heyMamas

Thanks for checking on me, Internet

This conversation came to me this morning at 4:45am.  A little odd, as I have never had a conversation with the Internet before, much less alone, while in bed.  So I thought I would share, just in the off chance that someone who majored in Dream Analysis and Interpretation would want to share back.....

Internet:  "Hey Sadie, how are you today?"

Me:  "I am well, thank you for asking.  And how are you today, Internet?"

Internet:  "We are well, thank you."

Me:  "Hey Internet, did you see what happened yesterday?  Did you see that the Dow plunged more than 700 points in 20 minutes?  Did you catch that one, Internet?"

Internet:  "Yes Sadie, we did see something was going on yesterday that wasn't very good for our economy." 

Me:  "Did you also see that the house nixed the bailout plan and that the economy is on the brink of disaster?"

Internet:  "Why yes Sadie, we also saw that bit of news."

Me:  "Ok (sigh) good, I am just glad everyone is paying attention, especially those guys on Wall Street."

You would have to be living under a rock

Just like the title of this posts says, you would have to be living under a giant, heavy rock to not know what is going on with the US financial markets these days.  I am not going to go on and on here because there are just way too many things to say and I don't want to torture you nice people, so I am going to limit myself to the following thoughts.

Update: As I was proofing this post, I see that I did go on and on a bit, so sorry.

How could it be that brilliant (well, maybe not so much after all...), talented and very well educated people running these Wall Street financial giants could allow something of this magnitude to play out the way that it has.  How could they be so stupid and apparently so motivated by greed and money, as to NOT see this would be the outcome.  If little old me could know that sub-prime lending and housing prices that continue to climb at an unnatural rate, was a bubble that was eventually going to burst, how did they not know that putting these mortgages in a pretty package and selling them on Wall Street, was going to blow up in their faces?  Is it greed, did they just think in the immediate and not think the whole process through to this point that we are currently facing?   That when the mortgage terms changed, people were not going to be able to afford their payments.  Not rocket science, people.

I hardly think that anyone could have ever imagined the collapse of major investments banks, back when this whole sub-prime was started.  I certainly could not have imagined a world in which there was not one stand alone investment bank in the United States.  What has happened is so disturbing and sad on so many levels. 

I have a friend who told me about one of her friends that worked at Lehman for twenty-six years as an administrative assistant.  She is single and has no one else to depend on.  Hopefully her 401k was diversified, but what about her pension?  That is money that she was planning to live on, what happens now?  What about honest, hard working executives who had their bonuses given to them in stock, like a friend of mine at Bear Stearns.  What happens now after amassing ten years of stock, is it worthless, I don't know and certainly would never ask.  Hopefully, he sold some as he was allowed to, after a certain period of time. 

Now here is the hot spot for Drew and I.  The housing market, the ridiculousness of the housing market.  Predatory lending, predatory borrowing, who is worse, which is worse?  The people lending the money, or the people borrowing the money who should have known full well that ultimately they could not afford a house at the price. 

Anybody that is going through the process of buying a house, especially a house that they are using ARMS for, better know what the hell they are doing.  It is a tricky business, but a home buyer should do their homework and know what the facts are.  I have had conversations with sheisty people and I know enough to go and do my homework and facts are not facts merely because they came out of someone's mouth.

Housing prices became so outrageous that people who were trying to buy a first time home, at least in my area, had to spend at least 700k (shit hole) to 1.1 million (nice, but no backyard).  I recall talking to people who were going on and on saying, "oh no, this area is really hot, home prices are not going to go down."  Hello, nothing that goes up that fast and is so outrageous based on past comparables, is going to stay at that elevated level forever. 

So what happens now, everyone that should not have been in a million dollar home and had to take a loan for the down payment, PLUS a mortgage with an ARM so that they could afford to be in a house that they REALLY couldn't afford, is now faced with either selling their house at a loss, or facing foreclosure.  Whatever the outcome, it is sad, but people were not thinking clearly and now they are in quite a predicament.

Then there are people like Drew and I (and MANY others that I know) who sat back and watched this whole thing grow legs and watched prices hit a level that was becoming unaffordable for most, even those making a very healthy income.  Could I have put myself into a 1.5 million dollar house with some tricky financing, sure.  Was I one hundred percent sure that would have been the right thing to do, or would I have been putting myself and my family's finances at risk? 

