Month: June 2015

grumpy about the construction project (closing cometh)

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Like a zombie slowly and hypnotically gamboling in my direction, the closing on our renovation loan is approaching. It’s scheduled for Friday afternoon (aka tomorrow), though hypothetically something catastrophic could still happen Friday morning if the underwriter decides something catastrophic should happen.

To be honest, part of me is looking for the catastrophe, because the months it’s taken to plan the renovation and get to this point have given my anxiety time to blossom into full-on panic. I am truly frightened by the scope of this renovation. Plus today was the last day of school for the kids, so now they’re full time with me, unless I want to pay someone. After I stop choking on the size of the wire transfer we’ll make to the bank as part of this loan transaction, I’ll check my balances to see if I have enough money left for a babysitter.

I am overwhelmed by my first world problems.

Grumpy about clear title (I am ignorant and stupid)

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I really was a lawyer once. A litigator. But I never, ever dealt with liens, except to the extent I must have studied them to take the Virginia bar exam, and I don’t remember anything about it, and anyway I never executed a judgment on anyone. 

Here’s what I do remember about taking the bar exam. Back then, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,  Virginia still had a dress code for the exam. Especially for women. Had I sat for the bar exam in the dark ages before the Big Bang, I would have been required to wear pantyhose. I would have been hosed. By the time I came along, I was merely warned to wear a dress. Some examiners might kick a girl out if she was wearing pants, no matter how professional those slacks might be. 

Anyway. What? Oh. Remember the liens I was talking about yesterday? I got to talk with the lawyer at WE energies this morning. He called at 7:00 am. Who does that?? Peeps in Wisconsin do that. Early risers here. 

The WE lawyer explained how this works. Judgments against people are recorded in court records. Title companies do searches in those court records when they’re making sure a homeowner’s title is clear. If they see judgments with our names (or similar names), they pick them up. But the plaintiffs who got the judgments haven’t gone out and found properties whose owners have those names and done something extra to “attach” the lien to their property. It’s just up to the title company to figure out what’s relevant. 

Ooooh… Imagine if your name is John Smith or Mary Jones. 

It turns out all you need to do when this happens is give the title company an affidavit that says, in various legalese, “that’s not me.” Done. No big deal. 

I had a massive anxiety attack about these liens yesterday and fretted and fretted. Total waste of time and emotional energy, caused entirely by my own stupidity. If only I had been trained as a lawyer. 

Oh. I was. God, I’m stupid and ignorant. I really do deserve to live with myself. At least I didn’t yell at anyone, so I guess it could have been worse. 

Grumpy about clear title 

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As we come limping into the closing gates on our renovation loan, we have had what I hope is our last surprise. The lady I’ve been working with at the lender bank called me today. “There are three liens on your property. Do you know about them?”

This came as a surprise. A really big surprise. No no. A REALLY BIG-ASS SURPRISE. The only debt Anthony and I have is our mortgage. We pay our bills. We check our mail. We answer our phones. We even check our credit reports sometimes. In fact, we’re going through a mortgage loan process, so our credit reports have been picked clean by underwriters. There should be no surprises.

Yet there they were, three clouds on clear title to our home. So let me tell you a tale of three liens.

1.  Child Support.

In February 2013, Milwaukee County child support filed a lien on our house. Totally makes sense. Because Anthony and I have children we don’t know about! Maybe it happened during the missing years in our 20’s. The title company provided us with a docket number, and It was remarkably easy to find Wisconsin’s child support “lien docket” on line. The website makes it really easy to search for a docket number, so I did that and I learned something. Some guy named Anthony Cross owes $24,861 in child support, at least as of two years ago. He was born on January 4, 1974. If I had a photo of him, I would post it here for you and the world to see. Different name and different birthday from my Anthony. This didn’t stop child support services from filing the lien against our home.

I called child support services and explained the problem. The nice lady who answered the phone told me I had to give her my social security number. Why? I replied. “Because that’s the only way we can find you in our system.”

“But I’m not in your system. That’s the whole point.”

“I cannot help you, ma’am, unless you give me your social security number.”

So I did. Because what else could I do?

“Oh. You’re right, ma’am, you’re not in my system.”

“Thank you for that excellent news. Who do I need to talk with about having the lien removed from my property?”

