It never ends

Not particularly happy with God at the moment.

Because of our having been left holding the bag of an $80,000 home equity loss by an insurance company whose claim of "good hands" turned out to mean, "We're good at washing our hands of you," I've spent the last year and a half trying to avoid foreclosure and bankruptcy. Finally, we got word that a buyer had been found -- two, actually, one of whom could close by the Friday deadline to avoid foreclosure -- and so we made arrangements to go up last Friday and close on the house, pay off our mortgage, and make a giant step toward fighting our way free without welshing on any debts (which is a big deal to me). We are beside ourselves with happiness; it'll be easily the best day of the past twelve months except for the day on which the court gave us Anya and Kinya and the day they landed in Austin.

That morning the puppy my wife had spent the week nursing took a turn for the worse, but hey, no problem, I had already gotten power of attorney and could do all the closing myself. The kids and I get in the car. The closing had been scheduled for 10:00 a.m. in Austin, but there were some paperwork issues because the buyers had done a couple of stupid things with their loan application and we had rescheduled for 12:30 or so.

We get to Austin and I call to find out where exactly we are going and when. Uh-oh, bad news: the buyers have really screwed up and it looks like it will take until 4:00 to straighten out. (Remember that 5:00 is our foreclosure deadline.)

We hang out for several more hours. To make a painful story short, the buyers have screwed up too badly and can't get their loan funded and the closing complete today. I go ahead and sign all our papers, at a quarter before closing (that is, six o'clock) in the Wells Fargo branch I used to bank at when we still were in Austin; that way at least if the whole thing goes to hell I'll keep the earnest money. My agent has begged and pleaded with the mortgage company and thinks that we will still be able to avoid foreclosure but we won't know until Tuesday (which means I still don't know as of this blog posting).

The kids and I start back on the three-hour drive home. I call my wife...

...and she tells me that our landlord has called. Our lease expires at the end of June but we had discussed extending it for a year with the landlord, and they had told us they wanted to do that because they were planning to get a different house. But now they have called back and their other house thing has fallen through and they need to live in that house. So we have to be out by 1 July.

Early the next morning the puppy dies in my wife's arms.

I think I'll change my name by deed poll...to Tevya...

"...but what do you have against my dog? Really, sometimes I think, when it's too quiet up there, You say to Yourself, 'What mischief can I play today on my friend Kenny?'..."

(I know, I know, to compare my sufferings with Tevya's is appalling license, similar to comparing having been splashed too hard in a pool to having been on the Titanic, but if you can't whine shamelessly on a blog where exactly can you whine shamelessly?)

P.S. To those who have been worrying about me because of the lack of blogging and commenting: a very sincere thank you indeed. As you perceive not all is well (though I'm used to that), but nobody has died except a couple of puppies. I do really appreciate your concern, and Jim, I enjoyed the link very much; thanks.