Thursday, January 31, 2013 @ 5:35 AM
Good morning, this is just me. It’s been a couple days since writing, but if
you’ve been here you have seen the pictures of the new house … and we were
hoping that at least this house would be something we could have. What is all the excitement about?
Basically, we had last written two days ago and we had just
gotten to the part of wanting to explore getting a house again. We had last left it that we were calling
Heidi from Ryland Homes about the first house we looked at on Munson in Plano
for $95,000. We had thought after some
consideration that if we couldn’t afford a $60,000 loan, maybe we could afford
a $30,000 loan. One of the things Heidi
had said was that we should talk to her guy Mike. Since then we DID talk to Mike and it is
still a no go for the present time. His
suggestion was that we do our 2012 taxes and that we get verification that we
would be able to defer our house the three years while waiting to drop the loan
charges due to disability.
I am thinking that the disability is something that is
ongoing and that it will be worked through in time, but that didn’t help us
immediately. And, we weren’t sure how
Rich’s income was going to show, because he has so many business expenses this
year. So, then we had to think of
getting a house possibly without a loan.
This meant that we’d have to, or at least Rich would have to ask his
mother again whether, she could at least go with her idea of taking out just
$25,000, because she had one CD for $25,000 and one for $50,000, so she could
keep the other in the bank. That is the
thought we’ve been operating under, though we know like last time, she may
decide any which way that also might not be the same way Rich and I are
thinking. We’ve still got his $27,000
and my $10,000 so if we could add those three amounts together we’d have
$62,000 for a home.
I don’t think that is very much money for a home, especially
since the last one was frugal at $120,000. BUT, we thought that this time we would still
look near Rich’s mother, and one of the benefits of that is that being away
from the city of Chicago, real estate was less expensive. We hadn’t gone too far into it the night that
we saw Dr. Marvin, although being there gave us a chance to talk over expenses
again and the house idea was brought up.
The most important thing at the time though was that we went over the
disability again and talked about how it affected the school loan and going
back to school again. I had brought the
paperwork with me that we’ve received so far and we ended up splitting so that
he took about 60% of the work and I took back about 40% of the work. There really wasn’t a lot to do on my
end. Basically, I had to get in a form for
one of the school loans to defer until the three year waiting period, and then
we had to get in final exit paperwork for the school. We went over with Dr. Marvin about what we
had to do and he explained some things that I wasn’t sure about.
Dr. Marvin said that he’d filled in his end of the paperwork
before. There were three documents, but
they were identical so as soon as he did one, he just had to copy the other
three. That was a good thing. He said that they didn’t allow for much
writing on the form, and so he’d written before where they hadn’t gone through
and he had learned through the process to write the questions independent of
the form so he could go into more explanation.
I was really glad for his experience.
He said that he would send me a copy and then we could go over it. There’s this thing about being appreciative
of the benefit, but also we need to better understand our disorder and about
why it is so hard for us to do things and to be able to do things longer than a
month or two. It seems over as long as I
can remember it, we can just go so far and we get confused and off-track and
unable to follow things through. Maybe
Dr. Marvin when asked the right questions can better explain it to me in general
layman terms why my life is so difficult.
I know that we can write, but part of that is that we can
write no matter which part is out. We
can have happy parts out one moment, and the next we are too angry to think, or
we are racing toward depression and suicidal ideation. Just we don’t have a lot of stability or
structure so that we can present a united front that gets much done other than
explaining where we are at as we hit each of those and more states. I think in our best way of thinking we have
to keep trying to put together some sense to the outside world, and that by
keeping a journal of the efforts, we might help others down the line understand
better the disorder. We’re figuring
pretty much that we are like a specimen in a bottle, or a case study. I don’t want to leave us feeling that we are
worth less as a human being than any other, but the fact of the matter is that
there are differences about us that aren’t really well known. Some people say that multiplicity happens in
1/10th of one percent, and others say that one percent of the
population is multiple. I’m more likely
to lean toward the 1/10th of one percent. I don’t mean to say we are “special”
different, just our minds are structured different through the process of
synapses due to the very early abuses and that point is just at its infancy of
knowledge. There are people studying the
phenomena, but then like some of our work on the NEWS journal we find that most
people are at the level of believing multiples are about as comic or depraved
as vampires and wolves. Maybe it’s just
part of our society in the twenty-first century. It makes good TV and movies. And, there are a lot of people who seem to
need this kind of entertainment.
