The first attack occurred at the end of August when my lender issued a 30-day postponement of foreclosure setting the new date to September 29^th, right in the middle of Rosh Hashanah.  Idiot my lender is.  Some of my best friends are Jewish… but I am not.  Tee hee hee hee hee.  This evil-witch-cackle sorely underestimated my foe’s resolve as they launched a second offensive issuing yet another 30-day postponement of foreclosure.  This bombardment possessed more precision as it landed on October 28^th, a few days before Halloween.  While I would love nothing more than to be anybody else than me this year, the resulting packing frenzy left me no time or energy to return fire with a costume for the holiday.  That’s okay because I launched the counterattack to end all counterattacks last week by purchasing three boxes of candy cleverly disguised as breakfast:  Count Chocula, Boo Berry and Frankenberry cereal.  Ha!  Suck on that… um… suckas?  I feed the munitions into my stomach over the course of two days just to show them who’s Boss… Hogg.  These puffs made from refined, genetically modified corn can’t be all that bad for me.  Chocolate is a fruit… I think.

And now this latest 30-day postponement schedules my foreclosure for November 25^th, the day before Thanksgiving.  Will it happen?  I hope so.  Otherwise, the next 30-day postponement will batter me during the biggest holiday season of the year: [INSERT HOLIDAY OF CHOICE: Ashura, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, etc.].   It’s sure to be the last because, according to my calendar calculations, the next opportunity for my lender to launch its holiday ruination strike isn’t until February 22^nd, 2010 when George Washington’s birthday rolls into town.  Who in their right mind celebrates that holiday?  Given my penchant for going along with this loan modification review process of late, probably me. 

It’s May 21^st, 2009.  I am no longer hot on the trail of the Making Home Affordable Plan after learning months ago it only targets Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans (and a handful of other lenders, mine excluded).  Cradling the phone to my ear and listening to my lender’s hold music, I patiently await the opportunity for an update on the status of my pre-application for an application for pre-loan-modification review.  Yes, it’s a mouthful.  I applied over the phone several weeks prior and was told a loan specialist would ring me within seven to ten days to discuss the process.  The phone never rang and I’m on hold with my lender to find out why.  

A customer service representative’s voice breaks the dullness of the hold music and promptly announces my pre-application for the application for loan modification for loan-modification-in-review was rejected.  “We were unable to reach you,” the customer service rep says with just a hint of snottiness.  I want to reach through the phone and wipe his runny nose with a pile of mashed potatoes and gravy but instead calmly scan my phone’s incoming call and voicemail log.  “According to my records there were no attempts by Bank of America to reach me,” I assert.  He tells me according to his records I’m incorrect so I ask for specific dates and times of these alleged attempts to reach me.  “We don’t keep a log of those,” he responds failing to notice the incongruence of his statements.  I’m accustomed to such nonsense by now.  “Oh I get it.  Bank of America hired telepaths to handle the loan modification process for their borrowers.  Duh.  My bad,” I acquiesce.  This isn’t said out loud.  There’s no need because the B of A telepaths are already inside my head.

I could go around in circles all day with this guy bending his absence of critical thoughts into origami baseball bats and beating him senseless with them but I see no point.  No amount of verbal violence is going to save my house from foreclosure.  Besides, this entire conversation proves he’s already senseless.  I ask him how someone such as myself might fall back into the good graces of the loan modification pre-application process.  “By reapplying,” he answers.  Okay… “I would like to re-apply for a loan modification,” I say with sarcasm that flies right over his birdbrain.  A barrage of financial questions follows.  My buddies Ernst, Young, Deloitte and Touche are not in the room with me.  I could guestimate on the answers if my life depended upon it but something tells me there’s a complex algorithm just waiting to reject the application if I answer incorrectly.  My dwelling’s life depends upon correct answers.  Thankfully the representative suggests I prepare the proper information and call back at a later time.  Whew.  It’s the first time he’s said anything that makes sense in the entire conversation.  Now I don’t have to beat him.  CLICK.  I hang up the phone and wonder if they’ll hire specialists in telekinesis to remove me and my belongings from the house after foreclosure.  An environmentally sound move like this sounds good to me.

Subsequent due diligence of pouring over financial records and a follow up phone call to the lender qualifies me for the main event:  The application process wherein I prepare and fax a 46-page document containing bank statements, budgets, tax returns, profit-loss statements and a hardship letter to Bank of America’s Home Retention Department.  The file took days to assemble but five grueling weeks laden with fiasco after fiasco to get it into the lender’s record books.  The affair looked something like this:  The lender confirms receipt of the 46-page document and says they’ll be in touch if they find it lacking any necessary information.  One week later I’m mysteriously booted from the application process because Bank of America claims they do not have the documents both they and my fax records confirm they had.  I go back to square one answering the pre-application questions and re-fax the 46 pages of financial embarrassment.  Once again, my fax confirmation and a phone call to the lender substantiate a successful delivery.  Believe it or not this charade of incompetency on my lender’s part repeats itself two more times until finally, on June 26^th I force an unwilling customer service representative to definitively confirm my faxed documents were scanned into the lender’s system… page by page.  I am officially past the pre-application for the application and crowned with “Application for Loan Modifation Review” status.  OY VE!

That crown is still wrapped around my throbbing melon.  An  article in The Washington Post echoes the frustrations of the process stating,

“The company's effort has been hamstrung by a staff shortage and by adapting its computer systems and even fax machines to the scale of the program, which began in March.”

In hopes of avoiding war I approached the lender with diplomacy.  They responded with incompetency and pinned me down with their loan-modification-review ray gun.  They’re trying to break me without firing a single shot.  What the lender doesn’t realize is the battle was over eons ago when they broke my spirit, my heart, my relationships and my vitality with their big, fat foreclosure foot.  They even broke my Rock Band drum pedal.  Bastards!  Okay, that last one was a lie.  I broke the pedal with my big, fat flubbing foot during a failed attempt at Fall Out Boy’s Dead On Arrival.  It was a last ditch effort to rescue a little dignity from the financial fire consuming my life.  An audience of one, my cat, watched as I set the drums to EASY mode, smashed the crap out of the plastic pedal and still managed to get booed off the stage.  Man, I suck.  If I were a rock star none of this would be happening.  Unless I’m Rich Robinson, founding member and guitarist for the Black Crowes, who lost his home to foreclosure last January.  Forget rock stardom.  I’ve got a better idea.  I’ll get a job working in my lender’s Home Retention Department.  According to the same Washington Post article it looks like they’re hiring:

"The number of employees handling loan modifications for Bank of America has doubled this year to 11,000, and the bank still has 240 openings. It plans to open another facility in Fort Worth by the end of the year staffed with 300 more employees, and then it would add yet another 300 by the middle of 2010."

If by some miracle of miracles they hire me I’ll reject my own loan modification the first day on the job and then promptly quit.  Rest assured, they’ll get no two-week notice from me.