The Wannabe

During World War II, it was often said of the Marine Corps that “uncommon valor was a common virtue.”  Naturally, the Marine Corps itself adapted the phrase to be a little more appropriate: “Common sense is an uncommon virtue.”  Sadly, this rings true both within the Marines and in normal life.

My mortgage lender is currently a shining example of a remarkable lack of common sense.  Here’s the situation.  I’m currently applying for a mortgage.  I also have student loans which are in deferment because I’m still attending school.  My lender is asking for two things:

1. That my student loans be in deferment for at least 12 months.
2. That my monthly payment after the deferment period be no more than $250 per month.

The first part is easy.  I have six months left of school and then the normal deferment period of six months will make a total of 12 months of deferment.  The second part is where I’m getting tripped up.  Naturally I intend to consolidate my loans and take a graduated repayment plan.  Based on calculators I’ve found on the internet, this will put my student loan payment at $221 per month.  However, I’ve called my student loan lenders and they’ve all said the same thing; until I actually do the consolidation, the only thing they can put in writing is what my monthly payment will be for each loan.  The minimum payment for each loan is $50 and I have 18 different student loans.  That means that on paper it’s going to look like I’ve got a $900 per month student loan bill!  Of course, doing the consolidation will automatically put me into repayment, thus losing the 12 months of deferment.

In other words, without the consolidation I have 12 months of deferment but not the monthly payment, yet with the consolidation I’ll have the monthly payment but not the 12 months of deferment.  This is insane!  I just keep thinking to myself, certainly a little common sense should apply here.  Under-writers aren’t robots, are they?  Shouldn’t they be able to see the dilemma?  Or is the mortgage world so shell-shocked that it’s taking the opposite approach that it took a few years ago and denying people who might be well-qualified?

I’m being told that it’ll work out and there’s nothing to worry about, but until I actually have the keys to the house in my hands, I’m not getting my hopes up.

Before today I never believed that one could make themselves literally sick with worry.  I always just assumed it was a figure of speech.  Yet with Jaxon’s first plane ride being Thursday morning, I found myself unable to sleep at all Wednesday night.  I even threw up several times while he slept soundly in his crib, blissfully unaware that he was going to be completely separated from me in only a few hours and on a plane to Arizona that could crash and burn before he’s even old enough to understand what was happening.  Where exactly did such thoughts even come from?  I love flying and have always scoffed at the thought of dying in a plane crash!  It’s one of those situations that I find myself in more often than I care to, where I’m fully aware that my fears are irrational yet somehow I’m still afraid.  Why does that happen?

Fortunately I have rational friends who are quite good at telling me when I’m being ridiculous.  As one friend put it, Shanan is a fantastic mother and Jaxon was in good hands.  After all, how many people do you know who put their child in a car seat on a plane?

So after falling asleep well after 4:00 AM and waking up less than three hours later, I was entirely unprepared to face the day.  I showed up for work, got sick to my stomach trying to remember if I told Jaxon I loved him, and promptly went home after several co-workers told me I didn’t look well.  I paced my apartment until I finally got a text message saying that they had landed successfully and that he had actually enjoyed the ride.  That’s when I breathed a big sigh of relief and passed out on the couch for several hours.  Now here it is, 1:00 AM, and I’m completely unable to sleep because I slept through the entire day.  At least I don’t feel sick to my stomach anymore, although knowing he’s so far away and that I couldn’t get to him if he needed me is driving me insane!  I need to calm down.  It’ll be the first Friday I’ve had free in over a year.  I should enjoy myself, right?  Maybe I’ll try to see a movie or something.

With the impending home purchase going smoothly, I’m beginning to question whether or not I’m fit to be a home owner all by myself.  The house that I’m purchasing is in pristine condition.  From a casual walk-through you’d never know that it was built in the 40’s.  It looks like it’s only a few years old!  During the inspection, the inspector kept saying how they had made a lot of repairs and, “They did them right.”  It makes me wonder if a future inspector would say the same thing about repairs that I’ve done to the house if/when I sell it.

I used to tell my friends that I was morally opposed to doing my own work on my house.  I called it my theory of economics: if everyone did their own work, we would be depriving the people who currently do the job professionally of their livelihood.  Landscapers, fencing professions, and carpet installers would all be out of a job.  The economy would collapse!  Then the economy really did collapse, but that’s another story that we’re all familiar with.  The truth is, I was just afraid.  I was working under the assumption that since I wasn’t a professional, I couldn’t possibly do the work nearly as well, or end up with anything resembling a satisfactory result, as someone who did it for a living.

