Posted by Leigh on September 25, 2008
For years I’ve suffered from hundreds of sore throats, according to my doc, I need to have my tonsils out. But I can’t even stand the thought of that. Then a fews years back, when I was still working in land development, my boss, a hobbyist bee keeper, told me to start taking honey for my sore throats, and he handed me a bottle. (At that time I hated even the smell of honey, because he used the kitchen in our office to process his honey, so the whole place always reeked of it.) So I came home that night and did some research on the topic.
Of course, you can find information on just about anything if you spend enough time looking for it online. Now whether or not you can believe most of that information is another thing. I found tons of sites extolling the virtues of honey and cinnamon, and I figured what the heck, it can’t hurt me, as they are two ingredients that I use often in cooking, so I started taking a tablespoon of honey sprinkled with cinnamon a couple times a day whenever my tonsils started acting up.
Read More…
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Posted by Leigh on September 10, 2008
My father got me out of bed last night because he couldn’t sleep. Luckily I wasn’t sleeping either, but reading instead. (I find I sleep very little since we moved in here.)
He wanted to know what happened to me. “You used to be such a fighter. That’s how you got your reputation as the family bitch.”
He’s right. I am the family bitch. (Pardon my language, but there really isn’t a better word for it.)
I know I’ve referred to myself as the black sheep of the family on the blog before and it’s true. I was never one to follow the pack. I’m the middle child, the middle of three daughters. My older sister is five years older than me, and when she was informed she was getting a baby sister, she told my parents she’d rather have a puppy. She was spoiled rotten, as the only grandchild at the time, and they all lived with my grandparents and my uncle and his former wife. Six adults and one child in a house makes for a spoiled child.
My parents got their first home just months before I was born, so not only had my sister lost the constant attention of four other adults, she had to deal with a new baby sister taking her place also. So from the time I was born, I had to be a fighter.
By the time my younger sister came along, when I was just three, my older sister and I had never gotten along. But she was ready for the new baby, she was allowed to help take care of it, while I wasn’t. It was about then, so my parents tell me, that I started getting into trouble.
I never took it out on the new baby, my younger sister, but always went after my older sister instead. I was “the problem child”. The one that wouldn’t listen, that talked back and always did my own thing. Not that this was a bad thing, at least in my opinion. It made me who I am today.
Growing up I probably felt dad’s belt across my backside three times as much as either of my sisters. I got to the point where I’d just tell him to smack me, because I wasn’t going to do what he asked me to. So I took the paddling, and then did what I wasn’t supposed to, and took another paddling for it.
By the time I was five, I had probably had more stitches, than most people ever get, usually doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. I was also the one that caused the most damage.
I was seven when I shoved my older sister, who was twelve at the time, through a glass door. She may have gotten the stitches that time, but I think my butt was more sore than hers when dad was done.
I should also mention that I was the smallest of us three girls, not height wise, as I’m actually the tallest now, but weight wise. (We pick on each other now, my older sister got the good hair, I got the good body, and my younger sister got the good job… Together we’d make the perfect woman.) Anyways, I was a scrawny little “stick child”, while both of my sisters were stocky in build. It may have been a disadvantage when we were younger, but now I’m envied for it.
Over the years, I caused lots of injuries to mostly my older sister. When we both became teenagers, Dad quit trying to referee our fights and got to the point where he’d just let us fight it out. As we were girls it usually came down to lots of teeth marks and pulling hair. I did blacken her eyes quite a few times though, but her teeth seemed to be sharper than mine…. lol…
When I was sixteen, and my older sister finally moved out of my parents house, the fighting between me and my younger sister picked up. She ended up with a few stitches and even a few broken bones. My favorite episode being when I broke three of her fingers, because she woke me up. Mom had told her to wake me one afternoon because I had to work, but she woke me by lifting my head off the pillow by my pony tale. I don’t think she ever touched me again after that, not that I can blame her. It’s really hard to get along when you have two broken fingers on one hand and one on the other.
Then after my I married my first husband, I had to be a fighter to survive. Only he taught me to fight better, not by teaching me, but by me having to defend myself and my young son. But as I’ve grown up, my penchant for violence has diminished, I’ve learned that words can work better than fists, but well, they’re always there for back-up just in case.
I was the first daughter to ever stand up to our sometimes over-controlling father. I’ve put my dad in his place a few times over the years. But I’m also the closest one to him, probably because I’m the most like him. (Although, I’ve never hit my kids.)
I finally defeated my first husband with words, not fists, and got out of that relationship. Only to have him force himself back into my life. It took a few more years before I got rid of him totally, but again it wasn’t done with violence, although sometimes I think it should have been.
Over the years I’ve used my fighting attitude to get things done my way many times. Even my current husband can’t one up me when I set my mind to it, although he is a cunning guy. Sometimes I get into fierce debates just for fun, usually when I’m bored out of my mind.
Okay, so to get to the point of this post….
On Friday when this latest mess started, the fight kind of went out of me. I had it stuck in my mind that I had to be nice to these people because the fate of my family rested in their hands. It’s wasn’t just me on the line anymore, but my husband and children also.
Last night’s little talk with my father put things back into perspective to me. He told me to quit feeling sorry for myself and to come out swinging! And he’s right!
The fate of my family and my house, doesn’t rest with these idiots, the dealership, the mortgage brokers or any of the rest. It rests with me. So why was I being nice and trying not to step on anyone’s toes, when I should have come out swinging then. I’ve never been one to wait around while other people decided my fate, I’ve always made my own path.
