven. These are still notes to our family and friends (no matter how far I stray from the stated purpose sometimes)—a way to stay in touch, talk about what we’re thinking, and share links and ideas.
As an aside…I remember when I started blogging, I thought it was really weird that strangers began reading this site. Whatever for? And why would I read some other miscellaneous person’s site either? I wasn’t so bored that I needed to fill my time. I have too many children to be bored. But now, I see how naïve I was, as many of these former strangers are now friends: the kind you eat dinner with; share stories, books, and conversations with; and learn with.
We’ve met dozens of people we’d never known before, and a handful have become the kind with whom you stay in touch. It’s neat.
So, I hope to catalog a journey that has a happy ending. There are so many steps that led up to this big leap, but I don’t have the time or inclination to recategorize those posts. I think they’re mostly under “Living Simple.”
Packing…oh boy. We’re packing up our house after six enjoyable years on the Florida coast. We anticipate our move occurring little by little over the next few months, with a final, big move in the early spring.
Anyone who has packed up a “lived-in” house is familiar with the concept of sunk costs. Sunk costs* are expenses that have already been incurred and cannot be recovered in any manner that makes it worthwhile. A gadget here, a doodad there, a thingamajig everywhere. What use is it now? But it’s painful to throw it away “because I spent good money on that thing!” The important thing to discern is how much use is it to me now?
Back before I had a half dozen children misplaced my brain, I was very organized. My closet was color-coded, and my CD’s were alphabetized. Now, I’m just glad that the door shuts. Since we all marry our opposite, though, I was doomed to marry a packrat. (There is a better term for that, I’m sure, but my thesaurus isn’t working well.) But he got me good last night. Actually, it happens quite often whenever I pitch something that hasn’t been used in seven years (even though the official rule is one year).
Magically, the very next day he finds a project where he can say, “Yep. I wouldn’t have to run to Home Depot and spend money if you hadn’t pitched [insert said piece of junk].” He’ll then emphasize the phrase “spend money” with flair, because he knows that’s my weak point.
But back to last night. He uncrumpled a print I bought years ago, which I’ve intended all these years to get matted and framed. It got lost in the depths of our pantry–somewhere behind the doggy biscuits and econo-size jar of pickles. He shook it out, but the dust and creases hung a little too tightly.
“I guess I can pitch this, right?” he began.
“But I LOVE that picture. It’s so pretty. It reminds me of the simplicity and order and beauty that I can’t seem to hear because of the Honey-Nut Cheerios crunching under my toes! If I can’t have that life, can’t I at least LOOK at it?! Besides (ahem), even though it was on sale, it still wasn’t cheap.”
“And?”
“We can’t just throw it away! I LOVE that picture. Do you hear me?!”
And so he tossed it amid my protesting and wailing.
Yes, I find it very easy to toss all the junk around the house (very late at night under secret disguise). But when it’s my junk? That’s another story entirely.
Bye-bye, my lovely quilt and wagon print. You’ll be missed.
*From Wikipedia: Economics proposes that a rational actor does not let sunk costs influence one’s decisions, because doing so would not be assessing a decision exclusively on its own merits. For example, when one pre-orders a non-refundable movie ticket, the price of the ticket becomes a sunk cost. Even if the ticket-buyer decides that he would rather not go to the movie, there is no way to get back the money he originally paid.
I’ve been unplugged since my last entry. Now, when I say “unplugged,” I really mean it. We closed on our property last week. It is an older Amish house on 54 acres, so we were without electricity and water. Going without electricity wasn’t bad at all, it was a lack of water that made things difficult. Even the Amish have a water source, but ours wasn’t hooked up yet. More on that later, though. After we regroup over here, I’ll give an update, details, and pictures. For now, I’m really busy flipping our kitchen sink on and off, on and off.