“You need to go down to the courthouse to room 101–”

Whoa whoa whoa whoa. I interrupted. “I don’t need to do anything. You guys need to remove the lien from my property, because it is wrong and a bad mistake.”

“I can’t do that, ma’am.”

“I KNOW. So who do I need to talk with??”

“The lawyer, who is in room 101.”

“Can I have a name and number?”

“No.”

??????

I’m at an impasse with myself, because I don’t feel like going down to the courthouse and I’m not sure what to do next.

2.  Power Company.

WE Energies, our local gas and electric monopoly, filed a judgment lien on our property in March 2011 for $1,700 and some change. The judgment is against — wait for it — Anthony Cross. I’m guessing this deadbeat was probably born some time in, say… January 1974.

I called WE Energies. I was transferred to some legal-ish department, where a nice lady named Ann took my call. I explained the situation and ended with, “What do I need to do, to make sure WE removes the lien from my property?”

“Ma’am, you can fix this problem yourself easily, by contacting your credit bureaus and informing them of the error.”

My jaw went slack as I took deep breaths and tried not to scream. “This isn’t ON our credit reports. Otherwise we would have known about it before. The judgment isn’t against us, we don’t owe you any money, so you haven’t reported us to any credit bureau.”

“Ooh. I’m not sure how to handle this.”

I got huffy. “It’s easy. WE Energies corrects its mistake and removes the lien from my property!”

After some aimless back and forth about the title company, there was a long pause, into which silence my imagination inserted a vivid image of a young woman staring blankly into space making a silent “duuuuh?” shape with her mouth. “I will need to look into this and determine who you should be talking to. Can you hold for a moment?”

Five minutes later, she took my name and number and promised to call back.

Two hours later, I got a voicemail from a gravelly-voiced man.

“Yes this is attorney Terry S—, from WE Energies, Wisconsin Electric, [telephone number], I’m calling for Carla Pennington-Cross, the call is regarding a judgment that was taken against a Anthony Cross, and I know there was some questions that was posed to one of WE Energies employees, and I think I can explain the situation better than she, and that’s why I’m calling. So if you want to get better clarification, give me a call at [telephone number]. Thanks, bye.” [sic, minus the “uh”s.]

I called him back and was rolled over to his voicemail. The message was recorded by a woman, suggesting Terry is a lawyer who’s too uppity to record his own message. Lame. I left him a message.

“This is Carla P—-, returning a call from someone named Terry regarding a lien that WE Energies filed against my home for a judgment against someone else. Please call me back as soon as possible. I look forward to receiving “clarification on the situation.” In particular I look forward to hearing how and when WE Energies will remove the lien from my home, since it was filed in error.”

No telling how this one is going down.

3.  The Bank

Associated Bank filed a lien against our house in August 2013, for a judgment in the amount of $18,151.73 against someone named Carla Cross. This one should be easy, because I’ve never been named Carla Cross and I’ve never had an account with Associated Bank. But I know it won’t be. After I spent a good hour trying to find phone numbers and information about the first two liens, I was used up. I guess I’ll call Associated tomorrow and see what the fuck they’ll actually do for me. Nothing, probably.

How could someone file a lien against my home without even sending notice of some kind to the address? Why are there deadbeats running around town bearing half my name and Anthony’s name? Am I really going to have to go down to the courthouse and file motions and do shit to get these liens, which are essentially false strangleholds on my title to my house, removed? Why? Why? I don’t want to be a lawyer anymore. This is the world I left behind me.

Our legal system may be amazing, but it also sucks.

grumpy about my child’s art

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Some time ago I admitted that one of the great joys of parenthood is hanging awful art on my living room walls. I usually can find my way to enjoying my kids’ crappy productions, but to my great delight lately Jesse has shown talent — i.e., some of her recent art not only doesn’t suck; it’s actually really good. But she likes to work with pencil these days and she’s stretching her chops, trying new things, exploring different ways to use lines and scribbles to build forms and compositions. Which means she’s back to sort of sucking. Or, from another perspective, she’s gone, uh… abstract.

Last week she came home with an enormous origami fortune teller. I remember making them as a kid out of a piece of 8×11 paper. My friends and I would put numbers on the outside and the inside, and tawdry little messages fit for a fortune cookie on the undersides of the inner flaps. We’d play with them at recess, and much girlie giggling would ensue.

Jesse’s must have been made out of a piece of poster board. I held it up and eyed it.

