Have you ever felt like you could just collapse on the floor in a huge blubbering pile? Like nothing in the world will ever go your way again? As if you need to take out a white flag and wave it for everyone to see and call a truce? The endless barrage of hardships and difficulties are just too much to bear!
I don't know what has been going on the last 5 years so that nothing will ever go our way, but I am at my wits' end. It just seems like it's one thing after another. As soon as we start to see the clouds breaking up, more clouds roll right in to take their place. It's just one never ending storm after another. I feel empty and hopeless. I am truly at a loss and no one will help us. I feel like I am in a bottomless pit of quicksand from which there is no escape. I have a feeling that the depression is trying to move back in and take back over my life, but I don't want it to.
I am usually a pretty optimistic person. I know it is always darkest before the dawn, really I do. I have made many batches of lemonade out of my pile of lemons, and some earrings, lemon bars, lemon sherbet, lemon bread, lemon meringue pie, lemon drops, lemon chicken, lemon poppy seed muffins, and lovely scented soaps too. But I am running out of things to make with these lemons and I would really like to get something else instead. Did you know that we have had 10 qualifying hardships within the last 5 years? I am sure I could find even more than that too if I tried. Sad. Pathetic. Unnatural.
Why does no one see my pain? Why will no one reach out a helping hand? Why does everyone think my business is none of their business? Even when I ask for help, no one will help. They won't see my need, it's like they put blinders on, plug their ears and sing a merry tune until I have talked so much I can't talk anymore. They change what I tell them to ease their guilt and so that they are able to do their worst to me. I am sick of it.
Bad service, rising expenses, job transfers, job losses, botched rentals, home sale staging, deaths, depression, short sale, foreclosure, credit clampdowns, home repairs, credit counseling, stress, illness, refinancing, medical debt, loan modifications, I could go on and on. All the while I always try to do the right thing and take care of my debts at the expense of our family and our life. It's sickening really. Why won't it stop? Why do these things keep happening to me? I need to put an end to this vicious cycle.
Everyone has a plan, and everyone tells me what to do when they can't help me. When I tell them I've tried that already, they simply tell me that I must have done it wrong or that I need to do X as well. They tell me someone else will help and pretend to act incredulous and disgusted when I tell them that didn't work either.
Can't anyone just listen, support a person, and help them out? Why does everyone feel the need to require documentation of everything even though I have never told any lies about my situation? Why can't we prepare for something bad that is going to happen when we know in advance it will happen simply because it has yet to happen?
Yeah, I know I have a lot of questions. Why can't anyone answer any of them? Doesn't anyone else have these kinds of questions too? Hasn't this kind of thing been happening all over the world? Why is no one willing to help a person simply to be helpful, not just because a law says they have to?
Apparently no business, no government program, and no job performance bonus is going to get us out of this mess. Only God can and only God will. How do I give this all up for him to deal with when all I do is worry about tomorrow? How do I give it all up into God's hands? I want to give up.
Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Cindy
Do NOT Copy
Showing posts with label My House in MN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label My House in MN. Show all posts
Fire Sale Update
I know some people out there may be interested in the house I just wrote my last post about. Some may have been following my story since I met them at the HGTV home selling message boards, I met some really great people there. Here's the latest as well as some information for people who may be going through this process and want to find out some more info. Please feel free to ask me any questions you have. We underwent this process in MN so it may be different in other areas of the country.
As you may be aware, our old house in BL was sold at a fire sale last year. As owners, we are never made aware of this information about the sale, so I only found this out the other day.
We were given a six month redemption period after the fire sale before it was finalized so my mom continued to live there until last November or so.
We were made aware of the fact that we could contest the transfer of title out of our name being sent official papers with the time of the "trial" and everything. This happened in June this year. It may have been interesting to go, but it was a long way away and my nerves are still really raw about all of the effort we put into that house and trying to sell it. It was best to make a clean break, so I didn't go. I wanted it to be over as soon as possible.
If I could have saved them the attorney fees and just handed the house over to the bank, I would have. Apparently MN has a law that says you can not do a "deed in lieu of foreclosure" on a home you are not living in. We tried every possible route that the bank suggested but apparently nothing but foreclosure worked for us in MN. It really was too bad since we had no interest in holding onto the house.
The house was listed in the court papers as being sold for $125,550 on 7/18/08 so I guess someone must have bid on it then. That is a far distance from the $230,000 we were told we could sell it for when we first contemplated the possibility of moving over three years ago!
At the end we had it listed for $124,900 (dropped from the original listing price of 197,000) but in all we only had two offers in total. Crazy for such a wonderful home on a corner lot so close to the lake. With our main competition being foreclosures and new construction we really had an uphill battle to try to win.
I tried negotiating with the first person who made an offer before we really knew that the housing market was in a virtual free fall. This right after we signed up with our second realtor. I am sure she would have sold it if she had been our original listing agent, if we didn't have a messy renter who refused to show the house or do the agreed on lawn care, and if the floor in the family room hadn't gotten so badly damaged. I would have owed more than the first possible buyer offered in September of 06 and thought I needed to take out a loan to cover the rest of the money I would have owed the banks and realtors. She wasn't willing to up her price and ended up walking. I really don't think she would have sat still for a short sale anyway since she was in the process of getting a divorce.
Our second offer got held up on a bank negotiation deal since we held both a first and second mortgage. After waiting forever those buyers also walked. I have found myself wondering if the final purchasers are those second people or not. I guess maybe I'll never know. I suppose it really doesn't matter. I am out from under that burden and I am not going to look back!
We were notified of the outcome of the court proceedings by mail. They sent a list of all transactions on our house including all of the times we refinanced, when we bought the house, second mortgages, fire sale, and other filings. It is now completely final and I could not be happier to be able to move on free and clear.
I hope the new owners enjoy that house as much as we did, it really was our dream when we lived there. Who knew my dream house would change so much when we moved here? I used to only want to live in town and have lots of kids for my kids to play with and be close to shopping. Now none of those things are even on the radar of my dream home. If our relatives and friends lived closer I'd have to say that the house we live in now would be my dream home.
I am also glad that living through that ordeal didn't end up breaking up a third marriage as it did the marriages of the first two pairs of owners. The neighbors shared the divorce house story with us after we moved in. The second couple only lived there for a year! I'm sure it very well could have broken us up if we had let the stress of the last few years overcome us. We've gone through a lot of loss, pain, and difficulties over the last three years.
Now we are a better, closer family than ever and I feel ready to conquer the health battle that lies ahead.... I hope! God help us.
Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
As you may be aware, our old house in BL was sold at a fire sale last year. As owners, we are never made aware of this information about the sale, so I only found this out the other day.
We were given a six month redemption period after the fire sale before it was finalized so my mom continued to live there until last November or so.
We were made aware of the fact that we could contest the transfer of title out of our name being sent official papers with the time of the "trial" and everything. This happened in June this year. It may have been interesting to go, but it was a long way away and my nerves are still really raw about all of the effort we put into that house and trying to sell it. It was best to make a clean break, so I didn't go. I wanted it to be over as soon as possible.
If I could have saved them the attorney fees and just handed the house over to the bank, I would have. Apparently MN has a law that says you can not do a "deed in lieu of foreclosure" on a home you are not living in. We tried every possible route that the bank suggested but apparently nothing but foreclosure worked for us in MN. It really was too bad since we had no interest in holding onto the house.
The house was listed in the court papers as being sold for $125,550 on 7/18/08 so I guess someone must have bid on it then. That is a far distance from the $230,000 we were told we could sell it for when we first contemplated the possibility of moving over three years ago!
At the end we had it listed for $124,900 (dropped from the original listing price of 197,000) but in all we only had two offers in total. Crazy for such a wonderful home on a corner lot so close to the lake. With our main competition being foreclosures and new construction we really had an uphill battle to try to win.
I tried negotiating with the first person who made an offer before we really knew that the housing market was in a virtual free fall. This right after we signed up with our second realtor. I am sure she would have sold it if she had been our original listing agent, if we didn't have a messy renter who refused to show the house or do the agreed on lawn care, and if the floor in the family room hadn't gotten so badly damaged. I would have owed more than the first possible buyer offered in September of 06 and thought I needed to take out a loan to cover the rest of the money I would have owed the banks and realtors. She wasn't willing to up her price and ended up walking. I really don't think she would have sat still for a short sale anyway since she was in the process of getting a divorce.
Our second offer got held up on a bank negotiation deal since we held both a first and second mortgage. After waiting forever those buyers also walked. I have found myself wondering if the final purchasers are those second people or not. I guess maybe I'll never know. I suppose it really doesn't matter. I am out from under that burden and I am not going to look back!
We were notified of the outcome of the court proceedings by mail. They sent a list of all transactions on our house including all of the times we refinanced, when we bought the house, second mortgages, fire sale, and other filings. It is now completely final and I could not be happier to be able to move on free and clear.
I hope the new owners enjoy that house as much as we did, it really was our dream when we lived there. Who knew my dream house would change so much when we moved here? I used to only want to live in town and have lots of kids for my kids to play with and be close to shopping. Now none of those things are even on the radar of my dream home. If our relatives and friends lived closer I'd have to say that the house we live in now would be my dream home.
I am also glad that living through that ordeal didn't end up breaking up a third marriage as it did the marriages of the first two pairs of owners. The neighbors shared the divorce house story with us after we moved in. The second couple only lived there for a year! I'm sure it very well could have broken us up if we had let the stress of the last few years overcome us. We've gone through a lot of loss, pain, and difficulties over the last three years.
Now we are a better, closer family than ever and I feel ready to conquer the health battle that lies ahead.... I hope! God help us.
Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
The Garden I Left Behind
I have talked to you often about the garden I left behind as well as babbling on about plants that made the trip with us on our last trip before the fire sale. Well, I finally got access to the old pictures that were on the computer that crashed. Now I can finally share them with you. Unfortunately we had to send the computer to the scrap yard as it was unsalvagable.
We moved into our second home when my youngest child was still a baby, just a three months old. She has no memories of our first home. We decided we needed a bigger yard for our children and a bit more space, so we moved about 5 miles away. It was the 30th of May in 2001 when we moved in.
