Refinancing Saga

August 31 we applied to refinance our mortgage with the bank that currently holds the mortgage. September 9 we got a call to set up the appraisal for September 13 at 1 P.M. The same day the mortgage officer from the bank told us to have the property in tip top shape for the appraisal. That found us painting, grooming the drive, weeding and mulching flower beds, and doing other miscellaneous clean up projects Friday evening and Saturday. We worked from 6 A.M. until 11 P.M. and did not take many breaks even for eating. We each had a banana about 8 A.M., a sandwich about 2 P.M. and a bowl of soup about 9:30 P.M. We rested on Sunday. Monday morning we were up at 2 A.M. to clean the main floor and basement of the house. By the time we left for work at 6 A.M., the place was ready for the appraiser.

This week:
Day 1 -- we received an e-mail from the bank. "The appraiser has concerns about the non conforming use of the property due to the print shop. The appraiser contacted the township and according to our rules and regs pertaining to the secondary market your home is not legal for their purposes. This only means that it does not fit the parameters for the low rates and that's why your home mortgage has remained with **********Bank. It is not a sellable loan, therefore, I cannot pursue this refinance any further. . . You could refinance within ***********Bank but when a loan remains 'in house' as we call it, rates are not that attractive and it would not behoove you to spend the money. So sorry ladies..."

Day 2 -- I e-mailed the bank: "OK, that raises some questions for us. 1) non conforming use -- How is it non conforming? Non conforming to what? 2) township--what did the township say that disqualified us? 3) rules and regs pertain to the secondary market -- in what way is our home not legal for their purposes?

The bank e-mailed us: "It is non conforming due to commercial use being a print shop. The secondary market does not allow for any use other than residential. . . The township merely confirmed that it is commercial in nature, they know it exists and that's OK, but not for secondary financing....Does that answer your questions. Let me know.

We contacted another local bank about refinancing.

Day 3 -- I e-mailed the bank: "That does answer our questions. We may look into other possibilities.

The bank e-mailed us: "Our corporate office ...had the underwriter review the portion of the appraisal that was done by the appraiser. We may proceed with your refinance providing: that the appraiser finds 1 or 2 comparable properties that have sold and settled that are like your property. Statement that the use of the garage is legal as per the township zoning officer. Statement indicating that the garage can easily be converted back to a normal garage. I'll keep you posted so just hang in there.

We complete the refinance application with the second local bank.

Day 4 -- I e-mailed the bank: Hmmm now that raises more questions and these are more along the lines of ethics. If it were not legal two days ago, how is it legal today? If it is legal, why were we told it is illegal?

I am waiting to see what the Lord has in store for us.

Vacation - 2010

After I finished scrubbing the floors at school, it was time for my vacation. Most summers I take a few days to return to Virginia and visit people that I don't normally visit when I go for a weekend. Mary stayed home to work and take care of the home fires while I roamed about the Shenandoah valley.

My first stop was with Joel & Bonnie in Maryland on my way to Virginia. I arrived about 10 AM and stayed for lunch. My next stop was in Bridgewater with the lady who had been my supervisor on my work/study job in the library at JMU. We have stayed in touch throughout the years and this was the second time I visited her on one of these summer trips.

My next stop was the highlight of the three days. In 1979 when I moved to Virginia, I was working at CLP with Doug Cyzick. He and his wife Reba frequently invited some of his coworkers to their house for an evening. I learned to know Reba and their seven children. Since then, Doug has left the family and is currently living in Tennessee. His children have grown up. His wife is remarried. He has quite a few grandchildren. But, I had not seen the family since 1985 when I moved back to Pennsylvania. A year ago I noticed the one daughter's name on facebook and began communicating with her. She told me that she and her siblings would like to see me sometime when I come to the area. The beginning of the summer I told her that I will be coming sometime this summer. It took me until the beginning of August to get that accomplished. Wednesday evening the Cyzick family got together for a potluck supper because I was in the area. I was glad Regina had posted pictures of everyone on facebook so that I could recognize them when I got there on Wednesday. Here is a picture of Reba and the Cyzick children as I remember them. Next is one of Reba and her seven children today. The last one is Reba and her husband Garry, the seven children and their spouses (not all of them could be there) and their children.

Back row Shannon, Amy and Jody,

Front row: Andy, Ethel, Reba holding Stephanie, and Regina

Andy, Ethel, Stephanie, Reba, Amy, Regina, Jody, and Shannon

Thursday I went for breakfast with Sharon, a friend from my Rosedale days (1977-1979), who lives in Harrisonburg. Then I went to CLP and took a tour of the place guided by one of my friend Sarah's nieces. It was interesting to see all the changes that have been made since the mid 1980s. I also saw several people who were working there when I did and are still working there. From there I went to Rockingham Memorial Hospital to the Hahn Cancer Center and sat with Sarah while she finished chemo treatment #2. On our way home from the hospital we stopped at Costco and Walmart to get some of her prescriptions filled. One of those was for Emend, an anti-nausea medication, that Mary had also taken. We always wondered how much it cost because Mary's co-pay was $100 for three pills. Sarah does not have medical insurance so I found out how much it really is. Each pill costs just over $100. In the evening I went to visit Ralph and Evelyn Landes.

Friday morning I spent an hour with Hilda Harlow. She was as entertaining as always. She was talking about her dog that she had before she moved to the retirement community. She said, "Heather was everybody's friend. She was friends with all the burglars and everybody. I never had any burglars, but she would have been friends with them." She was also telling me that she has more money now than she did before she fired herself (retired). That's Hilda--unique and entertaining. On my way home, I stopped at the United Zion Campground near Manheim to help Mary Martin cook for the Youth Conference there. After supper, I came home and started unpacking.

