Part 3: The Mel update
| March 25, 2015 | Posted by Melinda under Uncategorized |
Ugh. The Mel update. So much easier to talk about my horses than talk about *my* life right now.
Where do I even start? My standard blogging filters are not working well lately.
Graduation is less than 60 days.
I keep writing and rewriting and deleting whole paragraphs of “stuff” so let’s just leave it at: Things are very complicated. Beyond trying to vet as many endurance rides as people are willing to pay me for this summer I have no real plans. I have career plans, but no ambition to begin looking for a job. In a perfect world I would have a teaching position (post-high school) lined up for the beginning of 2016.
24 hours ago I was going to have a little subtopic in this post that was going to excitedly talk about my upcoming summer trip to Yellowstone. I’ve never been and it’s been on the list of top places I wanted to go to since I was a kid. Finally! And…since it was going to be in mid June, it was the perfect graduation present and so I connected those two in my mind.
So, you can understand if I spent most of yesterday moody and weepy when I found out we just can’t make it work. To go we have to make it come in under a certain budget. I am much more tolerant of spending multiple nights in a tent than my husband. And when we crunched the numbers, it just isn’t possible to spend the number of nights in a hotel as needed to make the trip fun for both of us. So that’s it. We don’t go. Even now writing this paragraph I can feel tears wanting to spill out of my eyes, that’s how badly I wanted to go and how disappointing this is. I’m sure I’ll get over it, but in the mean time just let me cry a little OK?
Moving onto happier stuff?
Alas no. That is not how this year has gone at all.
Last week I came home to a foreclosure notice on the door of the house. Which was a shock, since we rent.
Called the property management company and they are shocked. They’ve managed this property for a long time and things like this don’t typically happen when a private owner has owned a property for as long as this guy has. We didn’t sign another lease this year so are on month to month. So when the property sells, things could potentially get complicated. We aren’t ready to buy until next year and we the plan was to move from this property in about a year. It’s all happening about 12 months too soon and potentially leaves us in an awkward situation.
Of course, best case scenario the house sells and everything continues exactly as it is…but there’s some mitigating factors that make everything very complicated. I don’t know where I’m going to be working post graduation. We can’t move this fall starting in about September, through the end of the year. It takes time to find a rental that will take 3 big dogs. It costs money to move even if we find a similar rent. And of course, there’s still more details that are too private to post here on the blog. Bottom line is that the consequences of getting kicked out in the fall are great enough, that we probably can’t take the chance and I will spend post graduation packing boxes and negotiating leases.
This is probably a good time to review this article here, How to Be Happy.
Let’s talk about horses now!
(but in another post, because everything prior to this sentence was written on Monday and it’s now Wednesday and my brain is screaming at me that so much time has gone by that the next subject now warrants more than a line or paragraphs break…it needs a POST break.
OK brain. I’m listening. Go be happy now.
Oh Mel… That’s so much toughness all in one post… I know I’ve never met you but I do wish I could give you a big hug.
Yellowstone will be there when you’re able to go. I’m sorry you can’t go now – I recognize that uncontrollable teary-ness that your rational “well this simply doesn’t make sense” side cannot combat.
You’ll find a job soon, I’m sure! I’m rooting for you over the interwebs
It will be good to have lunch. When life gets a bit MEH, diffusing with friends es muy bueno. Especially when they bring crappy Spanish skills to the table 😉
Everything will and always work out!
We rented a house during my residency that was perfect for us. It was the second house on a boarding facility so the horses were out back yet didn’t require me to actually ever be home to take care of them with my schedule. Then one day we got a knock on the door and it was the Sheriff handing us foreclosure notice. Since we rented we found this odd. It came to light that the landlord decided to take our rent/board check to the casino every month instead of paying the mortgage. We hade 1 month to move out. Finding a rental with 2 dogs and 4 cats in a city where the limits are 2 of one animal only with mandated monthly records by the vet sent in to verify an owner doesn’t have more than that under the name, plus a new boarding facility all within a 15 minute drive of the hospital was really, really stressful. I feel your pain. Hang in there!
There are laws regarding foreclosure and tenants. The foreclosing bank may even pay you to move. You also may not be required to continue paying rent during the foreclosure process. I don’t know all the details and it might not work with month to month rentals, but you should look into it as I know of one couple that managed to live rent free for 3-ish months during a foreclosure and then the bank paid them a small sum to leave.
Your graduating??? Already?? It can’t be.. It seems like I was just reading your announcement blog post about entering vet school.. like it was yesterday! Good grief , time flies . I got really excited when you said you were coming to Yellowstone. It’s still an 8 hr drive from where I live but you would be in Montana.. and I thought that was kind of cool.. I am sorry you can’t make the trip . Those realizations always sting a bit but I am sure you will get here eventually. On the other hand, if you want to visit Glacier Park, we are a hop skip and a jump away and your welcome to crash here anytime!
I hope the house thing works out for you. It sounds like the last wrinkle in your plans that you need right now. I always dread situations like where things are out of my hands but I am directly impacted.
Ohhhh, man, I am so sorry, Mel. I don’t know anything about foreclosure but I know a lot these days about the importance of having something to look forward to and about having plans fall through and it completely sucks goats. I hope you get some good news ASAP.
Thank you everyone for the well wishes. Obviously as with any real life situation, it’s always more complicated then I’m necessarily comfortable putting out 100% on the web so there are nuances I’m not going into completely here. But appreciate everyone’s ideas and offers of help on the Yellowstone situation especially. We are revisiting the trip this weekend and I’m hopeful with the new options presented that *something* will work out :). Obviously coloring my entire outlook right now is significant burnout from school etc, so forgive me if I say that I don’t necessarily believe that everything always works out for the best. Because sometimes it doesn’t and you just move on because what else can you do?
Hey, this may not be helpful…. but we had the same thing happen to us. We came home one day to a For Sale sign in our front yard because the house had been foreclosed on… we’d been paying the owner, the owner hadn’t been paying the bank.
Here’s what we did: Send a certified letter to the owner (to prove receipt) that you will, from now on, be making payments only to the person who holds the note – as in, you will no longer pay him, but pay directly to the bank.
Voila. Instant free rent until the thing is resolved.
There’s no reason for you to line anyone’s pockets if the money isn’t going where it’s supposed to. You’re not refusing payment – you’re just refusing to let the money be spent on anything but the friggin rent.
I’m sorry, Mel.
Because we are paying a property management company and not the owner directly and the lease is being held through them, and not the individual, I’m not sure what our options are. In some ways we are lucky because things like our sizable deposit are nice and safe :). I will shoot a letter to the property management company and see if something like what you are talking about could be worked out.