We were on the road before 6 a.m. early Wednesday morning last week. Our trailer was packed to the brim with the first of many loads we were taking to our new place. The closing was scheduled for Thursday, so we had plenty of time to get there. We estimated it being a 14 – 15 hour trip, with an extra hour because of the heavy load we were carrying. Our plan was to drive up to Chattanooga and rest there the first night. This is normally a 10 hour drive for us.
We were only on the interstate for an hour when the first trailer tire blew out. It seemed quite early for trouble to start, but I was glad to be stranded while it was still cool outside. Thankfully, the tire was on the right-hand side, so Greg was in somewhat of a better position to be changing a tire while cars and 18-wheelers flew by at 70 – 80 mph. The jack was a bit dinky, so it took a half hour to change the tire. My job was to keep law and order in the van: “Do NOT unbuckle your seatbelts.”
My oldest son decided to ponder the sovereignty of God in the situation and suggested, “Maybe God doesn’t want us to move.” I told him that these things happen and that we shouldn’t look for a sign under every rock.
After we got back on the road, Greg and I decided that we ought to get another spare tire just in case. He’d drop me and the children off in a few hours for lunch while he bought another spare tire.
It wasn’t too long after devising our plan (but before implementing it) that the second trailer tire blew out. This time it was on the left side, and this time we didn’t have another spare yet. This is where the story gets long, complicated, and sticky.
We left the trailer and traveled 3 miles onto the next exit. The best chance for tires was about 15 – 18 miles back the other way we were told, so we turned back to hit the Wal-Mart Supercenter. It turns out that this Wal-Mart didn’t have tires, but a nearby heavily iron-barred pawn shop advertising “EZ loans” did. This was the kind of place that sells automotive bling, and I just knew this was going to turn into some Chevy Chase scene.
Apparently, our recently purchased trailer had been outfitted with car tires and not trailer tires, so Greg was scalped for three new tires (two for the trailer, one as a spare). We were spared in an act of sovereign graciousness souped-up tires; “Man, you want plain white-wall tires?!” When we returned to our abandoned trailer and Greg began working on it on the more dangerous left side, we discovered that the 5 bolt—whatever inch tires didn’t have the bolts in the same place. So it was forward 3 miles and back another 15 to the pawn shop.
By now, the children are beginning to fall apart, and my toddler decides to lick the floor inside the shop that hasn’t seen a mop for at least 50 years. He never licks the floor—except for today. A few hours go by and my oldest son ponders the sovereignty of God in the situation again, “Maybe God doesn’t want us to move.”
I agreed this time.
By now, it had been EIGHT HOURS and we were only two hours away from home. I suggested going on and leaving the trailer since there were only odds and ends on it anyway. I suggested turning around and crawling back under the covers at home.
What we did instead was press on. I entertained the kids with “Mother-May-I?” in the pawn shop parking lot and hiked with my crew to a carpet store to use the restrooms.
After we sorted out the tire situation and cleaned out the roaches we’d acquired at the stop, we were back on the road. We made it to Chattanooga after 17+ hours. It was midnight and everyone was miserable. I’m 30+ weeks pregnant; I’m not sure what everyone else’s excuse was.
The next morning Greg opened his Bible (not to whack a misbehaving kid with it) and read words that were an admonishment for our attitudes the day before and prophetic for the days to come, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, ‘Rejoice.’”
Our second day went better than the first. There was no road trouble if you exclude all the close calls with bad drivers, and we only had about five hours of driving ahead of us.
If you remember, I trusted Greg’s judgment in putting a contract on the place without my having seen it. He brought home lots of video and pictures and I felt confident about the purchase. We’ve been looking at property for several years now. Our close watch of the market not only allowed us to watch prices climb higher and higher, it enabled us to get an idea of what we wanted and what we didn’t.
When we were close, Greg cued the song we’d been listening to for a month straight now– our theme song, Knee Deep in Bluegrass. I knew something was wrong when my engineer, aerial photo guru, GPS boy said, “Yeah, I think this is it…Wait. No. It’s just ahead. OK, here we are.”
The reason we couldn’t see the place was because the weeds were 10 feet high.
