Bad Reputation

Once upon a time (and isn't that how the best stories start?), I was happily waiting tables at the coolest restaurant in Oklahoma City, the Eagle's Nest. (The place is still there, but it's owned by other kids now, and it's called something else ... plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, I guess.) It's at the top of a round 20-story building just off Northwest Highway, and the outer ring rotates ... as you can imagine, it was formal dining, and the wait staff wore tux trousers, tux shirts, bow-ties, and matching vests (lucky for us the tips were good enough to keep up with the dry-cleaning bills). I had a bunch of regular customers who'd ask for me when they came in, and one day, one of them (Michael) was sat in my section with another gentleman (Jon, although I didn't know that till later). In preparation for dropping off their tab, I asked if there was anything further that I could do for them, and Michael responded by asking what I knew about finance. I answered quite honestly that I knew nothing of it, that I couldn't balance a checkbook (still can't, for the record) and that if my sorority house hadn't had a test file, I'd have flunked Econ instead of getting a D. He told me to come chat with him after lunch, that he had a position available that he thought would suit me. I was of course intrigued, and that's where my career as your friendly mortgage goddess began (although it wasn't officially official until January 18, 1994).

So flash forward 13 years, and I'm still in it. By now I've been a loan officer, a processor, a wholesale rep, an escrow officer, an underwriter, and I've worked for a mortgage banker, a mortgage broker, a bank, and a credit union, along with two wholesale mortgage companies. I've got a pretty good grasp of the whole situation, and I can (and do) give little seminars to my first-time buyers so they'll understand as much as possible. I find this to be very helpful in making sure my clients don't make bad decisions that will catapult them into horrible things (like foreclosure) later in life.

When first I embarked upon this grand odyssey, what I knew about mortgages was that my parents used to have one but at some point had got rid of it. I learned it all from the inside out (reading the Fannie Mae Selling Guide and writing a summary of each chapter, hanging out with kids who performed each of the necessary functions in a transaction such as appraisers, credit folks, abstractors, title attorneys, closers, pest inspectors, home inspectors, surveyors, the list is extensive) and then got the baptism by fire. It was kinda cool, because I didn't know what I couldn't do, and so therefore I acted like I could do everything, and I very nearly did! It got me a reputation for finding a way to get things done.

All this time later, I've still got this "bad" reputation. I suppose it's good if you're a buyer with more than just a couple of hickeys on the old credit report, and I have some dedicated and faithful realtor clients who not only send me their business but recommend me to other realtors who are having a difficult time getting a transaction closed due to buyer financing eligibility issues. The part that gets me is when they call me and say that so-and-so told them that if I can't do it, it can't be done.

Don't get me wrong, this rather feeds into my happily arrogant "get the lesser mortals out of the way, get the whiners belowdecks, and let's get the damn thing closed" ego. It just bothers me sometimes to think that when a client calls me because of this type of referral, they hang all of their hopes and dreams on me. I didn't create the credit situation, after all, and no one (not even me ) can be expected to create a file that makes an underwriter happy about forking over the cash when it's evident that someone doesn't pay attention, much less a bill.

So here's today's hint, and it's for free: if you want to buy a house, get your hands on your credit report and have a look. Heck, I'll look at it for you if you can get it to me. I can tell you what an underwriter is going to see, and what you need to fix, and how long it will take. I can help figure out which things to address and which to ignore, and I know which ones are no big deal and which are the equivalent of a stake in your heart (followed by having your mouth stuffed with garlic, your head severed from your body and turned face-down in the casket, and said casket pitched into a running river ... in a mortgage sense, of course). I'm pretty good at being rather blatant with the honesty when I see a report that indicates that someone doesn't need a realtor and mortgage lender so much as they need a bankruptcy attorney and maybe even a priest.

Sorry if I disappointed anyone with the title of this entry ... but good grief, what did you think I was going to post about??!! : )~

Hail to Thee, O Cimarron

A couple of months ago, Kieran and Kendall got an invitation to a birthday party for Mason, a boy in Kieran's kindergarten class. It was a great party, with two tons of stuff for bouncing (it was at Pump It Up), pizza, juice boxes, cake and ice cream, goody bags - you know, all the stuff that makes a kid do. There was a weird bit, though (and how could there not be? That's just how my life goes) ... I knew one of the other moms there (well, two, actually, but that's not really relevant here) from one of the hallmarks of my growing-up ... Camp Cimarron.