We had looked at the house in March when the yard was still under snow. I fell in love with the inside, it was perfect for us! We put in an offer right away. It was only on the market a couple of days before came.
Imagine our shock when we saw the grass did not come back. Wasn't that the whole point of not buying new construction? Our first home had been new construction and we looked at established homes so we wouldn't have to do landscaping or finish a basement. The yard and landscaping were supposed to be in already. It looked wonderful in the winter with lots of trees and everything. Did I mention that most of the trees were dead too when spring came?
The back garden area was wonderful looking. I loved the bushes that hid our back yard from the street behind our house. It was a great place on a corner lot and it was close enough to walk to the beach. Inherited shrubs in the back mulch garden included a staghorn sumac in the center of the garden, 2 sensation lilacs, a white lilac, and red weigela, along with a few plants I never did figure out what they were.
The kids had lots of neighbor children to play with too. My son met his best friend when was about to start kindergarten. They seemed to be attached at the hip always either playing at our house or theirs every day after school.
After we lived there for a while and got to know the neighbors, we were told the people that sold it to us had lived there less than a year. The original owners were gardeners and the yard was always the best yard in the neighborhood. (I could tell from all of the earthworms that completely covered our driveway after the rain in spring.) It was just a shame a year of neglect could ruin all of that hard work. We intended to bring it back to it's former glory. After a bunch of hard work I thought it was right back up among the best.
We enjoyed most of the plant choices of the original owners, but the sumac was a total thug. It kept trying to take over the entire yard, sprouts shot up everywhere. I managed to talk Cheesehead into helping me rip it out even though it had beautiful form. To fill in the gap, we added some arborvitae that were passed along from some of Cheesehead's friends at work.
We added a couple of new garden areas including my prized rose garden. I had 3 climbing roses and 2 bush roses as well as creeping phlox at the entry path. The roses managed to thrive all summer and looked gorgeous each and every year. Somehow I was never able to keep them alive through the winter though. They got replaced each year. It sure was hard pulling out those rose bushes! But my was it lovely smelling to sit on that little bench under the arbor. When we were getting ready to move we planted 3 clematis to climb the arbor and two knock out roses to fill in the space.
The corner must have gotten too much salt spray from winter plowing, we never could get grass to grow in there so we expanded it into a large rock garden. We added a raised perrieneal garden as well as a wide variety of flowering shrubs.
There was a wonderful ornamental crabapple tree. The fragrance by our front door was always so sweet in the spring time. It was like heaven on earth between the flowering crab apple and the carol mackie daphne that grew next to the door. I put a bench there too. We also added plants that lined both sides of the driveway. Why in the world would you have all that rock but no plants anyway?
Near the door all plants the original owners had put in had vanished but the tulips they had planted. I filled it with color and various textures. Anything that survived our long absence before the fire sale came with me from this area. So far the monkshood is the only plant that died from the transplant process.
I added a pink weigela in an open space in the front garden, but the rest of the plantings were put in by the original owners. I think the green we chose looked better with the vinyl siding than the original color. I matched the new exterior lighting to the trim too. Looking back, I think we overspent on the improvements we made.
The back yard was spacious and we enjoyed outdoor entertaining here. It tended to get very hot in the afternoons in summer. We had plans of adding some sort of shade structure but never got around to putting one in.
This was the second garden shed we built. Somehow I never managed to get a picture of the whole shed. I am not sure what I was thinking when I planted these things in there, it was such a small space. They got very overgrown after we moved out. We like to landscape around all of our outdoor structures to add more enjoyment to our time spent outside.
Can you tell Cheesehead likes using landscaping blocks?
It was heart wrenching to have to move from our dream home just over three years ago. We had put a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and money into that place to make it perfect for us.
We moved into our "new" home three years ago this July. I guess I still call it new because we never really got the closure of selling our old home, signing papers, and the whole 9 yards. It was finally foreclosed on after being on the market for more than two years. Technically we've only really been rid of the burden of that house for 7 months. I'm sure glad that never ending saga is over!
Right now I wouldn't change our house for the world, it's really starting to feel like home.
Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
We moved into our second home when my youngest child was still a baby, just a three months old. She has no memories of our first home. We decided we needed a bigger yard for our children and a bit more space, so we moved about 5 miles away. It was the 30th of May in 2001 when we moved in.
We had looked at the house in March when the yard was still under snow. I fell in love with the inside, it was perfect for us! We put in an offer right away. It was only on the market a couple of days before came.
Imagine our shock when we saw the grass did not come back. Wasn't that the whole point of not buying new construction? Our first home had been new construction and we looked at established homes so we wouldn't have to do landscaping or finish a basement. The yard and landscaping were supposed to be in already. It looked wonderful in the winter with lots of trees and everything. Did I mention that most of the trees were dead too when spring came?
The back garden area was wonderful looking. I loved the bushes that hid our back yard from the street behind our house. It was a great place on a corner lot and it was close enough to walk to the beach. Inherited shrubs in the back mulch garden included a staghorn sumac in the center of the garden, 2 sensation lilacs, a white lilac, and red weigela, along with a few plants I never did figure out what they were.
The kids had lots of neighbor children to play with too. My son met his best friend when was about to start kindergarten. They seemed to be attached at the hip always either playing at our house or theirs every day after school.
After we lived there for a while and got to know the neighbors, we were told the people that sold it to us had lived there less than a year. The original owners were gardeners and the yard was always the best yard in the neighborhood. (I could tell from all of the earthworms that completely covered our driveway after the rain in spring.) It was just a shame a year of neglect could ruin all of that hard work. We intended to bring it back to it's former glory. After a bunch of hard work I thought it was right back up among the best.
We enjoyed most of the plant choices of the original owners, but the sumac was a total thug. It kept trying to take over the entire yard, sprouts shot up everywhere. I managed to talk Cheesehead into helping me rip it out even though it had beautiful form. To fill in the gap, we added some arborvitae that were passed along from some of Cheesehead's friends at work.
We added a couple of new garden areas including my prized rose garden. I had 3 climbing roses and 2 bush roses as well as creeping phlox at the entry path. The roses managed to thrive all summer and looked gorgeous each and every year. Somehow I was never able to keep them alive through the winter though. They got replaced each year. It sure was hard pulling out those rose bushes! But my was it lovely smelling to sit on that little bench under the arbor. When we were getting ready to move we planted 3 clematis to climb the arbor and two knock out roses to fill in the space.
The corner must have gotten too much salt spray from winter plowing, we never could get grass to grow in there so we expanded it into a large rock garden. We added a raised perrieneal garden as well as a wide variety of flowering shrubs.
There was a wonderful ornamental crabapple tree. The fragrance by our front door was always so sweet in the spring time. It was like heaven on earth between the flowering crab apple and the carol mackie daphne that grew next to the door. I put a bench there too. We also added plants that lined both sides of the driveway. Why in the world would you have all that rock but no plants anyway?
Near the door all plants the original owners had put in had vanished but the tulips they had planted. I filled it with color and various textures. Anything that survived our long absence before the fire sale came with me from this area. So far the monkshood is the only plant that died from the transplant process.
I added a pink weigela in an open space in the front garden, but the rest of the plantings were put in by the original owners. I think the green we chose looked better with the vinyl siding than the original color. I matched the new exterior lighting to the trim too. Looking back, I think we overspent on the improvements we made.
The back yard was spacious and we enjoyed outdoor entertaining here. It tended to get very hot in the afternoons in summer. We had plans of adding some sort of shade structure but never got around to putting one in.
This was the second garden shed we built. Somehow I never managed to get a picture of the whole shed. I am not sure what I was thinking when I planted these things in there, it was such a small space. They got very overgrown after we moved out. We like to landscape around all of our outdoor structures to add more enjoyment to our time spent outside.
Can you tell Cheesehead likes using landscaping blocks?
It was heart wrenching to have to move from our dream home just over three years ago. We had put a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and money into that place to make it perfect for us.
We moved into our "new" home three years ago this July. I guess I still call it new because we never really got the closure of selling our old home, signing papers, and the whole 9 yards. It was finally foreclosed on after being on the market for more than two years. Technically we've only really been rid of the burden of that house for 7 months. I'm sure glad that never ending saga is over!
Right now I wouldn't change our house for the world, it's really starting to feel like home.
Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
Weird Question
My mom told me that someone bought the house finally. It's about time, we moved out almost 3 years ago now!
They must have put in the offer right as it went into foreclosure. I'm assuming this since they were already moving in a couple of weekends ago. It was supposed to be "officially" foreclosed on December 16. We never heard anything about it from the bank and had trouble getting the utilities straightened out because the bank refused to notify them and I couldn't just shut everything off because of the cold weather rules. (Yet another mess!)
Anyway... the neighbor told us these people moved in a little while ago.
(Sorry about all of the rambling, but I think that some people are wondering about what happened to our house.) My question is... would it be stupid of me to write the new owners a letter about where to find everything and what some of the stuff is for? (ie fertigation tank, liquid fertilizer, NOT asking Green Lawn for sprinkler system maintenance, etc)
MN house chapter CLOSED!!!! FINALLY! Hurrah! (Though I still may share my former gardens if I can ever get the pictures from the old computer.)
Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
They must have put in the offer right as it went into foreclosure. I'm assuming this since they were already moving in a couple of weekends ago. It was supposed to be "officially" foreclosed on December 16. We never heard anything about it from the bank and had trouble getting the utilities straightened out because the bank refused to notify them and I couldn't just shut everything off because of the cold weather rules. (Yet another mess!)
Anyway... the neighbor told us these people moved in a little while ago.
(Sorry about all of the rambling, but I think that some people are wondering about what happened to our house.) My question is... would it be stupid of me to write the new owners a letter about where to find everything and what some of the stuff is for? (ie fertigation tank, liquid fertilizer, NOT asking Green Lawn for sprinkler system maintenance, etc)
MN house chapter CLOSED!!!! FINALLY! Hurrah! (Though I still may share my former gardens if I can ever get the pictures from the old computer.)
