Phantom Limb

I first felt the baby move late last night, right when I was falling asleep. Because I haven’t been able to hear an accurate description prior to this that didn’t involve vague mentions of “gas bubbles,” evoking delicate little carbonated beverages swimming around your midsection, I feel compelled to clear things up.

Uh, not so much with the delicate. You know what it’s really like? I’ll tell you. You know when you’ve got a gas bubble — and by “bubble” I mean a large wad of gas, not some tiny champagne-bubble shit — working its way down your intestines, culminating in what you imagine to be a giant, Mason jar-sized fart? (Stop it. You all do. I know you do.) It feels precisely like that, except the mondo fart never comes, and it never really moves down your intestines. It just sort of pokes you, and I spent the first 200 times thinking I was going to fart, and it was only last night that I realized that duh, the fart never came, and DOUBLE DUH, that feels a bit too rhythmic to be a fart, because it’s all hanging around the same spot and OH MY GOD, there’s a baby in there and it’s ALIIIIIIVE. And apparently I am less gassy than previously anticipated!

Creepy, right? I know it’s all delicate to say gas bubble, but why didn’t anyone say GIANT FART-BREWING FEELING WITH A FART THAT NEVER COMES? That would have been so much more descriptive and helpful. Now you know.

Onward! I believe we have found a place to live, and would you believe it’s in our dinky little town? I can’t either! Apparently not even the lure of Starbucks and civilization can compete with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops, not to mention pastoral river views. You know, I always thought I was an old house person — I AM an old house person, by most accounts — and I don’t know if it’s pregnancy or the cost of oil these days, but I find myself embarrassingly distracted by New! New! New! Also: AC! AC! AC! I think it’s that I’m all too aware how much harder it is to keep an old house clean and heated without an absurd amount of effort and expense, and my God, I don’t feel like dealing with pregnancy and/or a newborn PLUS all that shit. I want to be able to vacuum and be done with it, not have to closely examine every single baseboard with Pledge on a daily basis, and I haven’t even talked about the INSECTS. And do you know how annoying it is that no matter how much I clean our toilets, they never LOOK clean, because they’re SO DAMN OLD? ARE SHINY TOILETS TOO MUCH TO ASK?

Wow, that’s riveting stuff, yes? Anyway, keep your fingers crossed for us as we give notice on our place and navigate the new lease. I don’t know why I always expect these things to be fraught with danger, but I do. I’m never COMPLETELY satisfied until I’m firmly ensconced in a new home and several months have passed and no one has either sued me or ceased to pay any rent on the house we rented to them, thus enabling us to afford the house we live in. And pregnancy only exacerbates these anxieties, and at this rate, I’ll be in full-tilt panic until next August, rocking back and forth and muttering about lawsuits and mortgage rates.

Speaking of mortgage rates, the whole discussion is really grating my cheese, and I don’t mean to sound like Suze Orman, but in some cases — not all, by any stretch — people got themselves into this mess by showing an astonishing lack of common sense. And while I’m all for punishing the predatory lenders, and I’m just as peeved as the next gal that we’re in this pickle, I am equally irritated that there seems to be a lack of personal responsibility attached to it. I mean, do you have any idea how much more house Adam and I qualified for than the one we bought, and how lenders tried to convince us that no no, buying more (like four or five times more!) is better? But we didn’t. Not by a long shot, and in fact, we got a fixed rate mortgage at a great rate, with payments we could easily afford on one income if need be, because my God, you never know, do you? CLEARLY YOU DO NOT. But it may surprise you that even people like us are screwed too!

I know, I’m sounding preachy! And self-righteous! But man, it pisses me off, because I can’t help but wonder if people used a wee bit of personal logic, instead of letting themselves get talked into something that didn’t really make any fucking SENSE (Why yes, a $500K starter home sounds great, even though I only make $35K annually! What a STELLAR IDEA! Let’s finance the crap out of that sucker!), we wouldn’t be quite so screwed. Still screwed, mind you, but maybe not SO much?

But every time I see this shit parodied or talked about, it’s assumed that the only people suffering from this crisis are those who bit off way more than they could chew, or were buying investment properties by the armload to flip and ergo, they deserve what they got. Not true! Regular people who didn’t even have an ARM and bought their house for a fair, uninflated price are screwed, too! And not everyone who got an ARM is an idiot! Plenty of people saw it work for others because it was such a ridiculous, absurd market!

Now, I’ll grant you, we’re not as fucked as we could be — we have a renter, and even if we didn’t, could swing the two payments if we had to, not that we’d ENJOY it — but we can’t sell the place for what we paid for it, despite buying at the bottom of the market. (My next-door neighbors and much of the neighborhood paid two and a half times what we did, if that’s any indication of how low we bought at, and a sign of just how awful things are. I’m thinking theirs will sell in 2060?) And that totally pisses me off. It’s not like I’m trying to even make a profit on the damn thing, I just want to UNLOAD IT ALREADY. FOR A TOTALLY REASONABLE PRICE. And yet, by the rule book of life’s responsible actions, I did everything “right.”

Eh. I don’t know what I’m saying. I guess I’m saying that while I do put some blame on corporate (and government) greed, I also put some on some — not all, mind you, and certainly not my friends who might be reading this, I promise — people who didn’t have the sense to think the whole thing through. I’m not so down with looking at everyone as a victim here. I suppose to some that makes me a harsh asshole. Good thing I’m not running for office.

Well! Let us move on to something light! Like the fact that I do not understand how in God’s name ANYONE drinks grape juice — or any juice, save for orange or apple — undiluted. It’s like drinking SYRUP. And further, most grapes are light, sweet and delicious — like little bursts of clean sunshine after a rain — but Concord grapes, not so much. They’re like drinking heavy drapes in a mahogany room. Bleah. And yet the vast majority of grape juice is made with Concord grapes, and I totally blame — and subsequently loathe — Welch’s. I mean if wine can be made from a variety of grapes, why not JUICE, I ask you?

Happy Thursday!

*The Shins

51 comments October 8th, 2008