Chris & Joy’s Critterweb

We have been watching the economic situation progress for some time now, trying to determine what would be our best steps for the future; we weren’t sure whether we should consider another relocation, or whether we should settle in here — and if the latter, whether to keep renting or try to buy. My getting the job I have now steered us in the direction of staying put, unless I am relocated which is pretty unlikely. So that brought up the rent vs. buy question again.

The housing crash could potentially have a silver lining, in that people who otherwise could not have afforded a house are seeing the prices come back down into the affordable range, and in some areas of NC where economic factors have hit particularly hard there are some real bargains to be found. So lately we’ve been looking hard at whether it would be a good time for us to try and buy a house.

Ten years ago, I had this ‘money pit‘ of a Mercury Sable that required some expensive repair or another at least once a month. I remember saying to myself each time, “yeah, but at least I don’t have a car payment.” The last straw for the Sable was a blown head gasket, and when I sat and added up all the bills from the years I had it, I realized I had paid an average of three hundred dollars a month in repairs, and paid for the used car twice over. I could have been putting that money towards a car payment instead, and had the benefit of a vehicle I could trust to get from point A to B instead of worrying each trip would end with me stranded and waiting for a tow truck.

This morning, I was thinking back to that car situation, and contrasting it with our current rent vs. buy dilemma. I got the idea to add up all the rent we have paid in the last ten years, since we left NC for Arizona back in May of ‘99. The total, which doesn’t include the non-refundable pet deposits we paid in some places (but does include the deposit the first landlord cheated us out of when we moved out) comes to over seventy thousand dollars. That’s pretty sobering.

Now, on one hand this doesn’t account for the above-mentioned pet deposits, or the improvements we made to some of these places to make them ‘home’ for us, like shelving and gardens, nor could I think of any way to factor in the fact that, because of the difficulties finding rentals that allow animals, we wound up living in places where we would not have chosen to be if we’d had an alternative. I do recognize that, on the other hand, there were financial hardships that occurred in some of these places that would have been our responsibility if we had owned rather than rented — like the new roof our current house just had to have installed. I’d like to think that, if we’d been buying a house, we would have been able to avoid getting into some of these disasters (we could see when we rented this house, for instance, that it needed a new roof among many other things) but we do recognize that home ownership comes with risks and responsibilities.

Fear of facing unexpected bills we might not be able to cover (like a new roof, or a blown furnace) has been one of the things that has kept us from really thinking about home ownership. There’s also the fact that it means we’d have to pick a spot and plant our ‘gypsy’ feet in it long term, and that’s a bit scary too. On the other hand, not being able to really put in a proper garden, or repaint, or do many of the other little things that makes a home a home gets frustrating.

I can go in mental circles on this all day. What if we bought a house and then I was laid off? On the other hand, what if our landlord decided to sell this house one day, and we had to suddenly move? I guess, either way you look at it, you can be a few short steps from homeless if things go bad. The frightening thing is that with the financial situation in the country the way it is right now, it’s hard to predict how bad they might get. So we continue to watch, and ponder, and try and gauge what the best decision would be.

Over seventy thousand dollars in rent. Wow. I am actually not sure if it was a good thing to crunch those numbers, as it was a lot less disturbing when it was just some vague nebulous concept.

We’ve made a few recipes lately that called for (ideally) parchment paper or (less ideally) a greased and floured pan. Since the latter turned out to be horrifically messy, we decided to try the parchment paper. I was in Earth Fare today picking up a few things for another recipe and was pleased to find they had parchment paper as well, and an eco-friendly kind at that.

As I picked up the box, the end flew open and the paper shot out like it had just been lauched from a rocket, bounced off the cleaning supplies on the opposite side of the aisle, and landed on the floor. I caught it before it unravelled, but I was already laden with a red pepper, my reusable bags, a bag of mushrooms, and a can of olives so I didn’t make much headway with getting it under control. There was frantic juggling of all above items, some swearing under my breath, and the roll sailed gleefully in a different direction across the aisle. I put down all the other items and recaptured it; by now it had unfurled somewhat and expanded to about twice it’s previous size. It had no intention of going back to it’s box prison and escaped me a third time.