Thank you for stopping by to chat with me. Please leave me a message, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
To Winterize or Not
Many of you may know that the house in MN that we tried to sell for over two years has been foreclosed on. According to the original communication that we got from the bank we had 6 months from the sheriff's sale to redeem it. That landed us on December 16. I have been trying to contact the bank for a couple of weeks since I haven't heard from them in a while. I have sat on hold for over 1/2 an hour a couple of times onlyto get cut off. If I try to call other departments of the bank I get endlessly tranferred around until I get so frustrated that I just hang up.
My mom moved out last weekend so I no longer hasve someone else to pay the utilities. I can't afford to throw away money, but the utility companies won't take the bills out of my name until the bank contacts them. The realtor wants us to keep the utilites on so if someone buys it they'll be on for inspections. Why should I pay for something hat isn't even mine anymore? We had two showings this week too, but I don't think I could even choose to accept any offers made at this point.
Since the bank is too busy to care what's going on my neighbor says we should just winterize it and turn all utilities off. I'm so frastrated at this point I can't even stand it. What's a people pleasing perspn like me supposed to do?
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
My mom moved out last weekend so I no longer hasve someone else to pay the utilities. I can't afford to throw away money, but the utility companies won't take the bills out of my name until the bank contacts them. The realtor wants us to keep the utilites on so if someone buys it they'll be on for inspections. Why should I pay for something hat isn't even mine anymore? We had two showings this week too, but I don't think I could even choose to accept any offers made at this point.
Since the bank is too busy to care what's going on my neighbor says we should just winterize it and turn all utilities off. I'm so frastrated at this point I can't even stand it. What's a people pleasing perspn like me supposed to do?
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
Maybe the Banks Deserve What They're Getting!
What ever happened to customer service? I thought that it was important for businesses to communicate clearly with their customers and try to satisfy them to the best of their ability. Apparently that doesn't seem to be the case when I go most places any more though. It's sad really. I have experienced that first hand lately with the bank I've been a loyal customer at for almost twenty years.
They seem to have developed an attitude that they're doing people a favor by even existing and providing us a service. Well, that's all well and good, but what ever happened to them trying to be the best in the business? What happened to wanting to keep good customers for the long term even if it might mean making a small sacrifice? What do I mean? Please let me explain.
I was told by a couple of mortgage bankers back in MN that our house would sell quickly as well as several realtors. We discussed the fact that my husband was being transferred to another state by the company he works for and we thought about many options when we bought our new home. At first we had thought about doing a bridge loan but the banker thought it would be a better idea for us to go with home equity lines of credit instead. We asked if we could just take out a loan for no down payment on our new house. She told us that we could since our credit score was 753, but she strongly reccommended that we go with her plan so we wouldn't have to pay PMI on our new loan. We finally decided that the banker knew what was best and went with her plan.
Over the last two and a half years, we have been unable to sell our home that was supposed to be so easy to sell. Before our renter moved out, we thought it would be a good idea to refinance our house we're in now, take out the extra that we owed on our HELOC so we could drop our price without having to do a short sale. That would also help to keep our payments more affordable and we would be paying down principle on all of the three loans instead of just the one. The bank told us to wait until we got our basement finished because we didn't have enough equity in our home as it was to avoid paying PMI. I said that was okay, but the banker strongly suggested that we wait to build more equity in our house. Once again, we listened.
Our renter moved out without paying several months worth of rent and we weren't able to find another renter to move in in his place even though we ran an ad for over a month in one of the local newspapers. He had trashed the place and I invested a lot of time and money into fixing the place up again as well as repairing damage done to the house by a negligent sprinkler company when they improperly installed a sprinkler system and failed to adjust the heads after the plumber kooked them up to our water.
We had a couple of offers on the house anyway, but the banks bickered over things and could not agree to a sale before the buyers walked.
I told all of this to the bank, told them our first had gone up for sheriff's sale and asked them what I could do. Several people at the bank advised me that there was nothing else I could do, just wait to be foreclosed and they'd just have to take the loss. They were really very kind and understanding sounding when I spoke to them.
I guess I'd like to know if the bank makes it a common practice for people who don't know what they're talking about to answer customer's questions. I would also like to know if they are required to take notes every time a customer contacts them. I would say I had done everything I could possibly do to solve the situation including writing letters to the bank. I informed them that I would not declare bankruptcy because I felt it was my responsibilty to pay back my debts and asked them to again consider refinancing my mortgage. I made it perfectly clear to them that I intended to pay back the loan as long as the price was something I could afford while still being able to feed my family. They refused to refinance because by this point my other house had slipped into forclosure even though I have paid all of my other bills on time.
They sounded reasonable still and I thought there was hope for resolving my situation, so I kept calling and doing my best to offer suggestions and ask for advise. This went on until the bank turned it over to a collection agency. The collection agency was not kind and called and hung up on me all the time, but still I was never informed that the bank could take every cent I had in the world all at one time if I didn't make some type of payment arrangement.
Well, the loan was officially charged off at the end of October, the first mortgage's redemption period is up on December 16. That's where my $2,000 went to, the bank just took all of my money without saying a word to me about it. To make it worse, that's completely legal for them to do. Um, I don't know about you, but that sounds awfully stupid if you ask me!
Even though they knew I had two other mortgages with them also. Even though I had written letters to them pleading to make out some kind of arrangements with me. Did they even care that taking all of that money might cause a second set of forclosure problems for them? Apparently not!
Why in the world would you choose to cause this type of chain reaction to take place instead of being reasonable and working with a customer who is trying to show every effort to pay a bill and negotiate? Had I not gone online and noticed that they had done this to me, I would have also racked up a ton of bounced check fees too. They just seem to be on the lookout for more money because of the struggling economy.
Is the economy struggling for a reason? YES! It's called greed and I can't see any end to it until everyone can sit down and compromise. So they might make a little bit less money in fees and interest charges, is it worth it to have the world's economy circling the drain so they can scrape a few extra dollars together for their investors? I think not!
I'm not asking for much really, I just want the greed and money grubbing to cease. I have no problem with people making a reasonable profit, but when they start profittering in a faltering economy someone needs to stand up and shout "STOP!" . Is that asking too much?
I took the money MIL was kind enough to loan us and opened a checking account at a new bank today. I will not be doing any business with that bank anymore. If I could take my mortgage account and HELOC account away from them I'd do that too, but unfortunately I think I will be forced to leave those in place. All of my other accounts are going elsewhere though. I don't need a back-stabbing bank who pretends to look out for my interests when all they really want to do is line their pockets with money.
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
They seem to have developed an attitude that they're doing people a favor by even existing and providing us a service. Well, that's all well and good, but what ever happened to them trying to be the best in the business? What happened to wanting to keep good customers for the long term even if it might mean making a small sacrifice? What do I mean? Please let me explain.
I was told by a couple of mortgage bankers back in MN that our house would sell quickly as well as several realtors. We discussed the fact that my husband was being transferred to another state by the company he works for and we thought about many options when we bought our new home. At first we had thought about doing a bridge loan but the banker thought it would be a better idea for us to go with home equity lines of credit instead. We asked if we could just take out a loan for no down payment on our new house. She told us that we could since our credit score was 753, but she strongly reccommended that we go with her plan so we wouldn't have to pay PMI on our new loan. We finally decided that the banker knew what was best and went with her plan.
Over the last two and a half years, we have been unable to sell our home that was supposed to be so easy to sell. Before our renter moved out, we thought it would be a good idea to refinance our house we're in now, take out the extra that we owed on our HELOC so we could drop our price without having to do a short sale. That would also help to keep our payments more affordable and we would be paying down principle on all of the three loans instead of just the one. The bank told us to wait until we got our basement finished because we didn't have enough equity in our home as it was to avoid paying PMI. I said that was okay, but the banker strongly suggested that we wait to build more equity in our house. Once again, we listened.
Our renter moved out without paying several months worth of rent and we weren't able to find another renter to move in in his place even though we ran an ad for over a month in one of the local newspapers. He had trashed the place and I invested a lot of time and money into fixing the place up again as well as repairing damage done to the house by a negligent sprinkler company when they improperly installed a sprinkler system and failed to adjust the heads after the plumber kooked them up to our water.
We had a couple of offers on the house anyway, but the banks bickered over things and could not agree to a sale before the buyers walked.
I told all of this to the bank, told them our first had gone up for sheriff's sale and asked them what I could do. Several people at the bank advised me that there was nothing else I could do, just wait to be foreclosed and they'd just have to take the loss. They were really very kind and understanding sounding when I spoke to them.
I guess I'd like to know if the bank makes it a common practice for people who don't know what they're talking about to answer customer's questions. I would also like to know if they are required to take notes every time a customer contacts them. I would say I had done everything I could possibly do to solve the situation including writing letters to the bank. I informed them that I would not declare bankruptcy because I felt it was my responsibilty to pay back my debts and asked them to again consider refinancing my mortgage. I made it perfectly clear to them that I intended to pay back the loan as long as the price was something I could afford while still being able to feed my family. They refused to refinance because by this point my other house had slipped into forclosure even though I have paid all of my other bills on time.
They sounded reasonable still and I thought there was hope for resolving my situation, so I kept calling and doing my best to offer suggestions and ask for advise. This went on until the bank turned it over to a collection agency. The collection agency was not kind and called and hung up on me all the time, but still I was never informed that the bank could take every cent I had in the world all at one time if I didn't make some type of payment arrangement.
Well, the loan was officially charged off at the end of October, the first mortgage's redemption period is up on December 16. That's where my $2,000 went to, the bank just took all of my money without saying a word to me about it. To make it worse, that's completely legal for them to do. Um, I don't know about you, but that sounds awfully stupid if you ask me!
Even though they knew I had two other mortgages with them also. Even though I had written letters to them pleading to make out some kind of arrangements with me. Did they even care that taking all of that money might cause a second set of forclosure problems for them? Apparently not!
Why in the world would you choose to cause this type of chain reaction to take place instead of being reasonable and working with a customer who is trying to show every effort to pay a bill and negotiate? Had I not gone online and noticed that they had done this to me, I would have also racked up a ton of bounced check fees too. They just seem to be on the lookout for more money because of the struggling economy.
Is the economy struggling for a reason? YES! It's called greed and I can't see any end to it until everyone can sit down and compromise. So they might make a little bit less money in fees and interest charges, is it worth it to have the world's economy circling the drain so they can scrape a few extra dollars together for their investors? I think not!