A recent revelation about my own career changed my mind.  I work as an “IT field technician” which basically means that I make a decent living by knowing how to use a computer and being willing to help others who know less than me.  I was recently stopped by a woman who needed help with some sort of conferencing equipment.  I will be completely honest and say that I knew nothing about the equipment that I was being asked to help with.  Had never used one before, nor seen one used, but in this woman’s mind, the fact that I was an “IT guy” instantly qualified me to assist her.  The solution to her problem was simple.  I checked the cables on the back to make sure everything was connected properly, and then picked up the laminated instruction card that came with the machine and followed the instructions step-by-step.  It worked.  She marveled at my technical prowess, insisted that she had followed the instructions herself without success, and declared that I must have some sort of magical “tech aura” that she was lacking which explained why it worked for me and not her.  I’ve heard so many people reference the tech aura that I sometimes wonder if it actually exists.

Of course it doesn’t.  I’m a competent, educated individual who likes to solve problems.  No magic involved.  I’m certain that this woman is also a competent, educated individual who simply saw a technical term like “IP Address” and became afraid that she was going to break something.  Very likely the same fear that I experience when I try to imagine myself installing a new sink faucet or laying pavers in the back yard.  Maybe all I need is a little confidence and I can find my inner do-it-yourselfer.

I’ve already started to make a list of things I want to do to the house.  I know, that can turn out horribly bad if the worst happens and I don’t get the house.  I just can’t help it though!  The house is move-in ready but there are still so many upgrades and little cosmetic changes that can be done to make it my own.  I’ve got 19 things on my list so far, ranging from small projects like adding a garbage disposal to major undertakings like installing an underground sprinkler system.  I estimate it’ll take me the better part of a decade to finish everything.  First up?  Playroom for Jaxon!

With the house purchase coming up, I’ve had to work on my budget a little to make sure I can afford the new payment and not be living paycheck-to-paycheck.  One of the major problem areas for my budget is gas.  Driving is a zen-like activity for me.  There’s nothing more peaceful and relaxing then getting in my car when it’s dark, heading out to the winding country roads away from the city, and just driving.  It clears my head and is good fun at the same time.  Even without the late-night drives, I tend to go a lot of places.  Many of my friends live 50+ miles away in Portland or Beaverton, along with my school and my D&D group (never been able to find a group locally that’s any good).  Sometimes I drive home during my lunch, or stop by Target or the grocery store after work.  I think part of my problem is that I’ve never really enjoyed being home, and especially not when my home is a 475 square-foot apartment with neighbors who are almost all community college students who can’t stop watching porn with the volume turned way up for everyone to hear.

I’ve never really been one to track my mileage or pay attention to how much I’m paying in gas.  I viewed it as a necessary expense that I didn’t really have a choice about, like paying your power bill.  You turn on the stove when you need to cook something and you turn the heat up when you’re cold and a blanket just isn’t enough and you don’t really stop to think about how much it’s costing you.  You just get the bill at the end of the month and you pay it without questioning the amount.  My paradigm for driving is the same.  I have to drive, at the very least to transport my son, and driving requires fuel, so it’s not like I could choose to stop buying gas.  Nor do I put any significant thought into where I’m going.  When I need milk I have to go to the grocery store, and the best way to get there is to drive.  I don’t have a choice.  However, when I sat down and saw that I was spending $300-$400 in gas per month, I realized the choice wasn’t so black and white.  Maybe I could just drive less?  There’s a novel idea…

So I’ve set myself a gas budget of $100 per month.  At first I thought that was pretty low, but I decided to give it a shot.  If I can make it for just one month, then I can increase it a little bit with the knowledge that if I had to, I could make it on less.  When I did the calculations at $100, things didn’t seem so bleak.  My car can go about 300 miles in the city on a full tank of gas, which can be purchased for roughly $45.  So $100 is two tanks of gas, plus a little extra if I need it, which is about 600 miles per month.  So in a typical 30-day month, I should be able to drive 20 miles per day.  20 miles!  When I saw that I said to myself, “This is going to be easy!”  It’s about two miles from my apartment to my job and the one main road that runs between the two has everything I need.  So in theory, I should be able to stick to 10 miles per day if I had to.  How wrong I was.