I think we’re really veering off the beaten path here. Basically, we have to come back to its
Thursday morning at now 6AM and Rich’s alarm is about to go off. We jumped in the shower early this morning
and of course fed the cats and made the coffee.
We were actually up at 1:30AM, and then were able to fall asleep again
from 3:30-5:00AM. That is round about
that time. There was still a lot of time
lying down on the couch still rehearsing over and over again our latest series
of thoughts. When we get excited about
something, we get obsessed into it and have a hard time letting it go. You might guess then that what we were
excited about was house hunting, and more important house capturing. Maybe
then we should go back for a few more explanations.
Yesterday morning, we had extra energy and figured that we’d
go back into the house finding chores, but the first thing was that we had some
paperwork to take care of. We were doing
good with it. Sometimes paperwork sits
and sits and we are not able to comprehend it and then at other times we can do
it and we really take advantage of those times when they come. Yesterday morning was no exception. We processed through everything in the form
of paper that we could and we got some calls made, and we did some mail. Part of what got done was that we brought the
problems of Medicaid current which meant mailing to Medicaid directly the
latest series of bills. And, then we
sent our questions and queries amongst some old bills to UIC by sorting through
paperwork that Medicaid had provided. We
knew that the next time we saw Dr. Marvin (today), that we are going to have to
go through it with him. I dislike the
amount of time we have to spend on money issues, but it is part of the reality
that’s been so hard for us to understand and keep up with.
We’ve come a long ways since the days we’d save up up to
three months of bills without opening them, although Rich helping pay the bills
has made opening mail somewhat easier.
We also, mailed some updated paperwork to the lady that takes care of
our pension from St. Rose. The task
there is to send them a copy of our new disability earning each year to let
them know we are still under disability.
And, then the last letter out was?
Hmm, forgetting that part now … think we’re forgetting two because there
were four envelopes all together – three manila envelopes and two regular
envelopes. I think we’re going to let
that one go for now. Oh, I know, two of
the envelopes were for processing the school loans. That was the part we’d talked about before
that was 40% our responsibility. I felt
really good about getting all that done!
The other thing in general yesterday morning was getting
things copied through the scanner and getting all the papers to their right
spot. Rich had to take care of a few
things, but most the papers we get are already looked at by him and then it is
our chore to file them properly. I’m
very proud of what’s been accomplished there.
Usually, about once or twice a month we will take all the stacked up
papers and process them. It gives me a
better understanding of some of the things that Rich has to go through and that
are happening in our world. I’m
appreciative of so many less things to worry about since Rich took over my
bills - especially, in regard to not spending loosely as we had been. Yesterday, I looked at the online ban records
and it was nice to see that there was money there and when I went through our
charges, there really weren’t a lot of things there, and all that had been had
been approved by Rich. It seems we only
have three personal things we get charged regularly. We might have mentioned this a few days ago,
but our reoccurring charge on the leisure side is the Adobe, the pottery quilt
blocks, and Rhapsody music. We haven’t
got an official statement from Rich, but we had offered to drop all of these so
we could make payments on the hospital bills.
Pretty much that was a total of $95 for twelve months.
We’ll have to wait and see if it was necessary. I was serious about giving up my extras. We talked to Linda about it and she thought
we shouldn’t have to do this, but we admitted that we wanted to do our part too
in making things right. One of the calls
too was to one of the credit people. We
only owed them $10, but we wanted it off our charges. It seems now that we glanced at our ban statement;
the charge for $75 was taken off too.