I'm not asking for much really, I just want the greed and money grubbing to cease. I have no problem with people making a reasonable profit, but when they start profittering in a faltering economy someone needs to stand up and shout "STOP!" . Is that asking too much?
I took the money MIL was kind enough to loan us and opened a checking account at a new bank today. I will not be doing any business with that bank anymore. If I could take my mortgage account and HELOC account away from them I'd do that too, but unfortunately I think I will be forced to leave those in place. All of my other accounts are going elsewhere though. I don't need a back-stabbing bank who pretends to look out for my interests when all they really want to do is line their pockets with money.
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
Can They do That?
So I was minding my own business working to get my home mortgages for my house in MN figured out. You know how much I've been stressing about this over the last year. The bottom is falling out now.
I logged onto our account yesterday and they had taken all of my money out of BOTH my checking and my savings accounts. In all they took almost $2,000 from us. I didn't even get told this was even a possibility of happening. I've been talking so much with both the bank and the bill collectors I feel like we're almost on a first name basis with them. Why didn't they tell me they could and would do this?
Now I have NO idea how I'm going to pay our bills that are coming up to be automatically withdrawn out of our accounts this week. We need to come up with $1,000 fast. With no savings or checking we are going to have a whole lot of bouncing checks too. No one will give us a loan with a foreclosure looming on the horizon and we have almost nothing available on some credit cards that we used to be able to buy anything we wanted on them. As unreasonable as they're being I don't know that they will even contemplate waiving those charges for the bounced checks either. It's NOT my fault!
How can they just steal all of my money like that? I've been a good customer of theirs for almost 20 years, why are they being so unreasonable and crazy now? I keep calling them and trying to figure out a way to refinance our current house to add that loan to it but I don't want to triple the interest rate I'm paying either. They keep saying I can't refinance anyway. How can they be so unreasonable with someone who's trying to get them money, but just doesn't have the means to do it? Are we going to loose the house we're living in now because of this second mortgage on our other house that they forced us to take out when we didn't even really want to?
I'm trying to practically give that house away so I can be rid of the problem, but it isn't working. No one's buying.I've done everything in my power I could do and asked every question to every person I could find. I've done everything I can humanly do, yet it's just never good enough. What in the world am I going to do?
I'm so stressed! Where's the chocolate? Any advise? Do you know a good lawyer? I can't afford to pay any fees though either. What on earth are we supposed to do????
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
I logged onto our account yesterday and they had taken all of my money out of BOTH my checking and my savings accounts. In all they took almost $2,000 from us. I didn't even get told this was even a possibility of happening. I've been talking so much with both the bank and the bill collectors I feel like we're almost on a first name basis with them. Why didn't they tell me they could and would do this?
Now I have NO idea how I'm going to pay our bills that are coming up to be automatically withdrawn out of our accounts this week. We need to come up with $1,000 fast. With no savings or checking we are going to have a whole lot of bouncing checks too. No one will give us a loan with a foreclosure looming on the horizon and we have almost nothing available on some credit cards that we used to be able to buy anything we wanted on them. As unreasonable as they're being I don't know that they will even contemplate waiving those charges for the bounced checks either. It's NOT my fault!
How can they just steal all of my money like that? I've been a good customer of theirs for almost 20 years, why are they being so unreasonable and crazy now? I keep calling them and trying to figure out a way to refinance our current house to add that loan to it but I don't want to triple the interest rate I'm paying either. They keep saying I can't refinance anyway. How can they be so unreasonable with someone who's trying to get them money, but just doesn't have the means to do it? Are we going to loose the house we're living in now because of this second mortgage on our other house that they forced us to take out when we didn't even really want to?
I'm trying to practically give that house away so I can be rid of the problem, but it isn't working. No one's buying.I've done everything in my power I could do and asked every question to every person I could find. I've done everything I can humanly do, yet it's just never good enough. What in the world am I going to do?
I'm so stressed! Where's the chocolate? Any advise? Do you know a good lawyer? I can't afford to pay any fees though either. What on earth are we supposed to do????
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
Daycare Drama
Okay, some of you may be a bit confused about the babbling I've been doing about the daycare I used to work at. Techincally I worked at two different daycares, so I'm sure that may be where some of the confusion came in. If you'd like to hear the story, please read on!
I had 5 years of experience as a toddler teacher (and later lead toddler teacher) at a daycare center that I worked at when the kids were younger in MN. I started there when my son had just become a toddler. My mom could no longer watch him because of her breast cancer and she needed time off to recover.
I left that daycare right after my daughter turned two. I was tired of working full time for so little pay and still had my MN teacher's license, so I became a substitute teacher working part time for about the same pay. I was a substitute teacher for about 3 years in MN before we uprooted our family and moved hundreds of miles away.
When we moved to WI, I immediately applied for my WI teaching license. My husband was transferred within his business. We were assured by several realtors that our home was immacutlately beautiful and would sell easily. They told us the most it should take to sell would be about 3 months and we should feel free to buy a house. Even the banks concurred. Feeling sufficiently assured by all parties involved (as well as those who wished they had been involved) we set out to buy a house.
We thought that only moving the kids once would be the best option, so we bought a house that we could move into before we closed on it. It took our wonderful realtor a bit of work, but we eventually found a great two bedroom home that the buyer would let us move into prior to close. It was our fourth choice because we actually wanted more bedrooms, but it was a nice home and it didn't seem to need much work so we jumped in with both feet.
Our closing was half way through September of 2006 so we could push the payments off for a couple of more months. Our first payment on our new house wouldn't be due until November 1. I wanted to further secure our financial stability, so I decided to search for a job.
On September 9 I called a daycare that had run an ad for a full time infant-toddler teacher for the unheard of rate of $10 an hour. I went in the next day and filled out my application and walked out with the job. I started on the next day with orientation. I was SO excited! This was surely the answer to all of our prayers. Now I could put aside every penny I earned to keep us current with our house payments until our house sold.
I started orientation and got introduced to everyone. They all seemed so nice and enjoyed spending time chatting with each other even when they weren't on the clock, they were a tight knit group. Little did I know that would end up being my downfall. We discussed things I had done at my old daycare and they seemed to think that my ideas were great, they gushed on and I felt like they were happy to have me there. We were going to redecorate the room and make lesson plans to do with the older babies. It was going to be SO much fun. We could talk about just about anything and I felt like we were becoming fast friends. I guess appearances can be deceiving was one of the lessons I walked away from this situation with.
Apparently someone who was attending school to be a daycare worker was gunning for my job. She worked in the center for 2 years before I came along and was apparently the one left in charge when our boss wasn't there. She was shifted into the toddler room on an almost daily basis instead of being with the older infants that I was supposed to be in charge of. She became upset by this and started making waves.
I don't know why she didn't feel she could talk to me about any problems she had with changes I was making or why she didn't feel that she could ask our boss if I could take turns going to the toddler room. She went to the boss with lots of little issues that really weren't issues at all, I think she just wanted to have something to get me in trouble with. Most of the time I wasn't even aware of who was making these complaints/accusations.
I didn't usually have to start work after 7:30 in the morning and only worked until 3:00 in the afternoon. This was planned so I wouldn't have to shell out any money for anyone to watch my kids, my boss identified with me since she was a single mother. She was fortunate enough to have her retired mother living nearby to care for her daughter. I guess the childless employees didn't like the flexibility I had with my schedule, so I was often the subject of most complaints about how the room was run. I guess I never realized the extent of these complaints though, especially from one woman in particular. Maybe I was naive and really thought I was their friend, blind and way too nice, but I liked my job and the kids were adorable and sweet. My boss was great, very understanding and easy to talk to.
Shortly before Christmas, our daycare moved across town. That's when the trouble really started. Our boss was in another building and had to take the word of the people I worked with when it came to their "problems" with me. This complaining lady had another new issue with me too. I guess she didn't like the fact that I didn't come to work early and just showed up when I was supposed to get there. Oh, did I mention the clock she looked at was ahead of real time by about 3 minutes? She figured I was late every day even though all other clocks said I was right on time. She teamed up with the other person I worked with and they told her I didn't do my fair share of work either. Even though I changed more than my share of diapers, I always took the older kids outside, cleaned up both the kids and the dishes after lunch, and did all of the paperwork it was never enough. Apparently that wasn't enough for them though since I didn't make the meals.
I just got sick and tired of it and quit, I mean the housing problem was mostly covered by then because Cheesehead's friend got a promotion and job transfer to our old neck of the woods so he would live in the basement of our old house and Mom would continue living upstairs.
I was tired of being pulled into the bosses' office about their constant petty complaints and I get the feeling my boss was too. I cried during that last meeting, it took me a long time to compose myself so I wouldn't leave the building in tears. I didn't really want to quit, but I just couldn't take it any more and our finances looked solid.
After Christmas I put my name on the district sub list and that's where I've been working ever since.
Any questions? Maybe I confused you now more than ever, I do tend to babble at times.
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
I had 5 years of experience as a toddler teacher (and later lead toddler teacher) at a daycare center that I worked at when the kids were younger in MN. I started there when my son had just become a toddler. My mom could no longer watch him because of her breast cancer and she needed time off to recover.
I left that daycare right after my daughter turned two. I was tired of working full time for so little pay and still had my MN teacher's license, so I became a substitute teacher working part time for about the same pay. I was a substitute teacher for about 3 years in MN before we uprooted our family and moved hundreds of miles away.
When we moved to WI, I immediately applied for my WI teaching license. My husband was transferred within his business. We were assured by several realtors that our home was immacutlately beautiful and would sell easily. They told us the most it should take to sell would be about 3 months and we should feel free to buy a house. Even the banks concurred. Feeling sufficiently assured by all parties involved (as well as those who wished they had been involved) we set out to buy a house.
We thought that only moving the kids once would be the best option, so we bought a house that we could move into before we closed on it. It took our wonderful realtor a bit of work, but we eventually found a great two bedroom home that the buyer would let us move into prior to close. It was our fourth choice because we actually wanted more bedrooms, but it was a nice home and it didn't seem to need much work so we jumped in with both feet.
