In Defence of the Imprudent

As if sitting in on an end-of-life lunch conference wasn't bad enough (and imagine trying to discreetly work your way through a pasta salad when discussing Terry Schiavo and feeding tubes) I had the joy of sitting next to two self-congratulatory muppets holding forth on the credit crunch.

I did not weigh in, although I may have given my broccoli spears an extra vicious stab or two. It's a refrain I hear too often these days, smug fixed-raters happy to lay the blame for the current financial meltdown squarely at the feet of those 'stupid enough to take the loans in the first place'. People who happily bought their homes five or more years ago that were lucky enough to find properties they could afford without incurring excessive risk.

We are certainly not in this happy group. We did end up buying at the wrong time and with a horror story of a loan. We probably do deserve everything we are likely to get served up to us. I am putting this down in defence of the imprudent, the stupid, the people who made their own beds and are now forced to lie in them. I am writing this so I can get it off my chest without engaging any self-righteous twits the likes of whom I sat next to this afternoon.

If Bridget Jones can have her 'smug marrieds' I can have my 'smug fixed-raters'.

In my (our) defence, we are not stupid. I had heard of negative equity well before the credit crunch. We were faced with a town where real estate was so ludicrously out of our reach that renting was the only option. In the time that we sat quietly, prudently squirreling away our nest egg, the most basic, squalid, 2-bedroom condos sky-rocketed by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those people we watched take dodgy loans to get a foothold in the market were coming up smelling of roses. Santa Barbara real estate was always a safe bet, there had never been a downturn, if anything only a plateau, way back when the rest of the country took a bath. So we took a chance, because we'd already wasted so much time doing nothing. It was good advice, a sensible decision, and I am terminally sensible. It was the only chance we had.

I still think the decision we made was prudent. If things had gone faster, smoother, we would have been chuffing laughing. We bought an income property with the intent to switch four apartments in to four separately saleable condominiums. Divide and conquer. The City of Santa Barbara worked on our conversion application at a deliberately glacial pace. There were too many hurdles to mention (archeological surveys, sounds surveys, sewer lateral surveys, survey surveys), but we finally did get planning approval and permits issued.

Too late it appears, the financial tide had turned.

We are still in the fortunate position of being able to collect rents. Our position would have been infinitely worse if we'd bought a condo back in 2005. It still leaves us with a nuclear mushroom cloud of a loan, and a hell of a job trying to hang on, but you better believe we're getting creative on that end!! Who knows, you may see creature #2 on Ebay in the near future. At the very least I may be jogging for a 'tax baby' at the end of December.

So while you're busy patting yourselves on the back and applauding your fiscal good sense, perhaps take a moment to consider how much luck played in to your success. We are not all spendthrifts putting 'I want, I must have' things on credit because we feel we are entitled to a lifestyle above what we're prepared to work for. There are plenty of people in this mess, who through job-loss, illness, sky-rocketing interest rates or other unforeseen circumstance are no longer able to afford a basic right -­ a home.

And yes, in the words of Norman Tebbit, we can just get on our bikes. No-one made us live in this rich-man's town. Except it's my husband's home town, where he wanted to stay and raise children, and we tried to make it work. Trust me, nothing can put a strain on a marriage like running in to trouble fulfilling someone else's dream.

I don't blame our mortgage broker, he was only doing what every single loan broker in this town now denies doing; helping people into properties they knew they couldn't afford so that they could at least have a chance at taking a risk. I do blame the mortgage companies for allowing these loans, which caused property values to rise exponentially, and I'm sure they in turn have regulators they would like to slap. And yes, this is a 'correction' and people should be made to pay, capitalism will have it's pound of flesh. I see how unfair it is to take tax-payers monies to bail out those who made bad decisions. But this is bigger than that -­ this is everybody's savings, their pensions, their ability to get a loan to make a better life. This is scary. This is working hard and going backwards. You better believe I will be telling Anna the 'Robert the Bruce and the spider story' over the years to come.

See, this is what happens when I eavesdrop on other people's conversations instead of listening to this month's guest speaker on the topic of 'Advance Directives, How To Die With Dignity'.

It's A Bit Parky

She looks cute, but she's actually frozen solid.














One of the first things people ask when you return from a trip to the UK is 'how was the weather?'. I usually reply, 'there was plenty of it'.

California doesn't have weather, it has a climate. Not so the north of England!! What a difference a few weeks make. Last year we went home in early May, and England was at her sun-dappled green and leafy best. This time we went home and the phrase 'it's grim oop North' certainly seemed more appropriate. You know how people returning from Las Vegas always say 'but it's a dry heat'. Well in North Yorkshire 'it's a damp cold'. A malevolent cold that penetrates your core and refuses to leave, like someone's stuck a wet facecloth down your woollens never to be seen again. If you leave a damp towel on the floor it will not dry over time, in fact it will suck up more moisture, like a giant clammy sponge. It took me two weeks to remember to leave our towels over the radiators, and then it was time to leave. I think Anna first realized she wasn't in Kansas anymore when she sat on her first UK toilet seat and said 'Mummy, my butt is cold!'. British bums are made of sterner stuff.