I knew the lady looked familiar, but I had to use the mental person-morph widget (that thing in your head that puts different hair styles or colors or makeup or whatever on someone and changes the background until you get a hit on a composite and realize why you know them). At last I asked if her name was Rochelle, and yes it was, and hi, I'm Donna, we were CITs together at Cimarron in 1984, and we did a Hollywood Night where we all dressed up and lip-synched to "Let's Hear It For The Boy" (because Footloose was THE movie that year). She was stunned at first, and then happily surprised, and we got to chatting (like you do) and it was great. She told me that she'd been in touch with a bunch of the "alumni" from Cimarron, and got me up to speed on some people that I'd not thought about in years. We yapped for an age, and then she asked if I had an email address, and she'd make sure I got put on a list of other Cimarron people.

Then today, I had an email from Edi - that's Miss Fozzy to you - with a "what's been up with you for the last 20+ years, here's what I've been doing, oh and did you hear that Cimarron's closed for this summer, and they're talking about selling it." Talk about a ton of bricks.

Cimarron is where I learned to ride a horse, got used to cold showers, learned some way cool cookout recipes (and it went way beyond s'mores - who knew you could make a pot roast with a campfire?), and essentially spent most of my summer from age 11 until graduation. It's a Camp Fire camp, one of two owned by the local council (it used to just be the Greater OKC Council, but I think they've changed the name) - the other is DaKaNi, a day camp, where Cimarron is resident camp, where you pack your sleeping bag and plenty of underwear. It is a completely integral part of my childhood, inseparable from some of my best and fondest memories. (Don't get me wrong, I went to DaKaNi too, and it was lovely, but there is just something so intangibly special about Cimarron ... I could never explain it, but there are hundreds if not thousands of girls who know just what I mean.) How in the world could it be tanking? Sell Cimarron? To me, that's sacred ground. I am hugely saddened today. My head knows that everything good ends someday, but I have long harbored dreams of sending Kendall to Cimarron on the bus, and driving up there myself to be a "mom counselor" while she's there.

What was it like? The songs, the flag ceremonies twice a day, chapel on Sundays (absolutely non-denominational, really a role model for the kids in government who seem to need to pander to some religious sect or other), cookout nights, watching the sunsets from Inspiration Point, the mini-golf course that was lovingly created at the site of the "old" swimming pool (which was just "the swimming pool" when my mom went there), the counselors with cool made-up names that started with Miss (and some got pretty creative, like MissChievious and MissPlaced and MissCellaneous and such, although there were also equally great counselors with equally hip made-up names that didn't make up a word, like Miss Apatchey - who was my counselor the very first time I went - and Miss Suby and Miss Bird and Miss Tadpole and Miss Muffin and Miss Gopher and Miss Buddy ... our group of CITs wound up being Miss Fozzy, Miss Bliffy, and MissStake - that was me - although I don't know what Carrie and Espanta's names were ... and it was such a big deal when you found out a counselor's real name), being freaked out by the way the statue of the Cimarron Lady watched you no matter where you went in the Lodge, free swim in the afternoons followed by canteen time (soda and candy bars, yay!), coffee cake on a Sunday morning before chapel (and did I mention how cool chapel was, with all of us dressed in white t-shirts and shorts, even though nobody ever thought to sweep off the benches and we all wound up with dirty bums), and of course the Council Fire on the last night, where all the counselors gave out bead sheets and patches denoting how many years each camper had been there, and each living group gave its counselor something they'd made on the sly during the session, with many tears and hugs as we all filed out afterward. That's only skimming the surface, but geez, I know so many other women have similar memories.

I can't believe Cimarron's in that kind of trouble. I've got to go now, because I have to help figure out how to stop it.

WoHeLo! MissStake signing (and sighing!) off for now.