Our closing was half way through September of 2006 so we could push the payments off for a couple of more months. Our first payment on our new house wouldn't be due until November 1. I wanted to further secure our financial stability, so I decided to search for a job.
On September 9 I called a daycare that had run an ad for a full time infant-toddler teacher for the unheard of rate of $10 an hour. I went in the next day and filled out my application and walked out with the job. I started on the next day with orientation. I was SO excited! This was surely the answer to all of our prayers. Now I could put aside every penny I earned to keep us current with our house payments until our house sold.
I started orientation and got introduced to everyone. They all seemed so nice and enjoyed spending time chatting with each other even when they weren't on the clock, they were a tight knit group. Little did I know that would end up being my downfall. We discussed things I had done at my old daycare and they seemed to think that my ideas were great, they gushed on and I felt like they were happy to have me there. We were going to redecorate the room and make lesson plans to do with the older babies. It was going to be SO much fun. We could talk about just about anything and I felt like we were becoming fast friends. I guess appearances can be deceiving was one of the lessons I walked away from this situation with.
Apparently someone who was attending school to be a daycare worker was gunning for my job. She worked in the center for 2 years before I came along and was apparently the one left in charge when our boss wasn't there. She was shifted into the toddler room on an almost daily basis instead of being with the older infants that I was supposed to be in charge of. She became upset by this and started making waves.
I don't know why she didn't feel she could talk to me about any problems she had with changes I was making or why she didn't feel that she could ask our boss if I could take turns going to the toddler room. She went to the boss with lots of little issues that really weren't issues at all, I think she just wanted to have something to get me in trouble with. Most of the time I wasn't even aware of who was making these complaints/accusations.
I didn't usually have to start work after 7:30 in the morning and only worked until 3:00 in the afternoon. This was planned so I wouldn't have to shell out any money for anyone to watch my kids, my boss identified with me since she was a single mother. She was fortunate enough to have her retired mother living nearby to care for her daughter. I guess the childless employees didn't like the flexibility I had with my schedule, so I was often the subject of most complaints about how the room was run. I guess I never realized the extent of these complaints though, especially from one woman in particular. Maybe I was naive and really thought I was their friend, blind and way too nice, but I liked my job and the kids were adorable and sweet. My boss was great, very understanding and easy to talk to.
Shortly before Christmas, our daycare moved across town. That's when the trouble really started. Our boss was in another building and had to take the word of the people I worked with when it came to their "problems" with me. This complaining lady had another new issue with me too. I guess she didn't like the fact that I didn't come to work early and just showed up when I was supposed to get there. Oh, did I mention the clock she looked at was ahead of real time by about 3 minutes? She figured I was late every day even though all other clocks said I was right on time. She teamed up with the other person I worked with and they told her I didn't do my fair share of work either. Even though I changed more than my share of diapers, I always took the older kids outside, cleaned up both the kids and the dishes after lunch, and did all of the paperwork it was never enough. Apparently that wasn't enough for them though since I didn't make the meals.
I just got sick and tired of it and quit, I mean the housing problem was mostly covered by then because Cheesehead's friend got a promotion and job transfer to our old neck of the woods so he would live in the basement of our old house and Mom would continue living upstairs.
I was tired of being pulled into the bosses' office about their constant petty complaints and I get the feeling my boss was too. I cried during that last meeting, it took me a long time to compose myself so I wouldn't leave the building in tears. I didn't really want to quit, but I just couldn't take it any more and our finances looked solid.
After Christmas I put my name on the district sub list and that's where I've been working ever since.
Any questions? Maybe I confused you now more than ever, I do tend to babble at times.
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
A Day Late and a Dollar Short and Other Grumblings
I have participated in Carol's Garden Blogger's Bloom Day all through the spring and summer. I don't have a whole lot of flowers around here, plenty of mushrooms though! Needless to say I didn't run out to take pictures of my flowers this month since I really don't have much of anything going on around here.
I saw these mums sitting on the store shelf last month and I decided to purchase them. They were only a dollar each so I thought I'd give them a try. I've never grown mums before so we'll just hope I can keep them alive.
The purple ones were my favorites. I may have mentioned this a time or two before, but I like multi-colored blooms.
I bought the yellow one so the poor purple one wouldn't be all lonely.
Okay, I guess I mis-spoke when I told you that I had nothing else blooming. One of my pansies are still putting out quite a few blooms and I have one marigold that still has a few pathetic blooms too. My camera view finder is broke and my aim was WAY off on those pictures apparently so I only got the two pictures. Can anything else go wrong???
Okay, maybe I shouldn't ask that at this point with all of the health issues up in the air and everything too. I haven't heard anything else from the doctors to report yet so that COULD be a good sign, right?
Now if I could just afford to pay the collection agency, I'd be happy as could be. They're trying to get me to skip a car payment so I can afford to pay them what I owe Wells Fargo. Um, how would we get to work to support our family if we didn't have any transportation? We live out in the middle of nowhere so it's not like I could just walk to work or anything. I don't know why they seem to think I'm being unreasonable when I tell them my story, they keep telling me it's Wells Fargo's turn to get paid. If Wells Fargo and Wachovia could have gotten along and shared back when I had that offer I wouldn't even be in this situation! I feel like crap when I have to tell them I can't afford to pay them, but we need to make the best choices for our family. Does that make me a bad person? They seem to think it does.
I know I need to stop worrying about what everyone else thinks about me, but sometimes I find myself thinking I'm a bad person and making bad decisions. I doubt myself too frequently, I keep feeling my thoughts pulling me to that dark place they were a year ago. I don't want to go back to that place, to be that person again. I want to just move on with my life and be happy again. How much more do I have to endure before I get to move on?
At least going through all of this stuff has made me be less wasteful. I never throw away food anymore. You should have seen dinner tonight. I made left over casserole. I had a small amount of steak, pork chop, french fries, mashed potatoes, carrots, macaroni and cheese, and sauteed mushrooms. To that concoction I added a can of cream of mushroom soup, 3 onion rings chopped up, and some garlic salt and pepper. It was really good. Only one of the kids even complained.
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
I saw these mums sitting on the store shelf last month and I decided to purchase them. They were only a dollar each so I thought I'd give them a try. I've never grown mums before so we'll just hope I can keep them alive.
The purple ones were my favorites. I may have mentioned this a time or two before, but I like multi-colored blooms.
I bought the yellow one so the poor purple one wouldn't be all lonely.
Okay, I guess I mis-spoke when I told you that I had nothing else blooming. One of my pansies are still putting out quite a few blooms and I have one marigold that still has a few pathetic blooms too. My camera view finder is broke and my aim was WAY off on those pictures apparently so I only got the two pictures. Can anything else go wrong???
Okay, maybe I shouldn't ask that at this point with all of the health issues up in the air and everything too. I haven't heard anything else from the doctors to report yet so that COULD be a good sign, right?
Now if I could just afford to pay the collection agency, I'd be happy as could be. They're trying to get me to skip a car payment so I can afford to pay them what I owe Wells Fargo. Um, how would we get to work to support our family if we didn't have any transportation? We live out in the middle of nowhere so it's not like I could just walk to work or anything. I don't know why they seem to think I'm being unreasonable when I tell them my story, they keep telling me it's Wells Fargo's turn to get paid. If Wells Fargo and Wachovia could have gotten along and shared back when I had that offer I wouldn't even be in this situation! I feel like crap when I have to tell them I can't afford to pay them, but we need to make the best choices for our family. Does that make me a bad person? They seem to think it does.
I know I need to stop worrying about what everyone else thinks about me, but sometimes I find myself thinking I'm a bad person and making bad decisions. I doubt myself too frequently, I keep feeling my thoughts pulling me to that dark place they were a year ago. I don't want to go back to that place, to be that person again. I want to just move on with my life and be happy again. How much more do I have to endure before I get to move on?
At least going through all of this stuff has made me be less wasteful. I never throw away food anymore. You should have seen dinner tonight. I made left over casserole. I had a small amount of steak, pork chop, french fries, mashed potatoes, carrots, macaroni and cheese, and sauteed mushrooms. To that concoction I added a can of cream of mushroom soup, 3 onion rings chopped up, and some garlic salt and pepper. It was really good. Only one of the kids even complained.
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
Another Political Rant
Sorry, I don't usually discuss politics here. Somehow I just felt I needed to share my response to a friend's financial solution idea, I don't think many people think of the greed of individuals and I wanted to shine some more light on this problem. My friend Ael on myspace thought that each person with a primary residence should be given 20K to get them out of difficulty (That's the jist of it, there is much more to her idea which I find intelligently put together I might add)
While your plan seems like a decent one on the surface, I can't help but think that a plan like that couldn't work very well for people in my circumstances. The home I NEED to sell isn't my primary residence so I wouldn't qualify for it the way you have it set up. Even if I did, how is paying the bank the amounts I owe them going to owe them when I can't afford to keep paying them in the future? I'd be right back at square one. I need money to be out there for other people to buy my house (who can really afford it without using creative financing options thank you very much).
I know I was stupid and gullible for falling all of the bank and realtor's lies and lines, maybe I deserve what I'm getting. Maybe they deserve it too.
Part of the problem with our current situation in our country as a whole is that people are being greedy. They are buying new houses knowing they won't be able to sell their house for what they owe, but unwilling to take the loss out of their pocket, they are passing the pain on to everyone else. These people and bank executives who are taking huge payouts need to be stopped to save the rest of us from this economic meltdown.
Had I known what situation my family would be in at this point I would have never moved, I would have kept my house and stayed there and not let Brian take the job transfer. The problem is that SOME people CAN afford to pay their payment, but they choose not to because they can buy a bigger house now for a smaller payment in these economic times. It's cruel and greedy, but it's a fact. It makes me sick. I guess techincally I sort of could be lumped into this group too, except for the fact that I ammased a ton of credit card debt in order to legitamately sell my house and worked my but off to make it the best house in town. More stupid decisions I am sure, but I was trying to be an honest and responsible person.
I do agree that politicians shouldn't be pushing their agendas through on these emergency measures like this. I think each thing should be voted on seperately and not all thrown together as a package deal. If it sounds like a good idea, it will pass. If it doesn't the tax payers won't have to pay for it just because it was hidden in a huge bill that no one had the time to read or understand before voting for it!
