Ruminations on the gas buggy

I haven't posted on this blog in a very long time, because no one reads it.  But that's not  really a good excuse not to post.

In December 2013, after my last disgruntled post, my father's house, which continues to appear in my dreams, was finally sold.  Hallelujah.  For a whopping $180,000.  At least we didn't have to resort to calling one of those "we buy ugly houses" numbers.  The money was duly divided between my brother and me, and what was left of my half not spent on pricey house repairs was deposited in my savings and invested with Fidelity.  I finally bit the bullet and made a huge down payment on...

a Prius!

Yes, my fifteen year old Honda Civic, which still runs beautifully with 147,000 miles on it, has rusted out as all New England vehicles eventually do.  My mechanic informed me that within six months my car would be unsafe to drive.  This sent me into a tizzy, because naturally I didn't want to wait for that dire eventuality.  So...what car to buy?  For years now, I have been fantasizing about a Prius, which, while pricey, is at least in the range of the possible, unlike a Porsche or Ferrari.  I soon found that a new one was out of the question, so I researched the prices of used ones online.  I decided that no way was I dealing with a used car salesman.  Instead, I asked Pat Regan, my mechanic, who buys a few used cars and sells them from his service station, to find me a used Prius, no older than 2010.

A few weeks went by as I prayed to my Higher Power to send me my Prius.  I wanted the gunmetal gray one but I said I'd settle for any other color.  My prayers were heard and answered!   My Prius, which I have named "Fairy," is a light silver color and looks quite elegant.  As the cashier at Regan's told me, silver doesn't show dirt or scratches as much as a dark color.  Another plus!  The car, which had one owner, is in admirable condition, with "only" 47,900 miles--this is considered low mileage for a Prius.  2010s are selling for as much as mine with 60, 70, even 80K.  And the service manual goes all the way up to 120K.  And it's not just optimism.  Apparently they just keep going and going, virtually trouble-free.  Everyone I've spoken to loves their Prius.

My main reason for buying a Prius (at $16,000 and some change, about $10,000 less than a new one would cost me) is of course the environment.  If I keep this car for 120K plus miles, I will be releasing a lot less crap into our suffering atmosphere.  Although, as my friend Nelson pointed out, there is still the problem of disposing of the battery: if it ends up in a landfill, it will leach toxic chemicals into the groundwater.  I'm hoping that by that time someone will discover how to render theses chemicals harmless.

What I wasn't prepared for was the virtually silent ride the Prius delivers.  Smooth.  It's not a hot rod, and it doesn't accelerate 0-60 like a Maserati, but hell, it's sleek and beautiful, and it's cool.  There aren't as many as you'd imagine on the streets of Newton, being an uncool place.  The word is that California is full of them.  Proof positive of coolness.  For Californians, the Prius is the VW beetle of the 2000's.  More evidence that the West Coast is where I really belong.

Other advantages of the Prius are easy loading of equipment due to the hatchback, which creates a higher ceiling inside the car.  And the low gas mileage--50 mpg on the highway, the most economical hybrid around.  Gas prices are now falling precipitously, and the irony is not lost on me.  Oh well, it'll cost me even less to drive my new (used) car.

Fiasco

I have been complaining a lot lately to anyone who'll listen.  This is because I have lost an entire year of my life (and a hell of a lot of money) to the settling of my father's estate and the attempt to sell his house.  My hair is falling out from stress, I can't sleep, and I have no heart to play the piano (though I force myself to practice)  I can't handle much of anything beyond getting through the day.

Now, just as it seemed that the buyers were finally getting their shit together, the whole thing falls apart: we find out that they can't get financing. The deal is off, and we are starting from scratch, having lowered the price yet again.  So I am complaining.  It would be better if I tried to lose myself in writing Mentalist fanfiction--I have to rewrite my story based on last Sunday's season premiere.  It's after 1 am and I don't want to go to work tomorrow. I need every dollar I am capable of earning, so I can't take a personal day.

This is not the worst catastrophe in the world--it happens to many homeowners.  But the agony is being extended, with no end in sight.  My childhood home is empty, just the shell of a home, and every time I think about it I get unbearably sad.  Every day I try to distract, distract, distract.  It works up to a point, but the fear of ending up with no retirement money never goes away.

One small ray of light is that I received a royalty check for $411 from Berklee Press.

My book is selling!

Too bad it won't ever reach best-seller proportions...

Up and down and back and forth with the closing

The latest news is that the buyer has been in the hospital (!) for 2 weeks but still wants to close the deal on the house.  The question is, why was his wife also MIA? Why wasn't she taking his calls and why didn't she get back to their real estate agent?

Now I have to wait until their lawyer decides to have the closing.  It will undoubtedly be on a work day, so I will lose income.  I would not have lost any money if it had been the 29th. (Well, $40 for a credited piano lesson, and that's not nothing, but losing a whole day of Berklee teaching would be bad) I am trying to let go of this and enjoy my last few days of freedom from work.  I have done everything I could.  The house is cleared and swept.  The lawn is overgrown, but the estate can't afford $75 every 2 weeks.

I am still feeling as though my father died only recently.  It's because I finally chucked his two foot high pile of bluebooks and other notebooks into the recycling bin, because none of his friends wanted them.  I was throwing the only remaining pieces of his mind away.  My father's remains are literally a pile of dust.  There is no more corporeal Jack Davis.  And if there is a spiritual Jack Davis, he has yet to visit me.  It's very hard to forgive him for what he has put me through with his estate/house.  He actually thought he was making things easier for me.  Well, it would have been easier had he put even half of his gambling money in the bank.  Or saved what was left of his pension each month and paid off his $27,000 loan instead of sticking Joe and me with (as I repeatedly begged him to do.) It's over and done with, and I should let this go, but almost a year following his death it is still causing me terrible anxiety and depression.  If he'd kept up the house and grounds as he should have, we'd have sold the place by now.