That was to the second credit place.
We owed them $175, so the other $100 will come out of our checking
account automatically on the 5th as we volunteered to do. By then our disability check will be in.
Hmm, that didn’t go great L Because we figured Rich has been up for
almost a half an hour and it was on our mind, we told him that our accountant
had written yesterday. He didn’t like
what he heard, because we had to tell him it was going to be $210 to do my
taxes. I didn’t like that either, but it
is down from the $240 he charged the last two years. The accountant said, “I
checked with Dennis and the fee would be $210.00 for the preparation of your
2012 income tax returns. However, you may not be required to file for 2012 but
still may be due a refund for a possible education credit. I will take a look
at everything tomorrow and let you know for sure.” Rich was like … from everything he knew you
had to make money to get a return. We
were a little frustrated and responded, ok, I’m going to tell my CPA that she
doesn’t know what she’s talking about because Rich has a different idea. Grr.
It probably wasn’t nice, but sometimes he just does so much griping
about things that are beyond our control.
I told him, we were just reading what she wrote. Then we went back to our writing. He’s still sitting in the dark, quietly. I know though that he thinks about how to do
his day and such when he’s waking up. He
just sighed so maybe he got past some mental point of view that had been
bothering him. I wish we could make life
easier for him, but really we think we are helping as best as we can – given our
limited capacity to help.
Yesterday, we were the grouchy one in
that we had been very ordered with our morning and we had wanted to get back to
processing the house hunting however that might turn out. Rich was sluggish in getting out the door and
we were like ok, ok … you can go now. I
don’t recall what had been making me grouchy, but I think it was related to not
wanting to be interrupted after I started working on the issue. He did go and he didn’t get back until about
4:30PM. THAT’s when I was encouraged to
peel and cut four green apples because Rich said if I did, he would make the
German Apple Pancakes again. Ok, you
gotta know that we are going to go for that!
We didn’t complain about that once.
Well, almost once. For a little
bit of time Rich and I were working on the same table because I was doing our
part and he was looking up the recipe on his computer. We saw that he was studying the way I was
peeling apples and cutting them, and it was like, PLEASE don’t look at me. I’m doing this the best I can, and I think I’m
doing a good job, and you have to do your part and not mine. We got a little HMPF! From him, but mostly then the rest of the
time there wasn’t any complaining. I
worry so much he’s going to turn out like his mother and we’ll be like her and
Bud nitpicking each other to pieces. We
are working on it with Dr. Marvin and trying to bring the conversation home
with Rich. Right now we are focused on
him yelling at us, OR raising his voice to talk to us because he’s aggravated
and to us seems to be bullying us. It’s
really hard on our system.
Ok, I think the nicer Ann is out. We just got both of us another cup of
coffee. It’s just past 6:30 AM now and
Rich is thinking that he soon has to get going on something. Usually, he starts out with his computer and
checking email for business problems.
Back again. We waited another ten minutes with Rich
discussing the difficulties of him standing up to go to work. Pswhoo!
That was hard! We told him we
needed him to move on so we could concentrate, but then he said we were pushing
him. YEEKS! Wrong rabbit hole on our part! Soooo, the thing is now like yesterday we
finally have a chance to think our free thoughts less interrupted by other
(even if he’s our “lovely.”)
I’m not sure how the next part happened
exactly, but we spent the majority of the time between 10AM to 4:30PM in our
obsessive world with getting a house. I
do think we talked to Linda between 9AM and 10AM, but I don’t think we told her
much at that time what was happening.
Sometime later in the day we caught her up. It might have been closer to 7PM to 8PM. She was busy yesterday too working on a
couple real special birthday surprises.
NOOOO, I can’t tell you anything more!
I was so happy that she could get happy with us when we finally told her
what was going on.