So now, here we are waiting for prices to correct.  Not able to get a mortgage at a competitive rate, needing six months of expenses in the bank before I can qualify for a mortgage, and this is being responsible.  This is what responsibility looks like, while the people who were irresponsible for whatever reason, they were coerced, didn't understand what they were doing, didn't pay enough attention to the fine print, are potentially going to be bailed out, which translates to home prices possibly staying at the current levels, which is still inflated. 

Let's talk about the government wanting to bail these people out, in addition to bailing out the financial institutions that made equally stupid decisions.  Wall Street has to be bailed out to some extent because of all of the other businesses that feed off of what Wall Street generates.  The domino effect of damage would be too great if all of theses troubled institutions were to fail, although many of them should, therefore allowing markets and the economy to correct organically.  But of course, with a bailout, the tax payer, us, is going to suffer while these CEO's walk away with millions and millions of dollars. 

Unbelievable what has happened, just unbelievable.

To add a little humor to a very bad situation, put this link in your browser and see how all of the madness started.

http://docs.google.com/teampresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&pli=1

The dragon love affair

When we were on vacation in the Poconos, which now seems like months ago instead of mere weeks (even though I swore I was going to try to hold onto my laid backness with all that I had), the girls went on this dragon ride at the County Fair and as soon as the ride would finish, they would run so they could get in line again.  At one point, Lily was so obsessed with being the first one in line and therefore able to pick the seat she wanted, she would practically jump out of the dragon before it had even come to a complete stop.

The people who run these rides and work at these Fairs, are not exactly the type of people that I see everyday on the chic city streets of New York.  I am not saying these Fair people are not chic people, I am just saying, y'all, oh look the country in me didn't completely dry up, they are just not your average run of the mill New Yorkers, is what I am saying. 

So the girls kept riding the dragon and riding the dragon, again and again.  The guy operating the ride was just staring at them with this crazy blank stare as if internally wondering, "why the hell are these kids riding this ride so many times?"  If that was indeed what he was thinking, I would have to say that I certainly could see where he was coming from.

So here is the crux of the situation and the reason for this post, and what I am about to say my internet friends, is a classic New York situation.  The day after we arrived back home from the Poconos, we drove by a Fair that had alot of the same rides as the Poconos Fair.  The Poconos Fair was ten dollars for four hours of unlimited rides.  My girls ran and played for FOUR hours and it cost us ten dollars a piece, twenty dollars in total.  So the classic New York part is, this freaking New York Fair was charging four dollars per ride per child, four dollars for just ONE ride, one thirty second ride, four dollars.  So I ask, is that not completely ridiculous? 

So doing the math computations in my head, I figure that if I were to have bought tickets for the girls to go on that same dragon ride here in New York, three rides in ten minutes like they did at the County Fair, it would have cost me twenty-four dollars.  I was not about to spend twenty-four dollars for ten minutes of entertainment.  Maybe thirty or forty minutes of entertainment, I would even have thrown in an additional ten dollars if I would have been able to sit down and watch this said entertainment unfolding right before me.  But no dice here people, twenty-four dollars for ten minutes on the dragon was not gonna happen. 

So I explained to the girls that this Fair was just too expensive for the amount of fun that they would have had.  They were initially disappointed but handled it well and walked out of the Fair, faces scrunched up into scowls saying, "do you even believe how much the rides at that Fair cost, that is so stupid, who is even going to go there now?"  I am not even sure where they would have heard questions and phrases like that, that they kept on repeating, louder and louder each time, but boy were they right.

They did understand that for Mommy and her wallet, that fair was a colossal waste of money, but they are kids and they were disappointed, UNTIL I convinced them that cotton candy and a trip to Claire's would yield a lot more fun for the same amount of money than that stupid freaking Fair anyway.   

Change, to it being inevitable

After 37 years, I have finally figured out or perhaps finally accepted, that change is really hard for me.  Last week I started a new job, regular school days are back in full swing, I joined the gym after an eight year hiatus and have to go Friday through Sunday to get my three days a week in, soccer season has started and will monopolize the next ten weeks with four games per weekend AND I have my period.  So yeah, a little stressed over here. 

