Pollen, Dirt Bikes, and Chocolate

CP got out on the bike this weekend...twice.  On Saturday we went over to a friend's house and she was able to ride with someone her size.  It was a short ride, but she enjoyed it anyway.  I hope to get her over her fear of anything other than flat ground, so we went out to a local spot on Sunday for more riding to burn off some of that chocolate and Jelly Belly sugar.  

I got to ride Jason's latest bike.  He's been hemming and hawing about wanting to sell it and find a little more power and I've been wanting to ride the darned thing before he does.  I got 4 minutes on it Sunday and came back stammering like Timothy Busfield's character in Field of Dreams; "don't sell this bike, don't, don't, don't sell this bike!  It went exactly where I put it, did exactly I wanted without trouble or without having to do more than just think about where I wanted to go...quickly.  It's just amazing.  Don't sell this bike, indeed.

At first, CP was adamant about not wanting to ride the trails, but after following her uncle Jason around a part of the trail for a bit, it's all she wanted to do.  She had a blast and I was happy to see her out on a new adventure.

It seems that the time for pollen is upon us.  My face and teeth were hurting this morning when I woke up.  Ughh....  This just after we're all shaking off the loss of our sweet Violet this past weekend.  It's a different place without her, but we're glad for the time we had with her.

News, Good and Bad

Today's tax day and we heard some good news this morning.  We don't owe uncle sammy anything and even better, we get something back.  Combine this with the LW making her final payment on the student loan this morning and we should wipe our debt slate clean this month except for a house and vehicle.  Pretty nice to have that done, but soon thereafter Violet, the aged kitty, started acting strange and needed a vet trip.  It seems that she's in the latter stages of kidney failure and it's only the latest of her maladies.  It seems as though she's had kitty dementia for a while now.  18 years makes for an old cat.  This may be her final week basking in the sun; we'll see.

Old Peeps and Suess Hats

My folks are in town this weekend for a neice birthday and dropped by to visit this morning.  It was good to see them.  Mom mentioned that CP has grown so much since the last time they saw her and I reminded her that she only sees her once every six months or so.  Here I was thinking that retirement meant that you got out and went places, but it seems the only places they've been lately have been doctors' offices, hospital visits, and taking care of aging parents.

I feel bad for them.  This should be a good time for them, and in some ways, I guess it is.    It does seem though, that just as they come up for a breath of air, something else happens.  Health and aging issues are usually the culprit, with a good dose of Charcot Marie Tooth disease and related problems with bad feet and inability to heal from simple wounds thrown in for good measure.

Suessical was this week and the kid did well.  I was dumbfounded at the work that the school's music teacher was able to coax out of all of these 2nd graders, who scatter like ants, mentally and physically, at the drop of a (red and white striped) hat.

Yesterday was the GS troop Thinking Day and it was good for CP and the rest of the troop to begin to open their eyes to the world outside this tiny speck.  CP's troop had a presentation about Madagascar and I hope that they learned something about the place aside from the humor in the animated Disney version.  French colonization and the remnants of it maybe, or speciation and what happens when a part of a continent is cleaved away by drift, who knows.  If nothing else, they were exposed to maps and the idea that this world is at once a big place and a small piece of dust in the grand scheme of things.

Today is a rainbow loom class from the great folks who moved on from being Big Art, Little Masters, where CP learned the color wheel at the ripe old age of four.  Their latest gig is called Silver Tree Visual Arts and I'm sure the upcoming report will be wonderful.  Kristen and Ken do amazing work with the little ones.

Salty Wash

It's starting to thaw around here.  Everywhere and everything is drip, drip, dripping.  This afternoon there were tons of folks at the car wash and they were all getting ripped off.  I wash cars for a living, so I can see the ebb and flow of lunacy in real time.  Today was the first day of what promises to be a 6 day thaw.  Now, I'm all for washing cars, so don't get me wrong.  The thing is that there are a lot more days of salty thaw spray on the roads and it makes more sense to wash the car after all of that has happened.  Why waste $10 when it's going literally, not just figuratively, ...right.down.the.drain?

