Kiss my Fannie Mae

Apologies to my loyal readers. Both of you. I have been on the schneid. I've been preoccupied with a number of pressing issues and have neglected you. I am sorry. But first, a bit of house-keeping:

I am soon to officially launch my new delicious art prints business Mishmish Studio so if you want to be part of the launch and get on my mailing list, which is opt-in only, then please go here. It takes three seconds. Then they send you an email to confirm (another three seconds). I promise to send only the occasional email announcing new designs, new collections or upcoming promotions. And I won't share your email with anyone ever ever ever, except for maybe with one nice Nigerian diplomat with whom I have been corresponding lately regarding a substantial sum of money...

Then you can help me create some buzz by forwarding your newsletter to anyone and everyone. Some suggestions: Oprah, Angelina Jolie, the Obamas, Ellen Degeneres, Martha Stewart, Madonna…he he.

But on to more pressing matters. I have two words for you. Fannie friggin' Mae. Yes, people. There is a reason why Fannie Mae, the supposed government-sponsored enterprise chartered by Congress with a mission to provide liquidity and stability to the U.S. housing and mortgage markets, is named Fannie. Because they are full of shit. I've been hearing for months about this making Home Affordable campaign and how it's supposed to help not only those poor people who are looking at eminent foreclosure, but also those of us who got caught in upside down mortgages after our home values plummeted. Yes, we are one of those people. Or so we thought.

The back story: we bought our home, which is technically a condo (that's another whole story), in April of 2004. It was a small fortune for a two bedroom but with a little bit down and a double mortgage it was affordable. Did we put down 20%? No? Was that a mistake in retrospect? Probably. But we made enough money to cover the mortgage and we weren't planning to stay long. So the 5-year ARM worked for us and we had a 4.25% rate so the world was our oyster.

But the market is a fickle bitch isn't she and when all went sour in the fall we started to think about refinancing because five years later we're still in this tiny house and it wasn't looking like we could sell it for as much as we bought it for. Not good. And we tried to find a mortgage lender to help us but everyone wanted an 80% debt to value ratio and we weren't even sure we had a 100% debt to value because home values had dropped so much. But the deal with appraisals is that you pay for them no matter if the bank is willing to give you the loan or not and they cost $500. Except for Bank of America which doesn't charge you if they don't end up giving you the loan but there's no guarantee they'll send an actual person to appraise the house. They may just do a "desktop" appraisal which means looking at comps, doing a calculation and spitting out a number. That would be bad news for us because our home is very unique. It's half a duplex so it looks like a single family home with a yards and all but in fact it's considered a condo. Though if I can ever reach Brian Lombard over at the County Office of Santa Clara, I might be able to change his mind about that erroneous designation.

What to do? All the while I'd been hearing how Fannie Mae would help millions with debt to value ratios higher than 80% (that's a magic number, as well as $417K. It's a little bit like being in LOST with all of the magic numbers). So I thought, OK, any day now the banks are going to start rolling out these new terms and we'll refinance and a great hush will come over the land and all will be content. So we waited and waited and meanwhile no official word came out but now we're getting calls that sound official except they're from schemers and liars and cheats trying to hoodwink an already down and out population by pretending to be associated with the government and wanting to help out soon-to-be foreclosed homeowners. What is wrong with you people? Did you not have parents? Did no one tell you that deception and thievery is wrong? Don't get me started. Too late.

So finally we just decide to bite the bullet and apply for a loan through the Stanford federal Credit Union because we trust them (non-profit), they only do walk-through appraisals (which only cost $250) and there's only like three guys who work there so we have their ear when we want it. We filled out all of the paperwork, set an appointment for Daisy the Appraiser (she's friends with Dora the Explorer) to walk-through and then prayed, literally prayed, for an appraisal of $525K which would give us an 80% debt to value ratio. I had everyone I know doing the $525K mantra. We even prepared a one-sheet for Daisy listing all of our home's improvements and virtues. And I coached my husband on what to say to her on the day of the walk-through. We actually practiced his little speech. Five agonizing days later we got the call. $525K. I'm not fucking kidding you. Daisy came through and our debt to value was 80%. This meant we could get a loan and we didn't have to pay private mortgage insurance on top of it. Woohoo.