So “No more Mr. (or Mrs.) Nice Guy”, it’s time that we do things my way! And right now, I feel for the first poor soul to tell me it can’t be done! I’m just waiting for the phone to ring now, not nervously as yesterday. But anxiously!
You may not be able to catch as many flies with vinegar as with honey, but who wants to catch flies anyway? I just want my house back, and at this point in time, I don’t care how many toes I step on. Things are going to get done, instead of just talking about them getting done!
I guess we all sometimes lose ourselves when things like this happen, but we’ve just got to look back and remember who we are! If I can play Russian roulette with an angry drunk (my first husband) and come out on top, these bankers and business men don’t stand a chance - do they? Only no guns will be needed this time, as word can cut just as sharply, especailly when it comes to reputations!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Posted by Leigh on September 8, 2008
Everyday lately seems like it lasts forever… I spend most of mine sitting by the phone, hoping it’ll ring with good news.
Unfortunately the only good news I’ve gotten lately is when I stepped on the scale. This whole mess just makes me sick. Unlike most women who fight for years to get back to their high school weight, this mess has actually made me succeed. I now weigh five pounds less than I did when I graduated!
My parents and I met with the local bank loan officer this morning and things looked good…. Until he realized I filed bankruptcy in 2005. So now he’s reprocessing our application with my parents as co-signers, I guess we’ll have the results of that tomorrow. This time he’s running it as a home equity line of credit, which will actually reduce the closing costs by about thirteen thousand, and reduce the loan time from thirty years to twenty years, without changing the monthly payment much. I sure hope he calls with some good news tomorrow.
I couldn’t even get excited when the inspector came out to the new house today and gave us the final approval. Our occupancy permit should be in the mail tomorrow, and we have a temporary one for now. Not that that means much to us at this point.
I thought I had done all the research before we started the process with our mortgage broker, but now things are starting to look a little shady. If I hadn’t been so excited at the construction closing I would have asked more questions about what we were signing, but lo and behold I didn’t. I was just glad that we were ready to begin. Unfortunately, we signed a form stating that we wouldn’t live on the property until the final mortgage has closed.
Convenient how just hours after I let my mortgage broker know that the house was finished, that I got a call stating the bank had gone under. Now I have to wonder why, if such a large bank is going out of business that I can’t find any information on it on the internet? Wouldn’t that have made the news somewhere?
It’s looking more and more like the company we’re dealing with is trying to scam us a bit, if not a lot. They had us sign all sorts of forms that no other bank has even seen, these forms have even dumbfounded our attorney. They seem to break all banking laws, but because we’ve already signed them, are legally binding. Which means that until they or we secure a loan - we can’t move in.
They’ve also done everything they can to get us to pay all kinds of ridiculous fees, and default on our payments. We’ve never even received a statement from them, yet we’ve made monthly payments since construction began. She always tells me that the statements must have gotten lost in the mail… But three statements three months in a row getting lost? Come on now. If I hadn’t put the payments in my PDA we probably would have missed them, giving them the power to foreclose on our property.
Guess it’s a good thing that I’m at least organized. Or at least I used to be when I actually had a desk… Now I have mountains of papers stacked on mountains of clothes and it takes hours to find anything.
Then there’s the appraiser. We paid for the first appraisal upfront at the dealership. When the appraiser made the appointment with me, I informed her of this. The mortgage broker then told her that it was wrong and I was supposed to pay her when she came out. I called the dealership and had their wonderful (not being sarcastic) secretary sort the whole mess out. The secretary called me and assured me that the appraiser had been paid in advance and not to give her a check when she came out. So the appraiser showed up two days before her appointment, looked at the property for less than five minutes and asked me for a check. I refused, because I knew she had already been paid.
Now that the house is finished, they want another appraisal. But suddenly the appraisal fee has jumped by $150. What a crock! The lady jumped her prices that much in three months? I think not, so I called her. Not claiming to be myself I asked her about her appraisal fees, they were the same as before, so apparently our horrible mortgage brokers want the extra money for themselves. Ridiculous! They’re already figuring almost thirteen thousand in closing costs for themselves. Greedy, greedy people.
Then the mortgage brokers sent us another “loan application” to fill out. It’s actually an application for another mortgage broker. Why can’t they do it themselves? Why have they suddenly decided to hand us off to a competing company? And why does the new mortgage broker ask for all of our credit card numbers and want us to sign a release stating that they can charge them at any time for any fees they feel necessary?
I just flat out refuse to sign any papers for this new mortgage broker, and I’ve ordered copies of our credit reports. As i have not authorized them to check our credit, there had better not be any inquiries that originated from them, or they will hear from our attorney.
It’s just one big mess after another, and I’m left feeling foolish. I trusted the home dealership to put us in touch with a respectable mortgage broker company, but apparently they didn’t. Our lawyer thinks we might have a case there, against both the dealership and the mortgage brokers! I could care less, right now about suing anyone. I just want to be able to move into my house. But is it ever going to happen?
Why oh why didn’t we just go to the local bank in the first place? Oh wait, because they only like to deal with people with perfect credit. They wouldn’t even give my younger sister and her husband a loan for a twenty-five thousand dollar house without a cosigner, even though they make over seventy-five thousand a year between the two of them! And the home dealership assured us that a mortgage broker would get us a better rate… Yeah, a better rate for the mortgage brokers I guess!
I guess tomorrow will be another long day of sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring…. But I guess I don’t have anything better to do anyway, I can’t concentrate on anything lately.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
