We want things, and we want them now. We want our rewards now, our accolades. We want intimacy, and we don't want to wait or commit or be uncomfortable at all for it. We want homes, cars, couches, vacations.

Now.

Not tomorrow, not a year from today.


So the credit companies, the mortgage brokers, the ad agencies... they cater to us. They have built an empire of wealth on our fickle needs and whims. You need that red leather pair of pants? Now? Here's some money for it, we trust you to pay it back. With interest. For the next five years.

Need a house? Who doesn't? There's a company out there for you, eager to throw a hundred thousand or more at a house, in exchange for the title deed to that house and three hundred thousand dollars over the course of the next thirty years.

Gotta have that fling? That hot girl or guy at the night club, the beach, or the bar. They'll satisfy your need, right now. It may cost you a lifetime of herpes, child support, or emotional pain, but who cares? You got your fix when you wanted it.

I want a house. I'm thirty years old and I've never owned a home. Nearly everyone I know owns a home. I try not to let it bother me, but some days it really does. I look at my rental- knowing that I can never knock that wall out between the laundry room and the yard, put in a door, thus facilitating a laundry line and easier access to the grill. It would be prefect. But I don't own this house, so I can't do things like that to it.

Today, on a pure whim, we stopped by a lot that is liquidating their modular homes. I've had my eye on one there for several months now. The front is perfectly symmetrical, with a fenced porch and lovely windows. Inside, it was beyond perfect: a fireplace, a kitchen to die for, perfect master suite, high ceilings, crown molding, and even a laundry room. With windows...

I want that home.
I want it badly.
I want it now. Today. I want to hang my curtains up and put my pots on the stove and just exist in that simple little home.
I want it on an acre or two of land, with a little garden out back. I don't care if it's a modular- it still has drywall and wood and porcelain like a real house. And it would be so easy- all ready to move into. Now.

But I probably will not get that house. I don't know when I will get a house of my own, mostly because my husband and I gave into the 'now' epidemic when we didn't really have a secure financial footing. We bought a car when jobs and life were good, but jobs and life did not stay good and we lost that car. We moved a lot, sometimes leaving our bills behind with the old address. But those bills find you, with those little yellow forwarding address stickers that I have come to despise.

We were foolish, but we're smarter now. Now. We pay our bills now, and are slowly making good on the old ones. But our credit is badly damaged for the next few years, so a house is probably not on our horizon. But one never knows, not really...


I wrote a book, and I wanted to see it in print. Now. I read about agents, publishing, editing, copyrights... I lost hope. Its too hard, I cried, too hard! I'll just self-publish, on LuLu, and get around to the agent thing one day. Not now, but eventually. And then two whole years went by, just like that. Getting around to it never seems to come. I needed to write this annoying thing called a synopsis. Have you ever written a synopsis? How about one of your own full-length novel? Its not easy!

But I did it.
I did it today.
I opened my fortune cookie at work yesterday, and it said: 'You'll accomplish more if you start now.'
Well, duh. Of course I will.
But that silly little slip of paper stopped me in my tracks. I taped it inside my laptop, and this morning, when I normally would have opened up Civilization III to play, my wrist brushed against that little slip of paper and my soul screamed out for that book to be realized for what it is. I sat down and I wrote that synopsis. It was difficult, condensing 100,000 words into two pages of sensible plot outline. I had to trim and trim and trim my words. And then I wrote a query letter. Those two things were almost more challenging than writing the book itself! But I did it, and now I'm ready to send that synopsis and query letter out to one hundred agents. If not one of those agents accepts my work, I'll put that book aside and submit my science fiction novel once its done. And if that doesn't fly, then I can say that I've tried, and I will put my writing aside.

That's the kind of now I'm going for today. Not the 'I-need-it-now', but rather the 'I-need-to-do-it-now'. There's fiction inside of me, just crying to get out and onto that bookshelf. There's art inside of me, beyond my jewelry, beyond my writing- art that I've given up for the worries of life and having a manageable household. There's a child inside of me that doesn't play often with my own children, because that child was injured once too often ever so many years ago, and that child retreated behind a very thick stone wall, never to be injured again. But my children do not even know that child inside of their mother, and they deserve to have come out to play. So I'm going to do it, I'm going to come out from my wall and play. And I'm going to do it- not someday, because someday will come when they're too old- I'm going to do it NOW.

Labels: credit, home, house, impatience, money, mortgage, now, present, publishing, writing

I am one of those people who rent. I have never actually owned a home of my own, just moved from place to place, paying my landlords' mortgages. It kind of sucks, but it is nice to be able to uproot and go when we need to. Someday we'll own, but only when the time is right.

The house that we are currently renting is very nice, but is becoming more than we can bear financially. We are in the process of looking to downgrade, and I am (once again) finding myself increasingly frustrated by the entire process.

First of all, there are misleading listings. If the listing says '2/3 bedrooms', I can know that it has TWO bedrooms actually, with some weirdo pretend room with no door and no privacy. This isn't a room, buddy, its a den. Or a study. Or a parlor. Or a closet, for crying out loud. Call things as they are.

Secondly, if a home is less than a thousand square feet, but meant for a whole family, don't call it spacious. That's just not true, not even in Manhattan.