CP's been out of school more than in for the past two weeks.  She was out for snow days, then out for sickness, then went back for half a day and will be out until Tuesday for conferences or whatever.  Sheesh.  I finally made the call and enlisted the help of the grands down the street so that the LW wouldn't completely lose her $hit and start baring her teeth whenever I walk into the room.  She does that sometimes anyway.  CP is doing good in school and loves math.  Yayyyy!!

I was watching her do round offs before she left for gym class and wondered when she did all of that growing.  It seems as though the last time I looked at her she still wasn't 4' tall.  Time is flying and she's an expert pilot.

I picked up a file cabinet today in the hopes of clearing some floor space and it appears to be a success.  A local contractor was getting rid of some stuff and I was able to help her out and get a great deal.  $40...sweeeet!  I'll be buying a furnace motor soon too.  Ours has a dead spot in it and sometimes won't start.  That's really fun when it's 4 degrees out.

Snow Days or Thank You Roku!

We're on snow day #3 here and the wind chill is -8 at 9:15am with the sun shining.  There's close to a foot of snow on the ground.  We're saved it seems, by Netflix and access to My Little Pony and old AFV shows.  Cady had a play date on the first day and we had some fun in the Jeep just clowning around when the only folks out were few and far between.  Yesterday, we dug out the neighbor's car and just flopped around the house.  In the evening, a friend came over to play and stayed over.  More My Little Pony!

Don't get me wrong, it's fun hearing all of the laughing, giggling, and imaginative play.  The LW and I were just talking about it last night.  As an only child, she puts a good amount of load on us as parents and playmates at times.  We really enjoy watching her play with others and seeing where they go on their tiny big adventures.

Man, uh, I fell asleep...

No, not really, but to look at this blog, it sure seems that way.  Lately I, like a lot of others it seems, are growing tired of some social media sites and the jackassery that seems all to common within those walls.  Sometimes I'd like to just remain ignorant of the fact that most of the people I know through my hobbies don't share my "values".

I do know one thing though.  I love this kid...and her mom.

NationStar Nightmare

If your bank should happen to fail or something else happens and you wind up having to work with NationStar Mortgage out of texas, then you'd better prepare yourself for a slog. Our bank failed late last year and fell into receivership by the FDIC. No real shock there, since it was owned by a nutbar, but we had to do business there to get into the 203K program at the time.

Well, after the FDIC was done juggling things for a while, they handed our mortgage off to Simmons First bank after they were done. Well, the account numbers from FDIC note about where we should send our payment got messed up and we ended up paying the mortgage on someone else's house, who just so happened to not be making payments of his own. Well, maybe he was, but they were being applied to someone else's house....

Anyway, it took 8+ hours on the phone with various people in texas to get just this part figured out. They had to go into the account, find out what we had paid into the mixed up account, then pull it back out and put it in another account while it all got sorted out. It finally got kinda sorted out then a month later, I got a loan statement saying that there had been more money that wasn't applied to our account so we only owed $154.44 for the month. Ok, fine...it doesn't surprise me at this point. Well, the following statement says that I missed an entire payment now for that month and that I owe basically two months of mortgage payments. SWEEEET! More time on hold with people at NationStar and now they tell me that I only paid $130 and change and that I owe them the remaining money. WTF? People.

Later this week, I'm sure that I'll get news that they can't figure out what's going, I'll have to chew some lower level CS team manager's arse and then I'll go ahead and finally file a complaint with the AG's office in texas and with the Austin BBB to see what happens.

If your loan lands with these folks, or your broker suggests them, don't do it. You may just be the person to push this company past the 500 complaints mark. If you do take a chance and go ahead with them, I just hope that you end up on hold behind me, not in front.