By now the muttering under my breath was maybe not so much under my breath, and I lunged after the offending paper, managed to sort-of roll it back together, and stuffed it back in the box.  It didn’t really fit, and now stuck out about 6″ from the end of the box. Surprisingly, no one in the crowded store had witnessed the drama unfolding. Or maybe anyone who did fled quickly. For a split second I contemplated gently setting it down on the paper towel display and tiptoeing quietly away from the scene, but that seemed wrong — even if it wasn’t my fault the end of the box wasn’t glued. So off to the checkout went the parchment and I.

Checkout clerk (as he gets to the mangled box of parchment): “Uh…did you see–”

Me: “I did it. There was a large fight with the box and I lost. I didn’t want to be that person who makes a mess and then runs away and leaves it.”

Checkout clerk: “Oh… well thanks, but really we can get you a new box, we don’t mind. It looks like it was defective.”

Me: “That’s OK, I don’t want to waste it. And besides, it’s actually become a personal vendetta between me and that box.  I plan on continuing the battle at home.  Oh, and check your security camera for that aisle later; I’m sure I provided lots of entertainment.”

The clerk laughs a bit uncertainly, and finishes ringing up the stuff as I bag it. As I started to walk away after he handed me my receipt and I thanked him, he called after me, “Good luck with your fight with the parchment paper — I hope you win!”

We’ll just carve one of the tomato-monsters instead.

When I went to fill up the old platypus this morning before heading out on a run to Bryson City, I noticed the following neatly printed sign on every pump:

I thought maybe it was a typo, or maybe nonsense graffiti someone added, but it was the same on each sign. WTF is a knogle? Maybe a nozzle… except the sentence makes even less sense that way.

We awoke this morning to some snow on the porch, and more still falling. It’s actually still snowing at the time I write this, but not sticking because it’s a degree above freezing here. There are big fluffy flakes coming down!

This weekend I noticed that our rhododendron bush was blooming, what’s up with that? I also saw that the Jerusalem cherry by the greenhouse had grown several inches and was blooming, and below the deck railing where we feed the birds, a sunflower had grown and was getting ready to bloom. This is after we’ve already had several good frosts (the tomato plants and basil are just black skeletons) and a cold week. I guess it’s just warm enough next to the house for them to survive a little longer. We’re also still getting hummingbirds at the feeder — there’s one out there in the snow right now, in fact. Poor little guy needs to head out to wherever it is they go in the winter!

Since the actual day falls on a weekday, Joy made me a wonderful chocolate chai cake with butter-rum walnut glaze on Saturday and we had sushi. The title of this post is meant jokingly; I really don’t see the big deal with turning forty. When I was a kid, it sounded so OLD but now that I am here it doesn’t feel much different than twenty or thirty . I am still me — just hopefully a little wiser. If I am excited I still am inclined to run rather than walk, and I still play with bugs. Now that I have health insurance I may even take up climbing trees again (hope Joy is not reading this!) though my joints are a bit creaky at times. I have my share of grey hairs but am convinced each one can be traced back to a specific animal in my life — some of them maybe taking credit for more than a few grey hairs. Like the certain black cat who, after a two month respite, has taken to keeping us up all night again.

Anyway, I have a yummy cake and a some cool stuff including a set of pan-pipes to torment everyone within earshot with, and other than that it’s pretty much any other day.

The forces of chaos that seem to rule our lives were kind enough to send “blown hot water heater fuse” as their gift, so I started the day wide awake after a chilly shower. On the scale of calamities, that’s pretty minor, so maybe they’d intended something a bit more unpleasant and at the last minute decided to cut us some slack since it was my birthday.

Did I mention the cake? Oh yeah, twice. Hmmm…. Maybe I need to go sneak a taste before Joy gets home to see if it is as yummy as when I had it for breakfast, or that bite I had for lunch…?

Last night we watched Maxed Out, a documentary by James Scurlock that examines the American debt crisis from both the angle of personal debt and the national debt situation. This one had been sitting in our Netflix queue for a while, until Joy moved it up the list a bit recently because she thought it would be especially interesting in light of the current debt bailout crisis.  It was one of those films I felt would be important to watch, but I had procrastinated because I felt it would be dry and preachy and tell me things I already knew. It was actually extremely interesting and very well-done, and we both learned a great deal from it.