It’s the 11th of January and that means that by the end of the day I should have driven no more than 220 miles.  Yet my trip meter says that I’ve driven 210 so far this month.  A two mile drive home will put that at 212, which is certainly within range of my plan, but not by much.  And the worst part is that I didn’t leave home at all on Saturday!  Didn’t even step out of my front door for a whole day.  That means that I’m driving over 20 miles per day.  HOW?!  Most days I drive to work and back home.  That’s four miles.  Sometimes I pick my son up or drop him off at daycare which adds a few more miles, but is still less than 20.  I’ve had to take one day this week to go to the house for the inspection, but the house is only half a mile from my work.  I haven’t gone to Portland at all, nor have I taken any casual drives.  So where the hell am I going?!  Do I need to keep some sort of log book, track every single drive I take, and map it out on Google Maps?  I think I might have to.  I don’t see any other way of getting my driving, and thus my spending, under control.  The good news is that I’m still under my goal, but it’s frustrating to believe that you’ve set yourself an easy goal, only to find that it’s extremely difficult.

I want to preface this post by saying that I am not a prude, or a conservative, or an easily-offended person.  I am very much a liberal and a patriot who would defend my country and the constitution with my life.  I actually wasn’t even offended by the event described below, but rather just…disappointed.

While driving back to work today after the inspection of the house that I’m trying to buy, I noticed a man wearing an odd t-shirt.  On the front of the shirt, in big bold letters, was the statement, “I Love My Dick.”  I glanced back as I passed, certain that the back of the shirt would contain some sort of punch line or advertisement for a politician named Dick or something that would transform the crude statement on the front into a witty play on words.  Sadly, it did not.  The back of the shirt was blank which unfortunately meant that the statement on the front was to be taken at face value.  This man was proclaiming his love for his genitals for all the world to see.

I rolled my eyes and felt a twinge of disappointment for our great nation.  My first thought was, “How does a shirt like that even get made?!”  Someone had to have come up with the idea, put it down on paper, and submitted it to someone for approval as an idea that should seriously be considered for production.  That someone could have been the manager of a local t-shirt shop or some company that produces shirts with strange sayings or images on them.  But either way, someone actually approved the idea and passed it along to yet another person who then applied the statement to a t-shirt.  Some store manager or owner would then had to have approved the shirt as something that was worthy to be sold at their establishment and when this man walked in to purchase the shirt, he had to have judged it as being something he was willing to pay money for.  Finally, he had to have paid some employee who then accepted the money and sold him the shirt.  And out of all those people, not one of them looked at it and said, “Is this really a good idea?’  The sad part is, all of them must have answered, “Yes” or the man wouldn’t have been walking down the street wearing it (I’m assuming that he did not create the shirt himself and that he did, in fact, pay for it).

I’ve grown to expect these kinds of cynical reactions from myself.  However, moments later, my mind wandered into foreign territory: a hypothetical argument against the First Amendment.  What gives that man the right to walk down the street wearing such a blatantly crass and rude statement, at the risk of offending everyone around him and being immediately judged as a lower class of person?  I’m sure if confronted he would reference his freedom of speech, however I’m certain that’s not what our founding fathers intended when they penned the Bill of Rights and the amendments to the Constitution.  These were men who were building a nation that was distinctly separate from a nation of tyranny.  A nation where speaking out against the ruling class would get you beheaded or hung.  A nation where worshiping a different god, or even the same god in a different way, would get you burned alive.  Certainly our founders had a much nobler definition of “freedom of speech.”

It is of course ridiculous to think that someone should be arrested, or that it should even be a crime, for wearing a shirt with a crude statement.  Yet doesn’t it also seem equally ridiculous that the very foundation of our country not only defends such a choice, but also declares that it is one of our rights as a citizen of the United States of America?  After all, history is rife with examples of individuals and groups being persecuted for exercising their freedom of speech.  The McCarthy era, for example, is stained with the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of American communists and socialists, because they spoke out against the government.  And isn’t that precisely what was intended by our founding fathers?  Isn’t that the right that should be defended by our freedom of speech?  Just a thought.

The inspection of the house went well.  No major defects, or even minor ones really.  Some of the rooms felt a little small after I started to measure and envision my furniture in there.  And yet the more time I spent there the more I loved it!  The inspector even found a chimney in the attic that ran down to the living room where a fireplace has been walled up.  I’ll know on Tuesday if the mortgage will go through, although supposedly I’m “pre-approved” so I shouldn’t really have anything to worry about.  Sadly that won’t stop me from stressing myself out with worry all weekend.