This is the driveway and pond we couldn’t find. This picture was taken a few months ago, though. However, all 6 ponds were still full. We think some of them must be spring fed.
The drought didn’t suppress the weeds. I could see how the place kind of looked like the pictures once I situated myself a little better. Yes. There. I just had to use more imagination than I intended to.
We signed papers, unloaded our things, and began exploring. Greg made a few trips down to the pond for water to flush the (very gross and abandoned) toilet for us. At that moment, every fly in the state descended upon us and our food. It was hot. It was sticky. And we needed water.
No problem. The water would be coming the next day.
The next day came. We met several neighbors and talked at length with two contractors we were interviewing to install electric, water, flooring, and cabinetry in the house. This Amish house has walls and the basic structure, but we still need to finish it out. (This is why we don’t plan to make the final move for a few months.) We measured, sketched, and noted which windows needed replacing.
[I believe I only made one serious faux pas with a neighbor. He told me that bush hogging is done by the air. "By the air? I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand." He replied in two syllables, "HO-UR." I'm such an idiot.]
The children were not bored, and I was glad to see it. They named the guineas and the ponds, and they rode down the hill in the wagon. But they were dirty.
We hope to raise our own meat here.
We decided to wash up before we left to meet some folks who invited us over for worship. The water people came and Greg went down to the shut-off spot which is pretty far from the house. He turned it on.
I heard this gushing noise. Apparently, a line wasn’t capped in the kitchen. While trying to turn knobs and other stuff, I started yelling, “Turn it off! Turn it off!” but Greg couldn’t hear me. I sent the kids down the hill and around the barn to tell him. By the time they found him (one of the problems of having more than a city lot), the water had been pouring for several minutes.
We cleaned up the mess and went on to our new friends’ house.
We are converting the Amish house on the inside, but we’ll keep the simpleness of the facade. Gardens, flowers, and trellises will be the only additions.
One of the beautiful blessings we received with this move is more invitations than we could possibly accept. I’ve received emails from all over Kentucky with offers of dinner, help, and places to stay as we get situated. I can’t tell you how neat this is to us and how good it makes us think of the Body of Christ.
We worshipped that evening with about 60 people in an old tobacco barn that had been converted to a house. It was more refreshing than running water. We sang, prayed, and enjoyed meeting our new friends. It was the confirmation we needed that this wasn’t going to be a complete disaster. There are good things coming.
When Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone, I understood a little more of it considering our somewhat annoying circumstances so far. We were tired physically, but after that evening, we were refreshed. (We were safe and healthy, and that’s why I consider these inconveniences only mildly annoying.) After several days, we were still without power and water, though the power part wasn’t bad at all. The flies were incredibly annoying and seemed increasingly more interested in us as our smells grew. It’s hard to sleep as it is, and so my insomnia worsened. We were hot, sticky, tired, and dirty, but we were encouraged.
There are two cement floor buildings on the property. This is one of them.
This is the other building: Greg’s New Yankee (Confederate?) Workshop. He will have a nice set-up here. He is a great carpenter. I am so glad that he gets a bigger space for his tools. I will have a sewing corner in the laundry room, so I’m getting a workspace too.
Another day went by and I met some blogging friends in real life. We had 26 (+1) children between the four of us. It is no wonder that we know each other from MOMYS, which stands for Moms of Many Young Siblings. I hugged them (lightly) even though I’d been many days without a shower. I ended up asking one of them for a room that night. We all needed showers, and plus, it’d put us about an hour closer for the long drive home the next day.
I believe they were all under 10, except for about 4 children.
Here we are trying to capture a picture of the group. Yes, that’s my escape artist refusing to pose for a picture.
He’s a cutie pie, though, when he’s not running away.
We made it back home without incident, and we are grateful to the Lord for His goodness, especially that shown through His people that we’d never met before.
We plan to move after the baby is born and after the house is finished. We’ll have water by then… I hope.