Vacation is over, but I have a lot of pleasant memories from all the visiting I did with friends from 1977-1985. Today I am trying to catch up from being gone for three days, and Monday I will be going to school to begin the process of getting ready for the students to return in less than three weeks.

Summer Job

This summer has not been the norm. I realized my tenant was moving out of my rental property. There is a repair job that needs to be done and the taxes have to be paid. I had enough saved from the rent to pay either the taxes or the repair job. I had been thinking that maybe I should have gotten a part time job this summer. But my time is so extremely scheduled during the school year that I refuse to have much of a schedule all summer. Two days after I began processing all this, I got an e-mail from the school that the board had tired of doing the floors at school and were willing to pay someone on staff to do them this summer. The amount after taxes are taken out that they were willing to pay for the job almost exactly matched the estimate of the repair job. I decided that God wanted me to work hard this summer, but He was supplying what I needed. Therefore, I took the job. There was no schedule. I could go whenever I wanted to go, work as long as I wanted to work, and come home whenever I wanted to. No one needed to know when I was going to be there and when I wasn't going to be there. Some mornings I went as early as 4 or 5 and then left early before the hotest part of the day. Usually I started by 6:30 or 7 and worked until sometime between 12 and 2 P.M.

These were the basic tools that I used. I had three buckets and three mops: one for soapy water, one for clear water, and one for wax; and those were never mixed. The first thing that needed to be done was move everything out of the room so I could clean the floor. Next, I dry mopped the room. Then, slopped soapy water onto the floor and allowed it to soak while I got the floor machine ready to go. The next step was the floor machine with the black stripping pads on it. I went over the floor 3-4 times with those pads.

Then it was time to get down on my hands and knees and do the hand scrubbing. I used the centers of the black pads for that.

When I was doing the main hall, Mary came to help me one evening after supper because there was so much pitch on the floor from the new parking lot and lots of scrubbing needed. I hand scrubbed every block from the front door to the office.

After I was finished hand scrubbing, I ran the floor machine with the red pads over the floor another 3 times. The next step was mopping the floor with clear water until the water when I was finished was still clear water. That usually took 1-3 moppings. It depended a bit on how well I could get into the corners with the floor machine.

The rewarding step was putting the four coats of wax on the floor and seeing it begin to shine. When I was finished with the fourth coat of wax, the floor looked like it was wet when it wasn't. Several times I had someone coming to talk to me stop at the door and touch the floor before walking into the room. I knew then that my floor looked like it was supposed to look: wet. The last step was moving everything back in place in the room.

I started cleaning floors the last week of June and finished the last week of July. It took me 97 hours to do the whole school.

The question that remains: "Will I do it next year?"

Recovery

Mary and I dubbed this year the "year of recovery." She had been saying that 2009 was a year of survival, but now it is time to recover in several ways: financial, emotional, spiritual, and physical. She took steps to attempt to recover the ground she had lost financially last year and made goals in other areas of life too.

I decided it was time to do some recovery also, and I have been recovering in an area that was not part of that decision. I have stepped up my payments on the rental property attempting to get that paid off more quickly, but that was part of the plan. I have cut back on spending at places like Goodwill and Ollies, but that was part of the plan. We have not been out to eat since the beginning of 2010, but that has been intentional.

For the last several years, I have had a serious malady that I did not talk about, that I tried to ignore, that was embarrassing: I wasn't reading anything. I had not read an entire book since 2004 or 2005 and that was a Ramona book. I started many books but never got very far. I had just burned out and couldn't force my way through an entire book. That was embarrassing for an English teacher to admit--especially an English teacher with a doctorate in English. Mary knew that I wasn't reading because she never saw me with a book in hand. The only thing I was reading with news online and papers that I had to grade. I even went to listening to passages of the Bible online for my devotions. I got more out of it by listening to it than if I tried to read.

This last Christmas Mary gave me a book for Christmas and that has been the turning point for me. I read all the way through Vera's Journey, and it was the beginning of my journey to recovery. Since then I have read four more books--almost 2000 pages. I must get away from the computer and get the house cleaned so I can start the next book.

Year -- Two Ends

Each year has two ends. We reached the one end of 2009 and were instantly at the other end of 2010. Both of those happened while we were driving somewhere between Sioux Lookout, Ontario and Mohnton, Pennsylvania. Actually it was a lot closer to Mohnton than Sioux Lookout.

Here are a few pictures from our trip. We had a safe and a great time. There was a lot of time for relaxing, and we both discovered how much we needed that. It was great to go to bed and not set an alarm, but get up when we were ready--not that that was very late. It was good to spend time with friends and family. It was also good to see the beauty of the north. We were blessed with the sight of two moose walking out of the bush in front of our car (but not so close we had to brake for them). The worst part was the driving conditions on the first day. We stopped at a motel 150 miles before getting to our planned destination. Everything else on the trip went very well.

our trek

not a clear picture but we saw lots of emergency vehicles on our way

the forecast for the second day of travel

Christmas dinner in the preparing stages

Christmas dinner

and again

Bozey was always looking for an available lap

another train in progress

the old gold mine -- looking down into the shaft

the house had some structural problems

the wall hanging we quilted

in the hanger

the ice road across Beaver Lake

back in the USA