A Tale of Two George Ws

It's Presidents' Day ... the day when we (theoretically) celebrate American presidents. (When I was a kid, there was no such thing; rather, we celebrated Lincoln's birthday on the 12th of February and Washington's on the 22nd ... but I digress.)

George W. Bush went to Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, to celebrate the occasion. It was the first time since originally stealing the office that W had been to Mount Vernon, and according to the article at msnbc.com, he traveled by helicopter and made some remarks that led to laughter (among these being that "the first George W" didn't look "a day over 275" - which is not funny for a minute in light of the fact that Thursday would actually be Washington's 275th birthday). He also declared that "the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone."

Bollocks, says I. The current George W (and for the sake of differentiation, let's call him CW - and the C stands for Current, although you may have a somewhat different word in mind) is no more a student of history - American or any other - than the keyboard upon which I'm typing. The Founding Fathers wouldn't have dreamed of interfering with the government of another nation by any means, nor would they have been sufficiently arrogant to deem it right and just and proper and (dare I say it?) holy to export American-style democracy as though it were a consumer product. Rather, can't you just imagine John Hancock surmising over a nice snifter of brandy that we'd fought and bled and died to be separate from England, and if some other country wanted to wrestle itself free from the tyrannical bonds of the entity currently in charge, they'd have to do the same? Come on, CW, these guys pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to each other and to the new nation. You would never pledge your life (you were too valuable to go anywhere near VietNam, weren't you?) or your fortune (because it isn't really yours, is it - you've squirreled your life away puttering about at one failed venture after another, and those nickels you value so highly are handed down to you from antecedents who got them by hook or by crook or by trading with the enemy during WWII) or your sacred honor (you can't pledge what you haven't got, after all, and there's nary a shred of you that's either sacred or honorable).

It's worth noting here (again) that CW traveled by helicopter to Mount Vernon from the White House. That's BY HELICOPTER, folks. CW needed Marine One to go the grand distance of sixteen miles. So much for his State of the Union plea to all of us to reduce our fuel consumption in order to diminish our dependence on foreign oil. If you're going to lead, George, then lead by example. (What am I saying? Of course you're not going to lead by example. You're not going to lead at all, are you? No, you're here to pillage and plunder and make history. Fret not, though - we'll all be laughing when the history books quite rightly describe you as the worst president of the modern era, with every possibility of being remembered forever as the worst in American history.)

I am offended at my very core that this transplanted Texan, this conspirator-in-chief, this common thug who seizes first and asks questions later (because Dallas needed a new stadium, eh, George, and those people who rightfully owned that land that you seized by eminent domain were just squatters on YOUR property, weren't they - kinda the same way that all those Iraqi people have been living for thousands of years on top of YOUR oil), this smirking chimp whose second utterance of the presidential oath of office was even scarier than the first (because let's face it, there is no need to preserve, protect, or defend the Constitution - that "goddamned piece of paper" - from anyone but the very man making the pledge), this George W of the 21st Century would even remotely consider putting himself in the same league as George Washington.

My 42nd birthday is the day after the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States. The inauguration itself will be a gift that can't come soon enough.

And Iran, Iran so far away ...

Have you noticed? This week in the news, the Bush (mis)administration is once again thumping the war drums. They're putting forward the same kind of lies and bullshit that coerced the nation to a tacit assent to the war in Iraq. "Iran is supplying weapons to al-Qaida in Iraq!" "Sheik So-And-So is hiding in Tehran!" "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is making nuclear weapons!" Yeah, the sky is falling, the Soviets are coming, and we know where Saddam's hiding his WMD (they're in Baghdad, and north and south and east and west of it somewhere). Thank God we've got Democrats in Congress now to stem the tide.

Be real. The Iranians haven't been terribly happy with the US since Eisenhower caved to the Brits (who were telling him that Mossadegh was a commie) and joined them in Operation Ajax, handing Pahlavi a lovely little tyranny on a platter. Eventually, the peasants revolted, culminating in the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and leading Iran to become the nation it is now.

All anybody wants in this lifetime is self-determination. Why is it that our government seems to be so intent on telling everyone else how to live? Doesn't that make the US a dictator? Please, Nancy, keep us out of Iran. We have enough terrorists as it is ... invading Iran will only serve to make more.