This is the first day without fevers, and we’re beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Except for the nursing baby, the whole house has been weeping and wailing and coughing and sneezing. We survived but don’t sneeze sideways within a mile of our house please. The flu made a hard situation harder. Adjusting to a new baby is difficult; I’m not a smiling homeschool magazine mom. I don’t know where other people get their babies, but ours don’t sleep. That’s how we know our babies weren’t switched at the hospital. Plus, they all have reflux. It’s in the genes.
I was inclined to complain (because I am that sort). This was Greg’s vacation and we spent it spooning liquid Tylenol to our kids. If I were still thinking about those mommy wars and trying to live up to artificial impossible standards, I would’ve created an Excel spreadsheet with the doses, times, and amounts of cough syrup and alternating ibuprofen cycles. Too, I would’ve used the Sanitize cycle instead of the Quick Wash. Instead, I just asked, “Is it time for your dose?” and when they moaned, “Nooooooo” I just told them to stop wailing and open up. I’m practical, not perfect.
In other news, we signed a contract for work to begin on our farmhouse. We hope the work will begin in the next month, and we’re told that it’ll take about two months to complete. (So, make that four months, right?) It is a former Amish home, so we are adding electricity, plumbing, heating, bathrooms, a kitchen, and a laundry room. Just a few minor things. We’re also finishing the basement so that I have a place to lock up the children while I watch soaps. (That was a joke. I don’t watch soaps.) Basically, we just have a shell of a house. There are walls up, but we are moving a couple of those too.
This is what the inside looks like. There is drywall but no finishing work.
The whole “moving to the farm thing” is so close I can almost taste it. Greg and I ordered faucets and light fixtures yesterday, so it seems closer. These are happy days for our family (if you ignore the non-sleeping parts), the culmination of many years of hard work and planning. As lame as it sounds, this is our dream and it’s becoming a reality. I imagine it’ll be somewhat like Christmas afternoon, a little bit disappointing as the hype proves bigger than the dream itself. Overall, though, I like to think that the berries will grow and that the grass will be green. But we know that this world is not our home. We’re not looking for something to make us happy, so in that respect, I think it might be a good thing since our expectations are somewhat realistic.
Notice how big an Amish closet is.
We’ve been scrimping, saving, investing, and working long hours so that we could change the course our lives are on and it’s almost here. We decided a few years ago that we were tired of the rat race—working 60+ hours a week for some big company, Greg traveling all the time, me on the edge of burnout from juggling babies and toddlers alone everyday. There was an especially tiring year wherein Greg gave all his time to the company, and we hauled our family out to California for seven months to squeeze into an eight hundred square foot apartment with no yard. I sat alone on our anniversary, Valentine’s Day, my birthday, and Mother’s Day while he busted his rear for the big guys. They owned him and we didn’t even get a Christmas card. When tax time came, I took one look at the bottom line and cried. It just wasn’t worth it.
We decided that we’d live simpler lives—no big vacations, a modest house–so that Greg didn’t have to spend all his waking hours at the jobsite. I know some people don’t have the luxury of these decisions, but we did and didn’t want to waste it. When we move to the farm, Greg will say “goodbye” to the big company and do contract work (via telecommuting) for his cousin’s small engineering firm. This job is Providential in so many ways; we thank God for it. But reducing our income so substantially wouldn’t be possible if we hadn’t planned for that day and lived well below our means in order to get there. (We even saved $50 a month back in those $318/week days.) There is no secret inheritance, just old-fashioned saving and frugality.
If I sound overly passionate about these sorts of things, it’s unintentional. If I had the time or inclination, I’d maintain a blog on personal finance or real estate, my two closet passions –after luxurious seed catalog pictures. Cindy didn’t know that I swiped this quote from a blog comment of hers, but I hope she doesn’t mind my sharing it out of context here. It is priceless because of its fluidness and candor. I’m including it here because it is a good reminder to think on those important, eternal things. I am prone to bandwagons and majoring on the minors. I am not always passionate about Jesus as I am about pet issues. I can get lost in the paint colors and forget that we’re really building a home.