And now our hope of selling the house rests with a shoplifter.  Not a convicted felon, or as my lawyer put it, "not public enemy #1."  But someone incredibly irresponsible.  I get a daily headache in the upper right part of my skull.  I almost never have headaches, so I can only conclude that it's the stress I'm under.  When will it end?

What happened?

After 5 months on the market and 30 showings without an offer, my father's house finally got an offer.  We have the signed purchase and sale, the inspection went without a hitch, and I busted my ass cleaning the house out mostly by myself with some help from Tasha and Curtiss.  I didn't get rid of all the books and records until 2 days ago.

Despite numerous calls to both agent and lawyer, I have been unable to find out when and where the closing will take place.  We had a date--Aug. 29--on the contract, but no one has been able to reach the buyers.  The agent told me this evening that the buyer's realtor has been trying to reach him for 2 weeks and leaving messages, none of which resulted in a call or email back.  I can't think of a good reason for this.  Why would they go the distance and then run away from the deal?

Curtiss did some research on the buyer online and made a shocking discovery:  a young man with the same name as the buyer (and who lives in Conn.) was arrested for sixth degree larceny in 2011 for attempting to steal an air conditioner from a store.  I know that real estate agents can't vet their buyers, but how could this happen?  Our house was under agreement with a criminal?  The name is not a common one and it must be the same person.

The only reason I can think of that he has not been answering his calls is that he's on the run from the police.  Could this get any worse?

I sent a link to the newspaper article describing the crime to the lawyer representing us at the closing.  I asked both of them if all the financing was in order and if the real estate office had received their down payment (it was a small one because they have a special loan from the USDA with full financing and only a $2000 down payment.)  It's a lot easier to turn your back on and forfeit $2000 than $20,000. 

Now what do we do?  I have spent months getting furniture, antiques and books sold from the house, and only the other day gave the final sweep to the floors.  I wasn't worried that anything would go wrong.  My brother and Curtiss, who worry about everything, were worried and this confirmed their worst fears.

I might have known that it was too good to be true.  Here we were thinking we had finally found the perfect buyer--do it yourselfers who wanted to fix the place up.  Reasonable people who waived their rights to inspection for lead paint and radon.  People who said that any books we left on the shelves were OK with them.  I told myself they were nice people and I looked forward to meeting them at the closing.  Now I discover that the husband is a thief.  Shock, bewilderment, and even heartbreak don't even begin to describe my feelings.

We will have to shut the house up for the winter because we can't afford to keep the heat and utilities going without a tenant to pay them.  There's no furniture in the house, so how could we rent even if we could meet the stringent landlord requirements?

I haven't told anyone about the buyer's rap sheet.  I don't know how to tell anyone.  It was bad enough having to tell my brother that the buyer has simply disappeared and is incommunicado.

My aunt Joan says that there will be another buyer and not to make myself crazy over this.
But I can't sleep.  I don't know what to do.  There is nothing I can do.  Can we hold them to the contract?  Did they even succeed in getting the loan?

We've spent over $4000 to the law firm, so they'd better give us some good legal advice.
I need some answers.  It's not so bad that the closing isn't taking place this Thurs. as planned, but a buyer missing in action?  Maybe on the run from the law?

Why is this happening when I worked so hard to bring about the sale?

The piano teacher

Ally (age 7) and me at her piano lesson (June 12, 2013)

Ally: I really like the inside of the piano!  It looks like a place where fairies could live.

Me:  It does!  But--how would they get in and out?

Ally:  There's a space in front ( pointing to the gap between the music rack and the strings)

Me:   There is!

Ally is a real character!  She spent the better part of her lesson composing her music.  I wrote it out for her and it contained some interesting melody lines that were quite un-childlike.  She is very smart, very willful, and a touch spoiled, but she's very cute and imaginative.  She told me that she wanted to finish her piece but that her younger brother tore it up.  "Oh, that's terrible!  You've got to keep your music away from him," I said before I actually saw the piece of paper in question.  It had a large jagged tear which was easily mended with a piece of tape.  Ally goes for the drama every time.

She also knows that unlike most adults, she can tell me about where the fairies live and I will believe her.

Stuck in limbo

I have brief periods of respite from depression.  Last weekend, for example, I attended my friends' wedding, and was distracted for two days from the unpaid bills on the estate, the worry over the house not selling, the fear that I am sick with something serious instead of merely having a chronic stomachache from anxiety.

Depression and anxiety, my old friends.  I was probably experiencing them in utero.
Certainly, I was a depressed child and teenager.  As an adult, I take my antidepressants faithfully to ward off falling deeper into the abyss.  Now the feelings are exacerbated by grief.  I've arrived at the stage where I accept the fact that my father is gone forever.

My intent in writing this is not to gain pity.  It is simply to describe what it's like.  Sometimes the writing makes it clear that things could be, and have been, a lot worse than they are now.  But I have terrible money karma and that I have used up whatever good gig karma I had more than 9 years ago when I left the Four Seasons.  If you believe in karma.  Maybe it's just terrible luck.  I don't believe that people create their own success.  People have other people who help them succeed.  People with rich parents have an advantage over the rest of us.

I'm trying to enjoy the spring flowers.  I'm trying to motivate myself to do something creative with the free time I have left before starting work again on the 28th.  But mostly I end up online and watching endless TV.  At least I did about 90 minutes of yard work yesterday.

But I feel defeated.

View facing south, 21 Browns Rd.