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What the heck did she draw all over it?? Jesse doesn’t do random scribbles. She’s always trying to draw something. So I took a closer look at each of the four panels.

Panel 1:

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Hmm. Butterflies?

Panel 2:

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What’s that yellow thing? What’s the blue and red coming from off-screen? Maybe… a bunny rabbit being attacked by an arrow…?

Panel 3:

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Huh. That could be a lot of things, like a flower, or a telescope, or, well… a boob?

Panel 4:

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Yup. Definitely boobs.

Jesse drew two boobs, a rabbit about to be stabbed by an arrow, and butterflies.

WTF?

I tried to be nonchalant when I asked Jesse what was up with her fortune teller. She explained it to me, orienting it correctly.

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Those are eyeballs, and it’s a creature.

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It’s opening it’s mouth now. Jesse demonstrated.

The eyeballs still look like boobs to me.

I’m thinking maybe Jesse could do with some art lessons.

grumpy about the construction project (transition time)

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We are still waiting and waiting and waiting for all the technical paperwork and details to be completed for our construction loan. The bank is screwing up things in little ways, like when their “employment verification department” contacted the wrong person at Anthony’s job — i.e., not the person he told them to contact but someone else — and then when he found out, the right person was out for the day, and then it’s the weekend, and shit shit shit more delays.  I’m truly astonished by how long it’s taking, and also on the edge of a nervous breakdown because of it.

The children are also anxious about the situation, which so far has included a dumpster (which we filled ourselves) and now a PODS container sitting on our front lawn. But no wall has come tumbling down yet.

Jesse’s therapist, the able and thoughtful Dr. Abrams, suggested to me that I put together a sort of photo memory book of our house the way it looks now, before our massive renovation begins. He says it will help with Jesse’s transitional anxiety. He says she may miss the old house and the way things were. Sure thing! I said, as I cheerfully jotted in my calendar the free hours when I would do it.

I went home and, that very night, I carefully photographed all of Jesse’s special places and put together a scrap book. I used a variety of decals, ribbons, and pressed flowers to decorate the scrap book, and also I printed out special labels and names to identify places in the house so that 20 years from now, when Jesse is feeling really unsettled, she can turn back to this scrap book and find soothing comfort in deep memories of the home of her early childhood.

* * * * * * * *

I think I just fell asleep and had a bad dream, almost like a nightmare. Or someone else was typing a fantasy about something I did. Where was I? Oh right. Dr. Abrams said make a photo book of the house as it is. Here’s how that conversation went:

Abrams [looking kind and thoughtful]: Blah blah blah you could make a photo book of the house to help Jesse transition blah blah blah.

Jesse [nodding appreciatively while staring unblinking at me, radiating the betrayal she feels because soon we’re expanding the kitchen, adding a bathroom and mudroom, and giving her a bedroom twice as big as Nick’s.]

Me [staring blankly at Abrams and then Jesse as I cop attitude]: Well… Uh… Jesse’s got an iPad mini. She knows how to use it. She can take photos of whatever she wants before demolition starts.

Abrams [practically glaring at me and then speaking verrrry slowly]:  I.  think. you. should make. a book.

Well okay then. It’s not every day that Dr. Abrams is so directive with me.

In the weeks since that encounter, I’ve received two more reminders from Dr. Abrams, but the photo book hasn’t happened yet. Sadly, I have a very strong anti-authoritarian streak. Maybe if and when we finally schedule a closing date, and the Big Trucks are rolling into our driveway, I’ll get around to it. Until then, somebody hand me the Mommy-Fail stamp.

grumpy about brothers (happy birthday, Eric)

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It’s my brother Eric’s birthday today. He’s three years older than me, but at this middle-aged point in our lives we’re practically the same age. I’ve always called Eric my “little brother”, as in, my littlest big brother, but I guess once you’re a big brother, you’re a big brother no matter how old everyone gets. Even if you started out a little cutie like this.

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Eric’s the one in the middle in the feast shot, with our brothers Mark to his left and Ted to his right. That’s mom with the beehive. I don’t exist yet, because this was Eric’s one-year celebration, Korean style.

Here’s Eric with his lifelong best friend, brother Mark, who’s 14 months older than him. Eric’s on the right.eric2

They look like characters in a Maurice Sendak book.