We gave Maxed Out a five rating when we returned it (and I should point out that we’re pretty stingy with our fives) and I was surprised to see that the film didn’t have a higher average user rating on Netflix; I googled a bit this morning to see what sort of feedback it had generated from others… The criticisms I mainly saw from film critics were that the film’s style trivialized the situation and that it didn’t talk enough about how to solve the problem, or about why American society is so prone to incurring debt to bgin with. In answer to both points, I think that a big challenge for documentary filmmakers is the balance of getting as much information across as possible in a way that keeps the viewer engaged and doesn’t ‘beat them over the head’ with the subject matter, and I think they did a great job in this context. They certainly conveyed the gravity of the situation to me, and it seems to me that one would be naive to expect that the larger cultural reasons (and possible solutions to the mess) are something that can be summed up in an eighty-six minute documentary.

Several of the review sites also had a comments section where readers could post their own feedback, and reading some of these comments shed a bit more light on the lackluster rating on Netflix — as well as saying a lot about the nasty side of our culture. Most of the disparaging comments were from people who felt that the people in the film, who had racked up so much credit card debt that they wound up losing everything, (several even committed suicide) deserved what they got. I saw several references to the film being ‘one sided’ in it’s treatment of predatory lending, and the feeling from many people seemed to be that those who didn’t understand the details of their credit card contracts were much more at fault than the predatory lendors (who know exactly what they are doing) that targeted them. ‘If someone takes advantage of your stupidity, it’s your own fault for being stupid’ seems to be the prevailing attitude.

I had to wonder how many of the people who wrote those comments actually took the time to watch the movie, as I can’t imagine how they could be so callous and downright mean if they had. I am not saying that there is no personal responsibility involved here, that people shouldn’t be held accountable for bad decisions, but I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that people focus all their derision upon the individuals who got into bad situations through ignorance and poor financial planning, and let the corporations who preyed upon them off scott free?

To dumb the analogy down a bit, imagine you are living in a primitive society (yeah, even more so than now) and there’s this nasty little group in the tribe that has a racket going where they set traps for the other tribe members so that they can take all of their belongings. They dig pits and line them with sharp spikes, and then hang a piece of fruit over the trap. Along comes Ogg. Let’s suppose that Ogg is even less of a deep thinker than the other cavemen… Or perhaps Ogg has had really little success hunting lately and is starving… So Ogg makes a dive for the fruit, falls through the trap, and is impaled on the stakes. Now, maybe some of the tribe is thinking, when they see this, ‘those guys over on the hill that dug that pit, the ones with all the best huts and the most food, aren’t very nice’ but instead of doing anything about that, they all stand around the pit hopping up and down and laughing about how stupid Ogg was and it was his own fault for not looking where he was going.

OK, I guess that was a really dumb analogy, in fact (a) I just felt my own IQ drop at least 10 points and (b) MMM… a banana would be really tasty right now. But anyway, I see the same thing going on with this debt bailout. Are we helping the small businesses that are closing, the people who are in foreclosure? No. Why are we giving the money to the people who caused the mess? It’s easy for us to blame it on some couple who could only afford a hundred thousand dollar house and bought a four hundred and fifty thousand dollar house, but what about the company offering them the 450K with a bazillion-page fine print contract and the slick salesman smoothly telling them not to worry about reading all that, that they could really afford it, that this was a great idea?

I learned some things that shocked (but didn’t really surprise) me from this movie… like the fact that those payday loan companies are actually owned by major banks. That credit card companies pay colleges millions of dollars in deals that allow them to target college kids. That one of George Bush’s biggest campaign contributors was MBNA. Which reminds me, I was struck, listening to his big speech explaining the changes to the bankruptcy laws — which he said were because of all the irresponsible people who get in debt over their heads — with the irony that he could stand and make that statement, knowing that the country has emptied the social security trust just to pay the interest on the trillions of dollars we owe other countries.

Anyway, we’d really recommend this movie. The more people are aware of issues like this, the closer we are to solutions, and keeping more people from getting into these messes.