Paradigm Shift

Every time I think of the word 'paradigm' I relive the Salad Years skit from my Wheaton days. Salad Years was the student TV show, and one skit was two people imitating the Sesame Street two-headed monster doing a compound word thing. They did 'paradigm', except instead of 'para-dime' they said 'para-diggum'. It was amusing. I think you had to be there.

("para"...."diggum"...."para"...."diggum"...."PARADIGGUM!" "hey, there goes my dignity!")

Looovely.

And also very off-track.

Anyway, yesterday morning the phone woke me up, which is never a good way to start any day. But the weather was nice, and aside from being groggy I was mostly pleasant. The phone call was Frances from the mortgage company calling to verify when would be a good time to schedule closing on our refinance. She said she was spending the day filling out the forms for us and we'd probably close Thursday (today) or Friday afternoon. This was about... 9:30. OK, great, we've been waiting for a closing date for a month now. Fantastic!

I go about the morning, doing my morning things, and get ready to settle into schoolwork after lunch. The phone rings, and Frances tells me that not only can we not close on the refinance, but our home didn't even qualify for that loan in the first place. The loan officer was supposed to have checked our property values in their database, which apparently he didn't; so the only way we could continue is if we have a minimum of 10K out of pocket to bring with us. So not cool. So the refinance is cancelled, we're trying to see if we can get our non-refundable application fee (minus the assessment cost) back because the guy should have known we couldn't apply for it. We haven't heard back yet.

While I was finishing up on the phone with Frances (and trying not to throw my phone through the screen on the porch) our adoption case worker beeped in. She called back when I was off the phone, just to tell us that the homestudy she promised would be done by either last or this Friday hadn't been started yet. I'm not upset, there's good reasons, but I'm disappointed. Check the adoption blog for more details on that call.

So. Two upsetting and potentially life-changing things; but really it was a matter that in both cases we'd spent the last weeks or months anticipating a more comfortable and responsible moving-forward kind of life. I spent the rest of the day making calls and rearranging our financial goals and realigning my mental concepts of the near future. And relaying this all to Lanse, who was none-too-pleased as I was but processes things differently. It was an... interesting... rest of the day. Aside from a discussion reply or two, schoolwork wasn't part of it. But Lanse allowed an attack of Demon Housekeeper and stress-cleaned the main living areas and our bedroom, a quality of his in which I am very pleased. I just wish stress didn't have to be the trigger.

Some positive things happened though too. I wrapped up loose ends on the property tax snafu, and we actually can pay our mortgage and live off our income "comfortably" (in quotes, because we personally don't need much to feel comfortable; others would find our budget restrictive) and I finally got our March-April budget sorted out. We don't need the refinance to afford the house, and that's a huge sigh of relief.

That said, a little bit extra would be a great thing so we can start paying down some loans, so I'm wanting to put a little more focus in the concept of an Etsy shop with my quilting and jewelry stuff. I'm hoping to get the beading ladies at the game store to teach me some cool stuff that I can sell or give with Christmas in mind. Christmas took a big chunk out of our December budget last year, so anything I can do ahead would be good.

And then there's always schoolwork. Sigh. I suppose I should get to it.