Say that you rail and your rail with your children about all kinds of things: drugs and rock music and Christian music and weak Christianity and sugar and white bread and recycling and ‘those’ people and bad literature and mud on their boots and dirty houses and vaccinations and feeding babies and chocolate and vitamins and natural childbirth, how will your children know which of these things is really important? Maybe one day they find out that some Christians eat sugar and they are nice lovely people who truly love the Lord but from hearing you day in and day out he thought that anyone who ate sugar had a free ticket to hell. Now every single thing you have tried to teach your child ever has been undermined by your passionate intensity.
Today marked the official start of the work on the house. We affectionately call it “Demo Day.” The contractor called and there was lots of banging and clanging in the background. Most of the walls were torn into for the electric and rough plumbing. A few windows needed replacing, so they are being ripped out as well. We are salvaging some of the parts. My son wants windows in his tree house. He is still a city boy, obviously.
[Imagine a picture of the demolition here.]
Progress! Hopefully the work won’t abruptly come to a halt. The only thing worse than the house just sitting would be the house sitting all demolished inside now. I can’t show you a picture because we aren’t there to take one. Greg will fill me in later on in the month.
The work continues on the house. This is the first house project we’ve done without us living in the place or doing the work ourselves. Blessed relief. If you’ve ever lived through a major remodel with tiny feet pattering about, you know what I mean. The framing is almost complete on the walls we are changing. For example, there were six bedrooms upstairs, but one of the bedrooms is becoming two bathrooms (the master bathroom and the kids’ bathroom). The rough plumbing and electric are next.
These pictures were taken on the farm this morning. It is the first snow of the season. Conversely, we have our windows open here in Florida, and the kids even went swimming this week. Just like folks “ooh” and “ahh” over Mickey Mouse, alligators, and the space shuttle, we get excited about snow. The first snow I ever saw was on our honeymoon, which happened 11 years ago this Friday. Isn’t that funny?
More blogging later. I’ve been offline lately just taking care of business here. I am the woman, you know.
I’m a little slow on updating our house progress. (Here’s where I’m supposed to give an excuse: I still have six children in single digits, some of them sick, none of them of babysitting age…) Greg was up there last week to check on things. He took pictures and video, but I figure most of it is exciting only to us.
The rough plumbing is done. The wiring is mostly done. The broken windows were replaced with fancy schmancy tilt windows. I didn’t know we were getting these, but apparently, you can tip them in to clean the exterior. (Great. I’ve been enjoying the fact that I couldn’t reach windows from the outside all this time.) The HVAC system is partly done. It might be finished now.
So it’s still a mess. The drywall installation begins next week, and then the parts that I care about begin: paint colors, trim, flooring, cabinets. Greg tells me those things are minor, but that’s the fun part in my opinion. This other stuff? Just details. You have to remember that I’m married to an engineer who took a hacksaw to our dining room wall just to check for termites. (There were none.) Just make the construction parts work—that’s my attitude. I’ve got a smoky blue/deep red/taupe theme with hardwood and white trim going on throughout the house. That’s the good stuff.
Very exciting, eh?
Our builder is a Mennonite who was Amish until five years ago. I will refrain from highly recommending him until the project is over, but we are more than pleased so far. He has taken care of water damage and crooked floors without readjusting the bid (though he’d be justified in doing so). Owning a few sub-par properties over the years, we’ve dealt with a lot of contractors. I can’t say there’s anyone I’d deal with again or recommend. In fact, our pool guy walked off the job last year with our money– leaving a cracked, unfinished deck. Our rental units are a whole ‘nuther story worth its own book. So, it’s interesting to me that people seek out the work of the Amish—you know, “Amish built” or whatever—but my experience has been to steer clear of anyone with a business ad and the little fish symbol. There are some great Christians, yes, but they are harder to find (presumably due to the large number of people who say that they are but aren’t). It seems you don’t have to wade through a few dozen Amish/Mennonites before you find one who won’t rob you blind.