I hesitate to write the rest of this post, but sometimes the heart needs to speak. Eric may well get a bit miffed at me for this, but I’ll just go ahead and say it: he is a first-class keeper of the grumpy flame. There’s a reason we sometimes mocked him with the nickname Mr. Sunshine, alongside my grumpy dad. But don’t think for a second that I’m judging. It’s been some long years since I accepted my place on the list of flame keepers and recognized that Eric and I share a lot of grumpy DNA.

These days I wonder a lot about whether the relationships we remember with our siblings are reality-based or rather figments of the apocryphal stories we’re told over and over again by our parents and other observers. I thought for many years that I grew up in a constant state of conflict with Eric. As a teenager, he was pretty damn hostile and angry a lot of the time, but it wasn’t really that. There were the stories. I heard again and again about how he wouldn’t share his GI Joes with me at Christmas when I was three, so I punched him in the face and gave him a bloody nose, and then there was the time I bit him so hard he bled after he was mean to me. Ha ha ha what a great indicator of our relationship. There were always stories about us fighting and about Eric picking on me. I don’t remember anyone ever telling me stories about stuff we did together that was fun, about the love we shared as siblings.

When Eric went through some tough times in high school, no one invited me to be compassionate, patient, or accepting. My parents didn’t play parenthood that way. They yelled, they threatened, but they didn’t listen or sympathize readily. No one explained to me that Eric’s rage probably wasn’t about me but about something else, something hurting inside him. No one asked me to be bigger than a spoiled little sister. So that’s how Eric saw me, if I have this right. He called me spoiled, bitchy, stuck up, and much worse than that. He would even say, “Mom always loved you best.”

I always hated hearing that last bit. I still remember a particular occasion when that blurted out, when we were nearly adults. It reflected so much insecurity and sadness, and it wasn’t true. I felt terrible for Eric that he felt that way. But I didn’t have any magic moves in my emotional skill set to fill his cup in that moment. They didn’t come instinctively to me, and my parents didn’t teach them to me. My heart told me he needed to hear that he was loved, without any anger attached to it, but I couldn’t find my way there. I just kept yelling back at him.

When I root around in my memories of Eric, without the filters of other people’s stories, I find a lot of good stuff. We played together, we ate together, we watched TV and shared games. Of course we fought, but that’s normal. And Eric supported me in a lot of ways, like any decent and excellent brother. He helped me with homework; he cooked food and treats for me; he played games with me; he defended me; he posed for awful photos with me.

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What more can you ask of a grumpy big brother than to tolerate a little sister with such a dopey look on her face?

Echoes of Eric’s insecurities haunt me to this day, because I always wish I had been more sensitive to them, in all the ease with which I passed through school and college. But never mind. Here and now, I’m laying it on the line with this birthday message to my brother:

Eric. You are and will always be my big brother. Just like our grumpy dad was an anchor that brought our family together, in his stead you’re becoming the anchor that brings our family together. Your grumpy is an important part of it, a reminder of a father who I adored and still miss so much. I love that you’re a devoted husband and father. I’ve seen you apologize to your family for your grumpy behavior. It’s not something our parents taught us to do; it’s BIG that you found the courage to go there. May you always own your grumpy more than your grumpy owns you. I’m working on it too. And no matter how flawed you are or I am, I love you, bro, and I’ll always be on your side. I wish I could have told you that a hundred times, decades ago, when you probably needed to hear it more.

grumpy about school lunches

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I complain a lot about sending lunch to school with Jesse. Next year I have to start doing it with Nick, and I’ll no doubt complain twice as much. I can’t spare myself this hassle by doing hot lunches through school lunch programs, for two reasons. One, Jesse’s got the whole food allergy thing going on (eggs). Two, school lunches kind of suck, and my kids are pretty spoiled and picky eaters. Not picky like they have limited palates (except Nick is struggling with veggies), but picky like they know that a lot of food sucks and fresh homemade is almost always better.