All of this chaos and turmoil is making my stomache churn. We need practical changes in our government, we need to elimate the ability of people to be life long politicians, and we need to change the whole contribution to candidacy rules. Maybe we should both run for political office to bring some intelligence and compassion to the political system!
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
While your plan seems like a decent one on the surface, I can't help but think that a plan like that couldn't work very well for people in my circumstances. The home I NEED to sell isn't my primary residence so I wouldn't qualify for it the way you have it set up. Even if I did, how is paying the bank the amounts I owe them going to owe them when I can't afford to keep paying them in the future? I'd be right back at square one. I need money to be out there for other people to buy my house (who can really afford it without using creative financing options thank you very much).
I know I was stupid and gullible for falling all of the bank and realtor's lies and lines, maybe I deserve what I'm getting. Maybe they deserve it too.
Part of the problem with our current situation in our country as a whole is that people are being greedy. They are buying new houses knowing they won't be able to sell their house for what they owe, but unwilling to take the loss out of their pocket, they are passing the pain on to everyone else. These people and bank executives who are taking huge payouts need to be stopped to save the rest of us from this economic meltdown.
Had I known what situation my family would be in at this point I would have never moved, I would have kept my house and stayed there and not let Brian take the job transfer. The problem is that SOME people CAN afford to pay their payment, but they choose not to because they can buy a bigger house now for a smaller payment in these economic times. It's cruel and greedy, but it's a fact. It makes me sick. I guess techincally I sort of could be lumped into this group too, except for the fact that I ammased a ton of credit card debt in order to legitamately sell my house and worked my but off to make it the best house in town. More stupid decisions I am sure, but I was trying to be an honest and responsible person.
I do agree that politicians shouldn't be pushing their agendas through on these emergency measures like this. I think each thing should be voted on seperately and not all thrown together as a package deal. If it sounds like a good idea, it will pass. If it doesn't the tax payers won't have to pay for it just because it was hidden in a huge bill that no one had the time to read or understand before voting for it!
All of this chaos and turmoil is making my stomache churn. We need practical changes in our government, we need to elimate the ability of people to be life long politicians, and we need to change the whole contribution to candidacy rules. Maybe we should both run for political office to bring some intelligence and compassion to the political system!
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
Why Do I Blog?
Karen at Artist's Garden asked us why we blog.
I originally started blogging to keep in touch with people I alredy knew. I could check in with what they were doing any time of day and stay and visit as long as I wanted without being a pest. As you may know, I CAN be known to be a bit gabby at times. LOL.
I started out on myspace because I have a bunch of friends and relatives that were already members there. The site is free and there were quite a few people that I wanted to keep in touch with on there.
I started an outside blog because my friend Syl had an msn account and never really went to myspace. Well, myspace tends to have a few problems with letting non members view photos and blogs from what I've heard too.
We chatted merily on occassion with our msn blogs (which I still have but have converted it to an ancestry blog) when they changed things over there. This caused Syl and all of her friends to leave msn in drovers to blogger accounts. Wanting to stay in touch, I followed suit. I was now newly moved to a new town and had no friends to sit and chat with over here and was feeling rather lonely out in the middle of nowhere. I didn't blog as much then as I do now though. I viewed it as time consuming and I always seemed to have plenty to do.
My blogging has evolved since then too. You see, I was suffering depression and met a bunch of wonderful people on the HGTV chatrooms that I came to know and depend on for friendship. They could make me laugh and smile even on the darkest of days before I sought treatment for my illness. I was seeking help on how to get my house sold, it had been on the market for 18 months and I was really feeling the strain in all areas of my life. One of those dear friends is Anna aka Flowergardengirl.
If you know me at all, you may know that I sometimes tend to talk about things other than the topic of the blog. Apparently the powers that be didn't like our silliness and getting off topic so we were constantly getting our posts deleted. I was very upset as was Anna, so we moved our conversations out to the blog world instead. I have since stopped posting at the HGTV chatrooms as it seems that my account there has been frozen and they were accusing me of promoting my blog when I posted there. I had a link to my blog so we could all get together and be as off topic as we wanted without having to worry about our posts getting deleted. I left with an extremely heavy heart, many of my friends I made there still have never made their way to my blog. Maybe they never will, but I am on the road to recovery with my depression and it's all because of the kindness of "strangers". Anna told me about this great new little gardening community called Blotanical where she was spending lots of time so I thought I'd give it a try too.
Now I enjoy rushing inside after seeing something neat and interesting to chat with you about. As you can see I have been posting much more frequently here than I ever did on any of my other blogs! My early posts were few and far between and now I post at least a couple of times a week. I now blog to chat with my cyber buds that have helped me come so far in life who have helped me find my happy place once again.
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
I originally started blogging to keep in touch with people I alredy knew. I could check in with what they were doing any time of day and stay and visit as long as I wanted without being a pest. As you may know, I CAN be known to be a bit gabby at times. LOL.
I started out on myspace because I have a bunch of friends and relatives that were already members there. The site is free and there were quite a few people that I wanted to keep in touch with on there.
I started an outside blog because my friend Syl had an msn account and never really went to myspace. Well, myspace tends to have a few problems with letting non members view photos and blogs from what I've heard too.
We chatted merily on occassion with our msn blogs (which I still have but have converted it to an ancestry blog) when they changed things over there. This caused Syl and all of her friends to leave msn in drovers to blogger accounts. Wanting to stay in touch, I followed suit. I was now newly moved to a new town and had no friends to sit and chat with over here and was feeling rather lonely out in the middle of nowhere. I didn't blog as much then as I do now though. I viewed it as time consuming and I always seemed to have plenty to do.
My blogging has evolved since then too. You see, I was suffering depression and met a bunch of wonderful people on the HGTV chatrooms that I came to know and depend on for friendship. They could make me laugh and smile even on the darkest of days before I sought treatment for my illness. I was seeking help on how to get my house sold, it had been on the market for 18 months and I was really feeling the strain in all areas of my life. One of those dear friends is Anna aka Flowergardengirl.
If you know me at all, you may know that I sometimes tend to talk about things other than the topic of the blog. Apparently the powers that be didn't like our silliness and getting off topic so we were constantly getting our posts deleted. I was very upset as was Anna, so we moved our conversations out to the blog world instead. I have since stopped posting at the HGTV chatrooms as it seems that my account there has been frozen and they were accusing me of promoting my blog when I posted there. I had a link to my blog so we could all get together and be as off topic as we wanted without having to worry about our posts getting deleted. I left with an extremely heavy heart, many of my friends I made there still have never made their way to my blog. Maybe they never will, but I am on the road to recovery with my depression and it's all because of the kindness of "strangers". Anna told me about this great new little gardening community called Blotanical where she was spending lots of time so I thought I'd give it a try too.
Now I enjoy rushing inside after seeing something neat and interesting to chat with you about. As you can see I have been posting much more frequently here than I ever did on any of my other blogs! My early posts were few and far between and now I post at least a couple of times a week. I now blog to chat with my cyber buds that have helped me come so far in life who have helped me find my happy place once again.
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
Making Curtains and Other Random Thoughts
I know it's unusual for a shed to have curtains, but I thought it would help it look pretty from the outside. I didn't do as careful of work as I would have if I were to put them up inside, but I think they look cute. Normally I wouldn't hang up such wrinkled curtains either, but I wanted to get a lot done today so I admit I may have cut some corners.
If I had the money I probably would have went out and bought some fabric that matches the curtains hanging in my house's windows. Since I don't though, I raided my fabric stash. I thought this powder blue looked rather striking with the siding color.
I didn't have any curtain rods either, so I used thumb tacks instead. DO you think that's strange?
Now all that's left is finishing the landscaping around the shed, staining the ramp, and building the planter box and shutters. Those projects may end up waiting for next spring. The staining will definately have to since the wood is still so wet and I don't want to be staining again anytime soon. I have put up some decorations on the railing, can you see them? I suppose I should have waited until after this winter and after staining, but I just couldn't wait to see what it looks like!
I have refinished a wood bench that we rescued from our other house. I will place it under the window on the shed's ramp once the poly is dry and my side yard grass has finished growing in. I will also paint a plant stand that I have black and put it in one of the corners. SO many plans, so little time!
I got two doors for our basement stained today too. 3 down, 6 to go. I can't wait until we can put an end to the basement finishing. They can be put up once all of the flooring is finally installed. I am hoping that it will be done in the next week or so. Is that too optomistic?
Also got some banana bread, banana cake, applesauce, baked beans, and potato salad made today before we headed off to football practice and Cheesehead visiting. I want to relax, but should be doing laundry and dishes since I'm Chaperoning Peanut's field trip to the outdoor classroom tomorrow. I should also be taking a shower before our hot water goes out again, but I'm just going to hope that we still have hot water tomorrow morning. I'm exhausted!
We had another showing today for our house in MN. Just over 2 months left until the final foreclosure. I don't know if I should be relieved or worried. I wish it would just sell already, then I could stop with my hand wringing and worrying. I desperately keep trying to give my worries up to the Lord, but somehow I just can't keep them given away. Somehow I just keep taking back the yoke and I can't lay it down. What's wrong with me? Is this normal? How can I give my worries over to God for good?
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
If I had the money I probably would have went out and bought some fabric that matches the curtains hanging in my house's windows. Since I don't though, I raided my fabric stash. I thought this powder blue looked rather striking with the siding color.
I didn't have any curtain rods either, so I used thumb tacks instead. DO you think that's strange?
Now all that's left is finishing the landscaping around the shed, staining the ramp, and building the planter box and shutters. Those projects may end up waiting for next spring. The staining will definately have to since the wood is still so wet and I don't want to be staining again anytime soon. I have put up some decorations on the railing, can you see them? I suppose I should have waited until after this winter and after staining, but I just couldn't wait to see what it looks like!
I have refinished a wood bench that we rescued from our other house. I will place it under the window on the shed's ramp once the poly is dry and my side yard grass has finished growing in. I will also paint a plant stand that I have black and put it in one of the corners. SO many plans, so little time!
I got two doors for our basement stained today too. 3 down, 6 to go. I can't wait until we can put an end to the basement finishing. They can be put up once all of the flooring is finally installed. I am hoping that it will be done in the next week or so. Is that too optomistic?