Also the other thing that happened a
couple of times during the day was that we talked to Charlie the Realtor. Actually, I think it started the night before
while Rich was here. He came in and we
showed him what we had found and he immediately said, “Call Charlie,” So that’s what we did, and the calls – two or
three to him yesterday were fine-tuning that all process. Basically, we had between us and Charlie
found four properties that we were interested in. I had found a couple and so had he. A couple of my suggestions were passed
because Charlie said they already had contracts. That was disappointing, but not overly
because there were still properties that we were interested in. After we’d fine-tuned it to the four, we
copied out the information on them from a collation of many Realtor sites. Most the information is the same, but
sometimes they will add a little more in.
Like one might have six pictures and the other 13, and some might give
room sizes, and others not.
One of the things I’d missed was that
there was a property on Camden in Yorkville that Charlie and I had different
information about. Right after the last
time we talked, I discovered I was talking about Unit E and he was talking
about Unit D. Pswhoo. That’s a little bit of a mess-up. We wouldn’t have minded E, but there was a
contract on it, but we don’t like D. It
has bad paint, an unattractive front, no spindles on the stairs, small rooms
and ESPECIALLY a small loft, small closets, AND the same linoleum that we’ve
been staring at here in the apartment for twelve years. BLAH!
It is true that it’s only $48,000, but I say pass. At the time we talked, we had pushed Charlie
to cancel a few of his showings. One was
for $84,900 and the second was the $95,000 that we really liked, but they were
both too expensive for where we are at.
I will admit that our price range would be impossible if it were a
house, but we ARE looking at condos and townhouses, so we get a little more
leeway.
I teased Rich last night … he thought we
had to adapt, but we were like ADAPT?!!!
We were the one who started this real estate hunt SEVERAL years ago
thinking we could almost afford a $320,000 house. TRUE that was before the bubble burst, but
you get our general idea. The bottom
line was that we canceled a few properties and told Charlie we just wanted to
go on two, but now this morning we are like we only want to go to one. Fortunately, it is the showing that is at 9
AM. The house we are looking at is 3832
Munson in Plano, IL. In all actuality it
is just four buildings down from the one we looked at and loved at $95,000 on
3706 Munson, but it is only $56,000 which is naturally 39,000 reasons to be
happier. It is a HUGE change in price
drop – almost 60%. Our house on 3832
Munson is now a HUD house and registered then as distressed. It has only been on the market for eight
days, and I went crazy thinking that it was going to be stolen from underneath
me. It is a perfect solution in that I
really liked and have always liked the Ryland Homes. I have stuck with them from the very
beginning and they’ve held a certain standard for me.
We have let Rich know over the last 24
hours that our home is ready for us to put a quick bid on it. I think he knows from previous experience
that these kinds of houses don’t stay on the market for long. I think it fits his Bohemian nature to get a
house that has been foreclosed and we know that the offering price is just 32%
of its original price and that the price is only $35 a square foot. It’s a terrific bargain … REALLY Phenomenal. We still though have to get past Rich’s
mother. I feel good enough about it sot
that if it didn’t go through with her, we’d ask Rich to ask his brother for a
three year loan for $18,000. That would
mean we would pay him back $500 a month for those three years, plus interest. The house is going to cost almost $400 in
taxes, but that bill will be cut almost in half ($2,000), but I don’t think it
would count until next year, but that would mean paying only $2,800 for
property tax or $233 instead of $400.
BUT, looking at just this year if we borrowed $18,000 from Rich’s
brother, or possibly even our mother (if Rich’s mother doesn’t want to give him
the $25,000) then we would be paying for the house $400 for taxes, $500 toward
the loan, and another $133 for assessments, which would mean for three years we’d
be paying $1033, instead of the $900 we are paying now. Hmm, maybe a little more though because of
insurance.
Ok, ok … uncle! We just finished doing a little to get ready
like steam Rich’s shirt, get dressed, and take medicine. We’ve got about ten minutes left, but might
leave any moment. Probably then a good
time to get going with this blog entry being out. Pretty soon we’ll know our fate, right? Please hope for the best. I’m reminded by my mother though that it is
really His will, not mine *sigh*
(12,770/2,377)
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