Anyway, our contractor talked with Greg about his experience with converting from Amish to Mennonite. He says that when he was Amish that he and his wife traveled everywhere together in their buggy and life was much slower. Now, he and his wife have separate cars and go their separate ways. Much of the day is spent apart, you know, but that seems to be the cost of living with technology. There are trade-offs for sure, but time is definitely one of the casualties.
Just as an aside, last year a few readers hammered on me for romanticizing the Amish. For sure, there are theological concerns with some sects, works-based salvation being chief among them. I am a Presbyterian, after all. However, my point wasn’t a theological one, but a practical one.* Mainly, how much do we evaluate what we do, the choices we make, the technologies we adopt in light of how it affects the greater community? It is important to ask the questions, to think about their answers. The Amish are great at this; evangelicals less so. They at least consider these things, even if we don’t agree with all their conclusions. (Though, I’d argue after reading The Riddle of the Amish Culture that they are more right than we are in many cases.) I mean, we don’t even have communities, let alone have the problem of deciding how our decisions fit into the larger context of it.
I might be wrong here, but it’s my observation that organic community life occurs more often when people of similar lifestyles coexist geographically. This, in contrast, to the artificial communities we attempt to create based on theological sameness. There are many reasons and examples I can think of that would support this. It’s a thought I’d like to discuss sometime, but this post is already long enough.
*I often yammer on about how our theological beliefs have practical implications. If what I believe about God is “a”, then “b” necessarily follows. In other words, the sacred and the secular co-exist; ideas have consequences; faith has feet. But just go with me here on the point without dissecting that sentence…
We have some magic now. Buzzz, crackle, pop–electricity! The drywall is back up and patched. We are ready for paint. The electric, plumbing, and HVAC are in the walls now, and so we’re ready for the fancy pants stuff: paint, flooring, trim, and cabinets. Yessss.
I forgot to say that we have gutters too.
If you ignore my son’s big head, you can see a good view of the kitchen and dining area below. It is a traditional Amish floorplan. To the right is the large open living room. Amish church services are held from home to home, so the house is built to accommodate this lifestyle. (Benches are typically brought in for the meetings.) My son is standing with his back to the kitchen area with the dining area in front of him. (Yes, that is a toilet. It’s been there for, oh, about two months now.) There is no formal dining room; life happens right near the food, as it should.
I am regretting my choice of red paint now that I see how big this laundry/mud room is. It is 20 x 12, which is bigger than my current 8 x 4 laundry hallway. There is a lot of red paint for the house. I was feeling a little free-spirited when I made my choices.
Not many people get a half bathroom in their basement sewing room, but that’s the way it worked out. Rats, right? Due to the path the plumber had to take, the pipes went right by my sewing room. For just a few dollars, I thought it was a good last minute change.
There is a saying that money makes the world go ‘round, but being Creationists, we know in fact that it is God who makes things spin. Yet, money still has a lot to do with a lot of things a lot of the time. (Houston, I need an editor.) The Bible talks about money more than it does heaven. This isn’t because money is more important than heaven, but because such an insignificant, temporal thing can keep us from an earth-shattering, eternal thing. C. S. Lewis once said, “Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it,’ while it is really finding its place in him.”
That said, people always get funny when you talk about money. Since the Bible talks freely about it, I think we should too. The Bible also talks about certain things in the Song of Solomon, but really, I think the money part is different. I enjoy finance and real estate, particularly, but saying so is like saying I like anchovies on my pizza. It’s uncool, boring, and a bit on the weird side. People look at you different when they know you eat anchovies. (I don’t like anchovies for the record.)
Subprime Soapbox
From the perspective of being a real estate junkie, I am following this subprime mess with great interest. From the perspective of having my life savings tied up in the equity of four houses right now, I’m following this subprime mess with heart palpitations on steroids. Think Tin Man after he met the wizard. If you follow my sideblog, you already know I think a government bailout is immoral and wrong. It punishes savers, renters, homeowners with equity, and those who invested conservatively among others, while rewarding those who lied, cheated, and/or took a gamble. I don’t usually do rants on my blog.