I'll be the first to admit that my memories of the weather in North Yorkshire have become a little hazy with time. I didn't bring capri trousers in my suitcase like I did last year. *Moron*. The phrase 'ne'er cast a clout til May is out' is time-worn for a reason. You know that facial expression when somebody first dips a delicate toe into the frigid Californian Pacific? That was our facial expression for the entire trip. I began to rethink that halter-neck dress I'd bought for my brother's wedding, and started wondering if I could fashion a pashmina out of a goose-down duvet (tasteful darling, but I can't walk through doors).

Surprisingly LK loves British weather. He works outdoors, so the chance to escape the never-ending sun is a real holiday for him. I was worried about Anna though, whether her delicate Californian constitution would hold up to the wuthering of THE NORTH. I couldn't have been more wrong, because Anna had arrived in the Land of Puddles and was having the time of her life. It took us fifteen minutes to go a hundred yards, but hey, she was happy. This is 'stock footage' of her reveling in a puddle after a brief rainstorm in SB in February. See how happy?













She even got to make a snowball, and was so thrilled with the idea that she asks me at least once a day since we got back if it's snowing. Err, no, it's not snowing, it's 97º in the shade sweet-pea. That's why Mummy's blogging with no clothes on (apologies for that visual).

Basically it didn't rain that much, it just looked like it was going to all the time. It would go from hail to sleet to rain to sun then back to hail in a dizzying five minutes that would have us racing to the washing line four times an hour to retrieve the laundry.

People hang their washing out to dry in England, always have done. If anything embodies a spirit of absurd optimism in the face of reality, it's hanging your washing out to dry in North Yorkshire. Now it's the cool and eco-friendly thing to do of course, but it's mainly done out of thrift. I once asked some friends in SB why nobody does that here. I mean it seems far more sensible to hang your washing out in California, land of perma-sun, than in Manchester, every Atlantic raindrop's first port of call. Someone replied 'oh, we have tumble dryers here'. Ah yes thankyou! The industrial revolution. We Brits must get on that. I think thriftiness/tightness has to be the only answer because there is nothing as soul-destroying as hanging cold, wet washing out under a leaden sky.(For the record my Mum and Dad do have a tumble dryer, used for monsoon-like conditions). But why don't people hang their clothes out to dry in the States? Are you embarrassed people will think you can't afford a tumble dryer? Is it laziness? My excuse it that I'd be worried our tenants would nick our clothes, but we don't all live in ghettos. What's your excuse?

Chitty Chitty Bling Bling

I almost feel like I'm tempting fate by writing this, as if somehow my good fortune will disappear, like the England team always managing to snatch defeat from certain victory:

I have a new car.

This is absurdly overdue, as I've already mentioned, here and here.We have been in crisis mode with both our cars for a long time, managing to staunch vehicular hemorrhaging with regular oil changes and duct tape. My car was in particularly poor shape, because:

1. Smoke would curl ominously from the bonnet every time I drove on the freeway.

2. I didn't feel comfortable driving it more than 15 miles for fear it'd blow up.

3. Last time I went to get my oil changed the bloke said he couldn't do it. He couldn't change the oil if I didn't have any oil. That's how I found out I had an oil leak.

3. I was rear-ended about 4 years ago and as the insurance paid us rather than a garage and as the car was bashed up but still drivable we never had it fixed. The advantage to this was having the only easily recognizable Teal Honda Accord out of a sea of similar ones in Santa Barbara.

4. It was a 2-door. When I was pregnant I knew it would be impossible to get an infant in and out of a car-seat in a 2-door car. Almost three years later, I can add that it's almost impossible. As she got larger and larger I was flirting with the laws of physics to get her in to the back seat. Recently it was proving impossible to do it without banging Anna's head an the car roof as I literally had to fling her 28lb frame in to her car-seat as I couldn't take her weight with my arms outstretched. She's a great car passenger mostly due to a constant state of mild concussion.

The only cons to getting a new car were:

a. Paying for the damn thing.

b. Our tenants thinking we're living large off their hard-earned rents and keying the new car out of spite. Oh how I wish we were living large off their rents.

c. Having 14 feet 2 inches of pristine paint on each side of the car, and a narrow parking space. (this last comment seems to have been added by LK while I was away from the computer - thanks love).

Well, we've thrown caution to the wind and I now have a terrifyingly brand new SUV. Hello Soccer Mom-dom! This is a momentous occasion, as this is the first vehicle other than a bike that I've had any hand in choosing. All my other cars have been hand-me-downs. Not that I'm ungrateful you understand, but I have always merely ended up owning a car, I've never been instrumental in the decision-making process. I mean God Almighty, I drove a red Geo Storm for months that LK bartered from a friend (technically a 'Torm' as the S fell off never to be found). That car blew a head gasket after a matter of months - some would call it assisted suicide.

Going through the car-buying process has made me wonder though - how do you pick a car? There seem to be so many choices out there - how did you end up with yours? Was it a carefully weighed decision made with Consumer Reports in hand? Or did you just nick one you fancied from the local mall parking lot? Does anybody really say yes please, a brand new Dodge Neon, that's the car for me? What's the story behind your car?