Thirdly, and this is really burning in my brain today, don't say the word 'clean' in the listing unless it is. When your classified ad says 'clean', I am expecting just that. When I walk into the rotting kitchen to find the actual meal that the last renters cooked still splattered on the stove- from six months ago- that is not clean.
When I open a cupboard door and my fingers stick to the remnants of god-knows-what, I will shudder, twitch with nausea, and determine that if you are ever my landlord, I will make your life a living misery. We're talking water heater broken in the middle of the night calls- that is what you deserve for not cleaning the kitchen and pretending its okay.

Fourth (can I still use the 'ly' suffix? at what point does that cease to make sense? hundred-ly?) there is the fine point of bathrooms. Bathrooms should not be carpeted. (neither should dining rooms, but I digress) If a bathroom has only a shower- no tub- it is three-fourths of a bathroom, and should be listed as such. If a bathroom has extensive water damage, maybe you should fix it before renting. If the hot and cold water taps are mixed up- at least tell your renter so that on the first night they move in the lady of the house does not scald her hands from the 'cold' tap. Bathrooms should not leak in most places, toilets should work, drains should be open. It's just common decency.

Once you are my landlord (if you're the honest kind), I will do my best to get you your checks on time. I will decorate your house, take loving care of it, hang pretty curtains in the windows, and plant a garden. I will take care of your home as if it were my own. I know that not all renters do this, but I am not all renters.
So, since I am treating your home like one of my own children- please make sure the toilet works! We have to use it! And if it does die, and you are finally able to accept that fact, buying a cut-rate 'floor model' toilet is just, well, crappy. (sorry!)

If the dishwasher doesn't work, replace it. Soon. If the floor has a gaping hole, fix it. Now. There are reasons that our country has slumlord laws.

I understand that the downturn in the economy has made many a mortgage payer an accidental landlord. I understand that quite possibly you do not want this duty and resent the people in your home. But if you maintain the Golden Rule- doing unto others as you would want done to you- you just may find yourself tenanted for longer periods of time. And you'll find less trouble once people leave.
And maybe, just maybe, you'll feel better about yourself.

Labels: economy, home, honesty, house, housing, market, mortgage, rent, truth

Have you ever had an accidental shopping buddy? They arrive at the grocery store within minutes of you, and your cruising algorithms fall into step with each other's. Up and down the aisles you go, accidentally winding up in front of the pickles at the same time as each other, simultaneously selecting salad greens and jelly. It is often an interesting glimpse into the life of a complete stranger.

I had a whole family as accidental shopping buddies today: a tall, square shouldered youngish man and his wife, their small daughter, and the woman's sister. The man was a bit loud, and I gathered that he was a recently decommissioned officer, a Marine, home (hopefully for good) recently. He and his wife and sister-in-law were engaging in the plebeian task of grocery shopping, but they were having more fun at it than I have had in a good long time. Although finding myself in the same aisles as them every single time, we were on alternate routes, so our carts crisscrossed each other's about ten or twelve times.

Each pass, I couldn't help but overhear snips of their conversation, patches of laughter seemingly out of place in the sterile red-and-white of our local Meijer. I never caught exactly what was so funny- maybe it was several things- but I did hear them prank calling another relative on their cell phone, then roaring in laughter at the result of this.

In the pasta aisle, something tickled their funnybone so bad that they literally startled the entire aisle of shoppers with their laughter. It wasn't raucous or drunken laughter, just pure fun with a touch of insanity. The man laughed until he had to wipe tears away from his eyes, a full-bodied belly laugh that I can still hear.
I ran into them again, five minutes later, standing in front of the yogurt. The man had just finished another good hearty blowup of hilarity and was once again wiping tears from his eyes. He shook his head, passed a thick hand over the small circle of hair on top of his head, and mumbled the quietest thing I'd heard from him yet:

"God, I hope I don't have to go back."
His wife sobered and put her hand on his arm, her lips white. I grabbed blindly at a container of cottage cheese and darted down another aisle.

I hope he doesn't have to go back either.

I've laughed like that before, and it was only after a particularly nightmarish time in my life. The laughter cleansed the past weeks away, veiled the worries that still lay hidden inside my soul, and drowned memories.

Who knows what horrors that man saw. Who knows what emotion he's been through, what panic greeted him every morning. I don't even know if he was in Iraq. I know nothing about him beyond what I gleaned by accident. All I know is that he is home, and he is safe, and he is healthy. He has his wife and his child back, and a cell phone on which to make prank calls. He has cereal and yogurt and barbeque sauce and cheese and Ziploc bags- synonymous of normalcy. He has laughter that masks any terror that he might not be able to talk about yet.

Wherever you are, belly-laughing decommissioned Marine: I thank you for your service to this country. I don't agree with the war anymore, haven't for a few years now, but I appreciate each and every person who has trudged through the sand and mud and sun to honor the commitments that they made.
I hope that you come back safe, with your families and your world intact.
I hope that this nightmare ends soon and none of you have to go back over there, ever.
And I hope that when you come home, that you are able to laugh just a little bit softer, knowing that there are no terrors to drown out any more.

Labels: groceries, grocery, home, hope, Iraq, laughter, Marine, Marines, return, Semper Fi, Semper Fidelis, shopping, war