I wrote a post at the beginning of the summer about how my world tilts slightly off its axis when the girls change schedules, whether its camp to school or school to camp.  Whatever it is, transition stresses me out.  I now have hard evidence that camp to school is the much tougher transition and school to camp seems like a freaking cake walk. 

During the summer, our biggest stress is applying sunblock to the girls every morning and getting them to camp before the 8:30am start time, and thankfully that responsibility falls solely on Drew as he is the morning drop off guy.  That is like the ONE annoying thing that I actually get to miss out on because I am already at work. 

School and everything about it on the other hand, legitimately calls for stress.  Belle does part of her homework in after-school and still has about sixty more minutes when we get home at 5:30pm.  And people, she is only in the third grade for goodness sakes.  Lily gets about 20 minutes in Kindergarten, which seems to be the perfect amount considering she was chomping at the bit waiting for it, waiting to be more like her big sister. 

Without fail, when I pick the girls up from school at 5pm, I get the big, blue puppy eyes for either coming too early or perhaps too late.  If Lily has just gone down to play in the gym, she is VERY upset when I show up to retrieve her.  The procession to the car is a switch off between melodious cries and high pitched whines, consisting of how she didn't even get to play in the gym "hardly at all."  I do feel her pain though as I firmly believe that every kid has an innate need to just run wild for at least thirty minutes a day.  However, I have pressure to get home to begin our night, which includes such a series of events that I tire even thinking of it now and will spare you the details. 

For someone who is such a big promoter and true believer in the benefits of change, I am a little pissed at its power to throw me for such a loop.  I guess this change element, could be more accurately described as, my discomfort at being outside my comfort zone. 

My friend said it best when she said, as Moms we live by our schedules.  We are comfortable with those schedules and so are our children and when that breaks down, so do we.  I know by the end of the week I will be fine and hopefully back in the swing of things.  But moving through that space is so uncomfortable, and even more challenging when you have your god forsaken period.

To all my fellow Moms and Dads out there that are dealing with the change between the carefree days of summer to the 'must get this done by tomorrow' school year beginning, you will always have an understanding ear here at heyMamas.

Road to nowhere and this isn't about Sarah Palin's bridge

Drew had an early client call this morning, so I had the pleasure of going in to work late and taking the girls to school.  Not only was I able to take them to school, but we WALKED, which is always a big adventure. 

The adventure becomes even more fun and exciting, when I am carrying my work bag, one backpack on my back, pulling another backpack weighing in at approximately 35 pounds, all the while dressed in my pretty, delicate work clothes and trying to make a train that leaves in 20 minutes while the actual walk and subsequent dropping off, will take at least 15 minutes.

This is the conversation that we had while eating breakfast and discussing the big walking adventure.....

Belle: "Mama, you said I can decide the way we walk to school today, right?"

Me:   "Yes, I did.  I think it is a great idea and I could use the help since I don't do this everyday like Daddy."

Lily:  "But what about me, you always let her decide everything."

Me:   "That's not true Lil, how about you will decide the way next time, pinkie swear, ok?"

Belle: "Anyway, back to me.  So we will go past Connor's house and then make a left and go past Lillian's.  We will keep going straight and go by the public school.  Then we will make a left and go down that street and we will be at school."

Me:   "Wow, that sounds great!  What a big help you are."

Lily:   "Well, when it is my turn, this is how we will get there.  We will go down this road and then turn this way, until we need to go straight when we make that turn by that store.  Then we will go left and cross over the street until we hit that other street." 

Accompanying these verbal directions are Lily's arms flailing in the air to serve as a visual aid. 

Still Lily:  "Then down that street we like, and we'll cross there." 

Belle, as if she actually understands what route Lily has just described says:  "No, that's not the street, that's not even the right way." 

Lily:   "Yes, we turn at that street and go straight down that long road.  Then we can turn at that corner and cross over by that pretty house."

I am not exaggerating when I say that these directions continued on for about six more minutes....

Lily, finally finished, takes a breath, looks at me, smiles and says, "ok, so that's how we will go when it is my turn to walk to school, ok Mama?"