Also got some banana bread, banana cake, applesauce, baked beans, and potato salad made today before we headed off to football practice and Cheesehead visiting. I want to relax, but should be doing laundry and dishes since I'm Chaperoning Peanut's field trip to the outdoor classroom tomorrow. I should also be taking a shower before our hot water goes out again, but I'm just going to hope that we still have hot water tomorrow morning. I'm exhausted!
We had another showing today for our house in MN. Just over 2 months left until the final foreclosure. I don't know if I should be relieved or worried. I wish it would just sell already, then I could stop with my hand wringing and worrying. I desperately keep trying to give my worries up to the Lord, but somehow I just can't keep them given away. Somehow I just keep taking back the yoke and I can't lay it down. What's wrong with me? Is this normal? How can I give my worries over to God for good?
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
Garden Refugees
I meant to show you all of the work I've been up to for the last couple of days, but I've been slow. So, instead I thought I'd give you an idea of why no one wants to buy this house!
I was shocked when I went back and saw how completely over grown all of my gardens were. I felt horrible that I didn't have the time to take care of all of the poor babies, they were just screaming out for help. Poor Mom must feel overwhelmed with all of the gardens to take care of and work full time.
I was not feeling very hopeful that I'd be able to salvage anything out of this garden at all. Look at it, wouldn't you be skeptical too? This was once my prize rose garden. I replaced the roses each year since I never had the ability to get them to live through the winter. Right before we moved, I planted 3 clematis and 2 roses as a gift to the new owners of the house. With no care given to them since we moved I wasn't optomistic that they were still alive.
While browsing through the weeds, I found all 3 clematis and 1 of the roses. Not too shabby. Of course I dug them all up, I can't imagine that the next owners would want to keep this mess. Would you?
I have some wonderful sensation lilacs that were still in bloom, but they were on the decline. I should have grabbed more of them, but I only dug up and took two of them back home with me. I couldn't believe how big all of the "little" shoots had gotten by now, when we left there were several managable sized lilacs I could have brought with. So many of them are huge for one person to handle. They were thriving wonderfully in the mulch garden, as were the weeds. Look at that! I couldn't find a single place that I could see the mulch.
This plant is a remnant from the first owners. We were the third owners of this home. I have never seen anything quite like it. It sure smells like a lilac bush, but the leaves don't look like the typical lilac leaves in either shape or color. The flowers were also not clustered like the traditional lilacs.
The front garden was also badly in need of weeding. I did manage to weed this garden area while I was there, but this picture was taken before I had the chance.
I was so disappointed that my periwinkle and fern leafed bleeding heart weren't growing there anymore when I arrived. I had planned on taking them with me. Imagine my surprise when they popped up two days after my arrival. I could almost hear their tiny little plant voices pleading with me to take them with me. There were only a couple of leaves on each plant, the whole plants looked to be smaller than my pinky finger. I showed them to Cheesehead and all he could do was laugh. Of course I dug them up too. They're not big enough to showcase. They're so small they didn't even show up in my macro pictures I took of them. That's alright though, now they're safely nestled in my new shade garden!
.
I ended up taking 22 plants with me from my gardens. I wish I had taken some more, but I ran out of pots and time. Here they are awaiting the move. I dug them up the night before Cheesehead and BIL came to help me move everything. The plants rested in the garage that night and I loaded them up in the van the next morning after I had breakfast with my friends.
I have most of them planted in the ground already, however there are 9 left to plant. I ended up having to paint the garden arbor from my former rose garden, so the clematis had to wait to be planted until I had the arbor put back together.
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
I was shocked when I went back and saw how completely over grown all of my gardens were. I felt horrible that I didn't have the time to take care of all of the poor babies, they were just screaming out for help. Poor Mom must feel overwhelmed with all of the gardens to take care of and work full time.
I was not feeling very hopeful that I'd be able to salvage anything out of this garden at all. Look at it, wouldn't you be skeptical too? This was once my prize rose garden. I replaced the roses each year since I never had the ability to get them to live through the winter. Right before we moved, I planted 3 clematis and 2 roses as a gift to the new owners of the house. With no care given to them since we moved I wasn't optomistic that they were still alive.
While browsing through the weeds, I found all 3 clematis and 1 of the roses. Not too shabby. Of course I dug them all up, I can't imagine that the next owners would want to keep this mess. Would you?
I have some wonderful sensation lilacs that were still in bloom, but they were on the decline. I should have grabbed more of them, but I only dug up and took two of them back home with me. I couldn't believe how big all of the "little" shoots had gotten by now, when we left there were several managable sized lilacs I could have brought with. So many of them are huge for one person to handle. They were thriving wonderfully in the mulch garden, as were the weeds. Look at that! I couldn't find a single place that I could see the mulch.
This plant is a remnant from the first owners. We were the third owners of this home. I have never seen anything quite like it. It sure smells like a lilac bush, but the leaves don't look like the typical lilac leaves in either shape or color. The flowers were also not clustered like the traditional lilacs.
The front garden was also badly in need of weeding. I did manage to weed this garden area while I was there, but this picture was taken before I had the chance.
I was so disappointed that my periwinkle and fern leafed bleeding heart weren't growing there anymore when I arrived. I had planned on taking them with me. Imagine my surprise when they popped up two days after my arrival. I could almost hear their tiny little plant voices pleading with me to take them with me. There were only a couple of leaves on each plant, the whole plants looked to be smaller than my pinky finger. I showed them to Cheesehead and all he could do was laugh. Of course I dug them up too. They're not big enough to showcase. They're so small they didn't even show up in my macro pictures I took of them. That's alright though, now they're safely nestled in my new shade garden!
.
I ended up taking 22 plants with me from my gardens. I wish I had taken some more, but I ran out of pots and time. Here they are awaiting the move. I dug them up the night before Cheesehead and BIL came to help me move everything. The plants rested in the garage that night and I loaded them up in the van the next morning after I had breakfast with my friends.
I have most of them planted in the ground already, however there are 9 left to plant. I ended up having to paint the garden arbor from my former rose garden, so the clematis had to wait to be planted until I had the arbor put back together.
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
Oh, the damage!
Hi all. I just thought I'd stop by and say hi. I'm on an express computer since there are no internet cafes here for me to use. I want to stop by and visit you all, but somehow I just don't know that 10 minutes would allow me to do that!
I got back to MN and checked out all of the hail damage. One of my neighbors is a contractor and he estimates that we have about $24,000 worth of damage to the house, shed, and roof. I debated if I should file a claim or not with it going up for sheriff's sale on Monday, but I think I'm just going to hold off unless I get an offer that says they want me to fix the hail damage. I don't need any extra hassles that no one's requiring me to do, right? I mean, I went through this whole process about 2 1/2 (or was it 3?) years ago and it was certainly NO picnic!
Had two more showings today as well as a showing on Tuesday, so I'm still hoping for that offer.
I'm sure this poor lady sitting next to me thinks I'm some sort of pig or something. I was outside weeding the garden and I saw that the grass was very long. I decided to I mow the lawn when an unexpected showing came through. There was supposed to be another one within the hour, so I didn't even have the time to shower before I left the house. I think I could use a nice hot bubble bath tonight!
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
I got back to MN and checked out all of the hail damage. One of my neighbors is a contractor and he estimates that we have about $24,000 worth of damage to the house, shed, and roof. I debated if I should file a claim or not with it going up for sheriff's sale on Monday, but I think I'm just going to hold off unless I get an offer that says they want me to fix the hail damage. I don't need any extra hassles that no one's requiring me to do, right? I mean, I went through this whole process about 2 1/2 (or was it 3?) years ago and it was certainly NO picnic!
Had two more showings today as well as a showing on Tuesday, so I'm still hoping for that offer.
I'm sure this poor lady sitting next to me thinks I'm some sort of pig or something. I was outside weeding the garden and I saw that the grass was very long. I decided to I mow the lawn when an unexpected showing came through. There was supposed to be another one within the hour, so I didn't even have the time to shower before I left the house. I think I could use a nice hot bubble bath tonight!
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
Mom got a sheriff's sale notice.
HUH? I though that the OWNERS were supposed to get those??? Apparently it's going to go on the block on June 16, so if there isn't some miracle that occurs before that I'm not sure what will happen. We lowered the price, but still no lookers. We've only had 2 look in the 2 weeks since the price drop. Everyone is buying foreclosures and not even bothering to look at houses like ours.
I'm SO totally stressed out right now I can barely breathe. Where's a paper bag?
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
I'm SO totally stressed out right now I can barely breathe. Where's a paper bag?
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
We need a hair cut!
What a busy weekend! We were in MN for about 3 hours. I felt bad that I wasn't able to take much time to care for the garden I left behind. It looked like all of my bushes needed a "hair cut". Poor things. I didn't take pictures of everything though as there wasn't much lush foliage on them so you would have been looking at a bunch of sticks with buds popping out on the limbs. This is what I went back to.
Mom works full time and drives so far for work. She doesn't have the time I did to care for the gardens. I don't know that she has the knowledge I have either. Not to sound smug, but she didn't seem to know quite a few of the care tips I told her for my plants. Without her help though, I wouldn't have been able to bring back some of my plants that we dug up. I know it may have seemed silly, but you know how the next owner comes out and chages things and tends to throw out some of the poor plants. I didn't want to take the chance that would happen. I love my babies, I want as many of them to continue to live as possible. If that means I look crazy, so be it!
No wonder no one is making me offers, they don't want to take on all of that work!
Once the kids are out of school I think I'll be making a run over to give my gardens the attention they deserve. I'm not sure WHAT we were thinking when we planted these in such a small space! I may try to move these next time. I know I could be killing these plants, but how can I just let them suffer in this spot? They were begging me to help them move. Can you hear their little voices calling out for help?
My three pass down peonies in my back mulch garden were growing beautifully. We had plans of getting rid of this garden when we lived there and now it's overgrown, I'm sure the next owner won't hesitate to get rid of it. I wanted them here in my new garden, so Mom dug them up for me.