We live in Florida and have a great credit score, even though that great part was optional two years ago. We qualified for all the liar loans as well as the legitimate ones. While prices doubled and tripled all around us, we kept saying, “No, because what if…” The problem with a government bailout besides its unconstitutionality and its effect on the dollar, is that the public will have no reason to behave morally in the future when immorality receives compensation. It isn’t just an economic issue but a moral one. Let the chips fall. I don’t usually do rants on my blog.
I recently read about banks cutting checks in the amount of a few thousand bucks to borrowers facing foreclosure. The borrowers are already in default, living on another person’s dime for several months, in some cases, years (!) due to the backlog. Yet, banks are paying borrowers a huge check in exchange for not stripping the house, selling off the fixtures, and trashing it before they leave. They’re paying them not to behave immorally, and apparently, a lot of people need that cash incentive to do the right thing. I don’t usually do rants on my blog.
The program is called “Cash for Keys.” The basic premise is that it is cheaper to pay someone who already owes you money even more money just to not cause you an even greater loss. Does that make sense? It is the same thing that happens when McDonald’s or Wal-Mart settles out of court for a ridiculous sum of money for an even more ridiculous, frivolous lawsuit just because that’s the way it works. I always thought they should stick it to these greedy guts who spill hot coffee on themselves, but that was before it happened to us.
We paid off the guy, who was holding our seven rental units hostage, just to make him go away. We essentially gave him a huge sum of money just to give us back keys that we already owned. Cash For Keys, baby. You have to know that burns me up, but I understand more than ever how the world spins. It’s complicated and not always pretty. I’m just thankful that it’s –probably, hopefully– over. We are back to being regular landlords, as opposed to leasing them to someone who is subleasing them.
Moving Plans
Our plans for moving have changed. When we first began trying to think outside of the box in order to leave the rat race (60+ hour work weeks with traveling on top of it), we came up with dozens of options to make a go at a different kind of life. We were going to rehab houses. We were going to buy a deli in the mall food court. We were going to do all sorts of crazy things. When Greg landed a work-from-anywhere job eighteen months ago, I thought we had that piece of the puzzle figured out. This was great until that job began requiring a great deal of travel. (This is in addition to the rocket job at the Cape.) We’re currently trying to figure out our best options.
At the moment, we think the most prudent course is to stay in the area for a little longer to build up a better financial cushion. Most of our losses are unrealized gains, as we weren’t planning on our primary house equity dropping 50% in two years. We used conservative estimates in our planning, but not that conservative. It’s not just the people who are upside down on their houses that are affected, but the influx of foreclosures and rundown properties runs down the values for regular folks too. (Incidentally, our taxes were raised when our values rose, but when they plummeted, our taxes stayed the same. Heh.) We could move to the farm next month when our house is finished and be fine, but it’d require Greg to keep the high-travel job. If we stay here, he could travel less and have more control over his schedule. The goal has always been keeping our family together, not a farm fantasy. Yee-ouch.
Our plans change by the minute and by the disaster, and we can’t say for sure what will happen. The whole thing is fluid.
A Final Aside
Since something is always happening, I have to mention I got my oldest son’s arm put in a cast this morning. He played six baseball games last week, all the while with a broken wrist. The kid loves baseball. He’s suiting up for tomorrow night’s game, but this time he’ll be shouting plays from the bench. Just call him, Bat Boy.
I’ve been unplugged since my last entry. Now, when I say “unplugged,” I really mean it. We closed on our property last week. It is an older Amish house on 54 acres, so we were without electricity and water. Going without electricity wasn’t bad at all, it was a lack of water that made things difficult. Even the Amish have a water source, but ours wasn’t hooked up yet. More on that later, though. After we regroup over here, I’ll give an update, details, and pictures. For now, I’m really busy flipping our kitchen sink on and off, on and off.
Moving Plans