So even if Jesse didn’t have a food allergy, I’d rather pack her lunch and have her actually eat it, than have her sit staring glumly at her school offering and having to choose either to choke that shit down or to be hungry for the next 3.5 hours. That’s why Jesse gets homemade. She’s off the tacos I used to have to send (homemade tortilla cooked in the morning on a cast iron skillet, BAM). Now she’s on to pork barbecue sandwiches. Every few weeks I boil up a pork shoulder with a bunch of herbs and vege until it’s melt-in-your-mouth tender, and I shred and freeze it. I drop a frozen lump into a little container each day and it’s defrosted by lunchtime. I also bake homemade hamburger buns and freeze them. Wrap one in aluminum and it’s defrosted by lunch. A separate little container of barbecue sauce, and usually a side of canned peaches, and lunch is a wrap. Trader Joe is Jesse’s peach brand, and not the little snack cups with extra sugar for kids. She likes the fancy ones that come in halves in a jar and cost four times as much. I can’t really complain about it, because she’s right — they taste better. Or sometimes I’ll cut up some melon or a mango, or if they’re available she loves a handful of cherries. If I’m in an extravagant mood, I bake cupcakes and freeze them, so I can drop one of those in her lunch box too. It takes me a good 15 minutes to put her lunch together, and some mornings it feels like a lot of time that I could be spending in better ways, like lolling on the sofa, checking the weather on my iPhone as I mainline a cup of coffee.

I swear I’m not a food over-achiever. It’s just that I’ve had to pore over so many labels to look for eggs in ingredient lists. After you’ve read a thousand labels on packaged foods, you sort of lose your taste for them. The ingredient lists are usually so long, and most of the items aren’t things I comprehend. What exactly is hydroxylated soy lecithin, or sodium stearoyl lactylate, or calcium propionate, or azodicarbonamide? How do I determine if they’re derived from a chicken egg? Why do they have to be conjoined in bread? Maybe it’s all as innocent as dihydrogen monoxide, but I don’t really want to spend the time finding out. Better to just bake my own bread (flour, salt, yeast, water, sometimes sugar and butter). No mystery in that, unless you want me to wax eloquent about the mystery of how yeasty FARTS can make a bit of flour and salt into such a miraculously tasty and addictive simple carb. (I love that I feed my kids yeast farts. If I use honey, I can say with a lot of pride that I’m feeding them yeast farts and bee barf. All natural.)

I may get grumpy about doing lunch for the kids, but I shouldn’t. I’m grateful that I can afford to make them lunches out of the foods they choose and enjoy, that I have the time to do it, that I’m pulled together enough to do it. Not everyone has these luxuries.

The front office ladies at Jesse’s elementary school have a reputation for being pretty grumpy. A lot of people find them off-putting, stern and even rude. I admit I found them to be aloof and sometimes odd at first, but I’m not one to judge someone else’s grumpy. These women work in an open space through which every human entering and leaving that school building must pass. They also deal with kids ranging in age from 4 to 10.  It cannot be pleasant.

Over the years, I’ve hovered enough to see through the stern facade and observe the abiding kindness they feel for the kids who come through their work space. Once in a  while, I’ve caught pseudonymous Linda feeding kids in the morning. She sits them down near her desk and pulls something out of her drawer. She’s nonchalant, low-key, dry. She would never want a child to feel ashamed of this situation. She’s told me in rare moments of candor that some kids come to school hungry, having eaten nothing for breakfast, and sometimes nothing since their (free) school lunch the day before. There’s no knowing if it’s poverty or neglect. Doesn’t matter. Linda takes care of it, best she can. Her simple kindness breaks my heart, because she takes no pride in it (just the solace of knowing a child is less hungry) and because I wish there were no need of it.

It’s hard to accept that hungry children exist in my neighborhood, in this first-world nation. I can’t think about it too much, else I’d be crying all the time, as I am now. As the school year winds down, I find myself asking what becomes of these children during the summer, when there’s no Linda to look out for them, no one to see their hunger and answer it. And what the hell am I doing about it? Nothing, of course. Shedding tears and little else.

Ten years ago, I would have been filled with a hopeless rage in the face of this, mostly directed at myself and fueled by a stream of negative emotions — self-loathing, disappointment, shame, responsibility. Because everything is my fault. I still have that range of feelings, but I’m less hopeless about it all. Years of therapy with Jesse, who shares these tendencies, have helped. Rationally, I know it’s not my fault, and I know I can’t fix everything, and it would be pathetic indeed if I let my hopelessness stop me from doing one little useful thing. So I’ll try to do that, just a little useful thing for a hungry kid here and there as we wind through summer, just like Linda. I’ll probably be grumpy about it, but there’s nothing wrong with that.