In the foreground of this picture is what used to be my rose garden. I've been debating bringing my arbor here, but Cheesehead doesn't sound too fond of that idea. I may do it next time I go anyway though. I can be a bit stubborn that way. In the background you can see another part of the mulch garden. It is huge! I like the screening it provides and the neighborhood kids seem to like to play in it. I'm planning on taking more of my flowers out as well as a few lilac bushes. Maybe if I edit it a little bit it will be easier for Mom to take care of....
These arborvitae in the middle of the mulch garden were more passed down plants. They look a bit windburnt. Poor things! I'd think about bringing them here, but the deer would probably think I just opened an all you can eat buffet for them!
This was one of Cheesehead's little darlings. He dug it up and brought it back with us too. If it survives he has plans to go and dig up the other little ones as well. You're probably wondering why in the world we would need more trees when we already live in the woods. I'd have to say that's an excellent question! Umm, how about we're tring to bring in some diversity to live with all of the white pines?!?
I spent the day yesterday planting the transplants into my new yard. Whew, was that a lot of work! I'd post those but I think I'll save it for when the plants are growing more and I've had a chance to lay down edging, landscaping fabric, and mulch. Looks like I've got a lot more work ahead of me. Today's job is to clean out the garage though, so I suppose I'll have to save more garden work for Tuesday or Wednesday.
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy,
Mom works full time and drives so far for work. She doesn't have the time I did to care for the gardens. I don't know that she has the knowledge I have either. Not to sound smug, but she didn't seem to know quite a few of the care tips I told her for my plants. Without her help though, I wouldn't have been able to bring back some of my plants that we dug up. I know it may have seemed silly, but you know how the next owner comes out and chages things and tends to throw out some of the poor plants. I didn't want to take the chance that would happen. I love my babies, I want as many of them to continue to live as possible. If that means I look crazy, so be it!
No wonder no one is making me offers, they don't want to take on all of that work!
Once the kids are out of school I think I'll be making a run over to give my gardens the attention they deserve. I'm not sure WHAT we were thinking when we planted these in such a small space! I may try to move these next time. I know I could be killing these plants, but how can I just let them suffer in this spot? They were begging me to help them move. Can you hear their little voices calling out for help?
My three pass down peonies in my back mulch garden were growing beautifully. We had plans of getting rid of this garden when we lived there and now it's overgrown, I'm sure the next owner won't hesitate to get rid of it. I wanted them here in my new garden, so Mom dug them up for me.
In the foreground of this picture is what used to be my rose garden. I've been debating bringing my arbor here, but Cheesehead doesn't sound too fond of that idea. I may do it next time I go anyway though. I can be a bit stubborn that way. In the background you can see another part of the mulch garden. It is huge! I like the screening it provides and the neighborhood kids seem to like to play in it. I'm planning on taking more of my flowers out as well as a few lilac bushes. Maybe if I edit it a little bit it will be easier for Mom to take care of....
These arborvitae in the middle of the mulch garden were more passed down plants. They look a bit windburnt. Poor things! I'd think about bringing them here, but the deer would probably think I just opened an all you can eat buffet for them!
This was one of Cheesehead's little darlings. He dug it up and brought it back with us too. If it survives he has plans to go and dig up the other little ones as well. You're probably wondering why in the world we would need more trees when we already live in the woods. I'd have to say that's an excellent question! Umm, how about we're tring to bring in some diversity to live with all of the white pines?!?
I spent the day yesterday planting the transplants into my new yard. Whew, was that a lot of work! I'd post those but I think I'll save it for when the plants are growing more and I've had a chance to lay down edging, landscaping fabric, and mulch. Looks like I've got a lot more work ahead of me. Today's job is to clean out the garage though, so I suppose I'll have to save more garden work for Tuesday or Wednesday.
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy,
The Garden I Left Behind
I just got back from my trip and had to leave more behind than I wanted to. Next time we go back we're going to finally grab the rest. I really wanted to bring the rest of my garden stuff, but since my yard here is still covered with snow, I decided they would be safer where they were. Next time, my pretties!
It was pretty bitter sweet! The snow was completely gone and the yard was ready for tending. The ground wasn't even wet! It was all I could do to focus on the task at hand and not be distracted by caring for my babies. Poor things. Some of the plants were looking so sad and neglected. My beautiful Albert Spruce were screaming for Miracid, several bushes needed to be trimmed back... A LOT! SIGH! Unfortunately I had no more than 2 hours there, so I had to worry about other things instead. I did manage to snap a couple of pictures while I was running around like a chicken with it's head cut off though!
I don't remeber the name of this particular plant, but I love the berries it grows. It adds much needed interest to the winter garden landscape!
Look how my flowering crab apple is starting to get buds. Maybe it will be blooming next time we go back??? I'm hoping to get there in the next month or so, ESPECIALLY if we get some good news tomorrow! Wish us luck and keep us in your prayers PLEASE!!!
Remember that wren house I told you about? Well, I couldn't get close enough to get the top of it where the branch has decided to claim ownership of it, but you can see from the weathering that it's been there for a while!
This is my lovely snowball bush. I like how the dried flowers look. They also stay intact all winter long so I love how they add a spot of interest to my winter garden too.
I think this is some type of lilac bush, but I'm not real sure. It has beautiful fragrant flowers in May (I think that was the right month...) that are a bit smaller than the traditional lilac as well as a small bell shape and a paler shade of purple. I've never seen anything quite like it. The poor thing took quite a beating when we had our house re-roofed a couple of years ago, but I just couldn't give up on it. I thought about asking the contractor to pay for the damages, but I'm sure they would have expected me to replace the bush then. I just couldn't do it! Does anyone know what it's called? The previous owners bought it, so I have NO idea!
These are popping up all over. I think they may be coral bells? Or were they some type of sedum? Hmm, I guess it's been too long since I planted these as well. I didn't used to be as good at keeping tags for things I planted. My memory is not as good as it should be for a person of my age either....
It was refreshing to hear all of the birds twittering and flying about. A sharp contrast to the winter like conditions still enveloping my current home. I guess I'll just have to busy myself with inside stuff to keep my mind off what I'm missing on the outside!
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
It was pretty bitter sweet! The snow was completely gone and the yard was ready for tending. The ground wasn't even wet! It was all I could do to focus on the task at hand and not be distracted by caring for my babies. Poor things. Some of the plants were looking so sad and neglected. My beautiful Albert Spruce were screaming for Miracid, several bushes needed to be trimmed back... A LOT! SIGH! Unfortunately I had no more than 2 hours there, so I had to worry about other things instead. I did manage to snap a couple of pictures while I was running around like a chicken with it's head cut off though!
I don't remeber the name of this particular plant, but I love the berries it grows. It adds much needed interest to the winter garden landscape!
Look how my flowering crab apple is starting to get buds. Maybe it will be blooming next time we go back??? I'm hoping to get there in the next month or so, ESPECIALLY if we get some good news tomorrow! Wish us luck and keep us in your prayers PLEASE!!!
Remember that wren house I told you about? Well, I couldn't get close enough to get the top of it where the branch has decided to claim ownership of it, but you can see from the weathering that it's been there for a while!
This is my lovely snowball bush. I like how the dried flowers look. They also stay intact all winter long so I love how they add a spot of interest to my winter garden too.
I think this is some type of lilac bush, but I'm not real sure. It has beautiful fragrant flowers in May (I think that was the right month...) that are a bit smaller than the traditional lilac as well as a small bell shape and a paler shade of purple. I've never seen anything quite like it. The poor thing took quite a beating when we had our house re-roofed a couple of years ago, but I just couldn't give up on it. I thought about asking the contractor to pay for the damages, but I'm sure they would have expected me to replace the bush then. I just couldn't do it! Does anyone know what it's called? The previous owners bought it, so I have NO idea!
These are popping up all over. I think they may be coral bells? Or were they some type of sedum? Hmm, I guess it's been too long since I planted these as well. I didn't used to be as good at keeping tags for things I planted. My memory is not as good as it should be for a person of my age either....
It was refreshing to hear all of the birds twittering and flying about. A sharp contrast to the winter like conditions still enveloping my current home. I guess I'll just have to busy myself with inside stuff to keep my mind off what I'm missing on the outside!
Thank you for stopping by. Please leave me a message and a backlink. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cindy
We got an offer! Keep praying please.
If I had the money I'd just accept it here and now. Thanks for the help so far, but I still need a few more prayers though. I am now going to pray that the bank works with us and lets us still walk not having to pay back the $25,000 that we'll owe to get out of this mess. As far as I'm concerned it's a good offer considering recent sales, all the competition and all of the foreclosures around there right now.
First showing in 23 days
We had our first showing today, I just found out about it. I am praying that these are our buyers! I've been praying VERY hard about this. Could you help me please? I NEED to sell that house... like yesterday!
Annoying!
Well, when I talked to the bank in the beginning of January and told them there was no way I could afford to pay the house payment because our renter moved out and owed us months' worth of back rent they decided to send us a "work out packet". So, I filled it out and sent it back.
Apparently they never got it??? So I keep on calling them so they don't think I am being a deadbeat or something. Well, they FINALLY decided to send us a "short sale" packet. I don't know if it will do much good at this point since we are already two month's behind. After 3 months you get a breach of contract letter and foreclosure begins. I highly doubt that one month's time will be long enough for us to get the house sold and closed before they want to foreclose on us. SIGH. I'm not sure why they wouldn't even consider trying to get thinngs figured out BEFORE all of this stuff happened! I haven't even gotten the other rent either that's supposed to cover my utilities, insurance, and taxes. Apparently Mom has more important bills to pay???? I have SUCH a headache!
Apparently they never got it??? So I keep on calling them so they don't think I am being a deadbeat or something. Well, they FINALLY decided to send us a "short sale" packet. I don't know if it will do much good at this point since we are already two month's behind. After 3 months you get a breach of contract letter and foreclosure begins. I highly doubt that one month's time will be long enough for us to get the house sold and closed before they want to foreclose on us. SIGH. I'm not sure why they wouldn't even consider trying to get thinngs figured out BEFORE all of this stuff happened! I haven't even gotten the other rent either that's supposed to cover my utilities, insurance, and taxes. Apparently Mom has more important bills to pay???? I have SUCH a headache!
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