In God we trust, all others pay cash.

You know, for a house I didn't especially want in the first place, it's been a hell of an ordeal to get the thing put in my name. I agreed to do that during the divorce: take the house on when I could. For the last year, that really didn't seem viable. Closing costs run about $3500.

Do I have $3500?

No, I do not have $3500.

According to my latest bank statement, I have about $13 until payday. I have a few bucks in savings: enough to buy an OK television or have a fair weekend in Dollywood, but nowhere near enough to clear a refinance.
Of course, that was until I heard about an FHA streamline, which is supposed to be a magic bullet for people like me. Put together as a way for people to lower their interest rate with little or no money for closing costs, it can also be used to modify an existing mortgage --in this case, amend who owns the property in question.
After several months of periodically bringing up this with the guy who wrote the first mortgage and being mostly blown off, he finally decided it was in the bank's best interests or his best interests or someone's best interests to go ahead and start that up.

Honestly, I got no traction until I said, "Either you can help me or I'll just find somebody else who's willing to try."

Finally, he said, "I can get you $700 a month with no money for closing."

That was his first offer.

Then a thousand to two thousand dollar closing cost fee appeared. Then it disappeared. Then returned as around a thousand dollars, but a monthly of $675.

I have no clue what it will be tomorrow.

The whole process gets crazier and crazier all the time, which in my mind explains why the banking industry tanked a few years ago. They're all fucking high on something.

Currently, I'm halfway approved, but there's a list of things the underwriter's need, which today includes documents from a consumer creditor counseling service I used for about five years and dropped seven or eight years ago. It was kind of a scam, actually. The company was supposed to be able to clear up my debts, but that's not really how that played out. They paid themselves very well and every month put a little  money on my debts.

The only thing they managed to do was keep people from calling my house, bitching about how much I owed them.

I got a loan from my mom that turned into a gift to just pay off my creditors. After that, I very pointedly left the counseling program, talked to a nice man who seemed to think that was just swell, what I was doing. It was and I was glad to be out from under those people.

Why the bank thinks I need permission from these people now to streamline my mortgage in order to remove my ex-wife's name from it sounds insane. I'm about ten minutes from just telling them to go fuck themselves and just put the house on the market.

Selling the place would solve getting my ex's name off the mortgage.

I've been thinking about that more and more lately. I like living here, mostly. I like feeling like something is mine. I like having a garden and like not having to worry about the damned neighbors hearing me if I snore or laugh at the stupid television, but I don't like feeling like the place owns me.

I'm not sure I'm cut out to be middle class and a homeowner. I'm not even sure if I'm cut out to be a local anymore. 

And now, for something completely different

On the hill overlooking the river, monarch butterflies skimmed the ragged, green grass the city forgot to cut. They chased one another in a late summer game of tag as the wind began to pick up and rustle the trees.

The butterflies didn't seem to mind the wind. Their wide wings were scarcely troubled, while the branches overhead shook and the leaves rustled. They continued to fly and fight a kind of effortless Kung Fu against the wheezing current.

One little bug turned away from the swarm playing over the grass and soared out over the river. Foolish or brave, he dipped and dove over the water like a kite, flying further and further out until his orange and black wings became only a speck against the olive green rocks of the river bed.

Across the way, there were cheap, slender trees and wild grass, but nothing I could see so compelling as to leave one side for the other. What could be so important? Why? I couldn't imagine there was a better party across the river, not that there was a particularly thrilling one over here.

I watched until my poor eyes could not find the color in contrast. Halfway across the water the bug disappeared or drowned. I couldn't tell which.

So I waited and listened as the cars passed behind me, rushing along the boulevard, possibly racing back to desks before their individual bosses noticed they were late from lunch. A half-minute or two dwindled by. The rest of the butterfly herd continued with their mid-day exercises, but no sign of their missing brother who had set out for parts unknown.

Across the river, a single mutant fish only a foot or two from the bank broke through the surface in an unimpressive hop to snatch a late lunch. He barely came out of the water before falling back down with a lazy, fat flop. Whatever he'd grabbed had been flying very low and very slow. It might have come from what would have seem to something so small like a great and daunting distance.

I hoped it was a mosquito.