But wait, the plot thickens. I go to seal the deal with my buddy Alex at SFCU and he tells me that because we own a condo, I either have to pay 3/4 of a point on the loan (that's 3/4 of a percent on the entire loan or $3,800!) or tack on a quarter of a percent to the interest rate. This is written nowhere on the website and was never mentioned in previous conversations. So I am livid. And I let Alex have it realizing of course that he is only the messenger but I can't help it. And why this new ridiculous stipulation? Because of, yes you guessed it, kiss my FANNIE MAE. As of April 1st all condos that don't have a 75% debt to value ratio have to come up with this extra cash.

So not only has Fannie Mae not helped anyone who's underwater, they're actually sticking it extra to the people who happen to be above water and want to do the right thing by getting into a normal and stable loan. Fannie Mae, you suck. You heard it here first. Go to hell Fannie Mae.

So this is where I've been. On the phone with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Lending Tree (never use these people - they are a giant scam), Alex at the credit union, Brian Lombard's goddamn answering machine, Daisy the queen of all appraisers and Fannie Mae herself.
Anyway, our appraisal is good for three months so we'll be making some decisions soon. If Brian changes our house to a townhome or, even better, an attached single-family, then we're really in business. Of course, he'd have to return my phone calls for that to happen. Otherwise, we will just suck up the extra percentages points and refinance and continue to live out the American Dream, grateful that we still have a home at all.

Name game

I painted some new designs last week and got them on the web this weekend. Enjoy. I think my favorite thing about this product line - the name prints - is that I get to use all the names in the samples that I would have wanted to use for my own kids had I married an American. I was never the type who had elaborate plans for my wedding day nor dreams about having babies. But I will say that I did play MASH as a girl where you draw a square and pick future spouses and future cars and future kids and you had to pick one clunker for every category. MASH stood for Mansion, Apartment, Shack and House (please tell me other people played this game...). The clunker in the car category was always a "pool man" car, whatever that was. (a camino maybe?) So I definitely had kid names in my head for a to be determined future date when I'd have a few to name, not realizing I'd be marrying an Israeli with his own ideas about baby names. Or anyone for that matter who might have ideas that were different than mine. Preposterous!

Anyway, these fun little drawings let me finally use my names. Lucky me!

Respiracy Theory

I have a theory.
Follow me for a minute.
I was listening to NPR, which is where most of my theories begin including the one about how Rene Montagne, Michele Norris and Carol Wertheimer are all the same person. But I digress...

They were talking about sleep apnea in kids and how one persnickety kid didn't know he had it until he was twelve and then they took out his enlarged adenoids and his personality changed entirely. Maybe because it was the first time he'd slept a full eight hours ever. They said his only symptom was snoring and waking up tired.

Well my daughter doesn't wake up grouchy, not in the morning anyway, but she does wake up often at night. Not fully, but enough to either mumble or get out of bed or catch her breath and make a snarfle. Last night she came into our bed (big shock) and proceeded to swing at me half the night. And she snores. Loudly. She's basically had a cold since she was born, but even on the rare occasion when she doesn't have a runny nose, she still snores. She's like an 82 year old man. AND she doesn't talk. I know she can hear but I don't know how well she can hear. She says words but her pronunciation is crazy. I'd say she has about 25 words which is probably normal, but my theory is that she has enlarged adenoids and tonsils and all of it has to go. Then she'll be able to sleep and hear and she'll stop snoring and start talking and then we'll really be in trouble.

I should have been a doctor. Except that when I had a mole removed on my belly recently and had to change the band-aid, I almost passed out.

I'll stick to writing.

Darling daughter

My son came over to me the other day and gave me the low down, very proud of his baby sister's developmental progress.

Aviv doesn't scratch me any more mommy. Now she only bites and hits.

This is my daughter. This is the girl who for nearly two years could do no wrong. Even when she pooped in the tub, we thought it was funny. She'd have a tantrum, we'd have a giggle. But increasingly she is becoming my nemesis. Last night she only wanted to put her pajamas on by herself. More specifically she wanted to put her feet through the neck hole of her shirt and wear it as a dress with the sleeves whapping below by her feet. She was adamant. And when she's in one of her violent moods, she just goes right up to her brother or anyone and starts swinging. And of course we've given up on the sleep training. We missed the window and now we have to live with our mistakes. But at least we're taking advantage of daylight savings to get the kids to go to sleep together at a mutually beneficial bedtime.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that this blog may have a new antagonista. And she packs a punch.

Sleep straining

Last night, without any premeditation or strategizing, I decided to sleep train my daughter. About a year ago we had begun our journey down the slippery slope of early morning snuggling in our bed. She would wake up around 6:00 and one of us would get her and put her in the bed. And she would snuggle and giggle and usually fall back asleep for another hour. Then at 7:03 she'd wake up and make my husband take her to get a banana for breakfast. We enjoyed it. She was like a little early morning radiating butterball.

But then 6:00 turned in 5:00, then 3:30, 2:30 and so it went. And she grew bigger. And developed some annoying habits. Like digging her heals into the space where my back meets the mattress. It was like she was trying to burrow. And she had to share my pillow. And she snores. Basically it became intolerable. She had also forgotten how to fall asleep by herself. We got in the habit of putting her to bed in my son's twin (she refuses to go to sleep in her crib) and when she's asleep, we sneak out. It only took minutes and she was so cute and cozy to sleep with. But when she wakes up at night she can't fall asleep again unless we're with her, which is why she comes into our bed. And since she shares a room with her brother, we can't just let her shriek until she falls asleep. And anyway, at this point she's on her crib mattress on the floor next to her brother's bed, so she can just get up and roam into our room at all hours.

So you could say, we made this bed and now we're lying in it. And the thing is we were so diligent with our son. Vigilant even. And he is a champion sleeper. I remember reading an article in some parenting magazine about how a family of four kids had four different sleepers and I wondered how can that be. Now I know. The second kid is very different than the first. The second has to share a room with her brother. We have exponentially less energy now for middle-of-the-night discipline. So many factors.

But last night I'd had enough. So at 2:00 am when her majesty came into our room, I brought her back to hers and she started to shriek. So I grabbed her blankets and made her a bed on our floor and for the next two hours she got out of her covers and tried to gain entry to our bed and I put her back on the floor. Back and forth. 97 times. I made my husband take a shift and then my daughter got disoriented and went stumbling around the house looking for me unaware that I was just hiding in the far corner of our bed. Then my son woke up so I pleaded with him to go back to bed and my tone must have been sufficiently urgent because he just turned back around and hid under his covers. But we heard him whimpering so I sent in my husband and I snuggled with my daughter on the floor for a few minutes. That calmed her down but when I got up she started to shriek again. And then she got up and we repeated our exercise a few more times. At this point she has started banging into the bed and tripping over everything because she is so exhausted. I feel like I've been hit by a truck but we remain steadfast. She makes one final effort but I put her back on the floor and tuck her in tightly. Her whimpers subside to aggressive thumb-sucking. And then…silence. We have won the battle.

This morning everyone woke up an hour late. My daughter was unusually grumpy. But it took her about a minute to snap out of it. After breakfast she came into our room and looked at the heap of blankets on the floor and started wagging her finger and saying sternly, no no ni ni, which I can only infer to mean, no sleeping in mommy's bed. You have to go ni-ni on the floor. Poor thing. We'll see how she does tonight. She's a persistent little bugger. But she gets that from me.