I have no idea how many days remain until my lender, Bank of America, forecloses on my house and boots me out.  My house no longer exists on their website that handles foreclosure auction sale dates and postponements so there’s no telling what is going on.  A public auction of my house was to occur on January 4^th, 2010 and to my knowledge no such event took place.  For the past six months my file has sat in a backlogged loan modification review database waiting on final approval for a mortgage payment that will be $400 or $500 more per month than the one I already can’t afford.  This “modification” has yet to be officially offered to me and so the foreclosure has been postponed on 4 previous occasions just one day before the house is to go up for public auction.  However, this time around I received no automatic postponement for reasons I do not know.  It behooves me to call my lender and get the scoop on the situation but there are far more pressing matters on my plate at the moment - like teaching my cat to fetch.  The orange ball of fur that rules my roost with an iron fist (but not an iron stomach as the constant threat of feline vomitus looms around every corner and keeps me on and off my toes) is getting restless. 

The fetching lesson didn’t exactly work out and now the cat finally understands what true disappointment and failure feels like.  As his instructor I’m not the least bit disappointed because I did my part with the adept tossing of the twisty tie across the kitchen floor for 45-minutes nonstop while he just stared at it and rubbed up against my leg.  It’s his fault he can’t grasp the fundamentals of fetching - not mine.  I tried cheering him up by explaining how the venture beats the heck out of a 45-minute conversation with one of Bank of America’s Home Retention customer service representatives but he simply responded by barfing on my pillow.  Touché.  As soon as I can figure out why the lender uses the word retention in this department’s moniker I’ll give them a call.  Until then I’ll skulk around the house in a state of paranoia because my sanity was the first item to be defenestrated by this year-long process.  I want it back ASAP because next on the list of distractions from foreclosure is training the cat to be a professional beer pong player.  If he reads this he’s going to claw my eyes out while I sleep, I just know it.

While taking a post-run shower last night and admiring the overpriced rain showerhead elegantly protruding from the ceiling above me and the wall-to-ceiling natural stonework that both collaborated to drain my savings account during the remodel, I nearly fell in love with the house again.  That is a big no-no.  I had to cast my eyes downward to the faded spot near the drain where the re-glazing of the cast iron tub is beginning to wear away and hope it would drive me nuts.  It didn’t so I creatively visualized a large chunk of frozen airliner sewage crashing through the roof and into the living room.  I envision this occurring when I’m away for a few days so it can properly melt and contaminate the house beyond repair.  In this same fantasy world the cat is also not home because he’s in Vancouver preparing to represent the U.S. in Ice Table Tennis for the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics.  As I stand under the warm streams of water dreaming about the lucrative endorsement deals the cat will bring in to save the house at the 11^th hour there’s a loud knock at the door.  It’s 8pm-ish.  I’m not expecting anyone.  Uh oh.  The knocking comes with a quality that is definitely not friendly or familiar.  If ever there were a time to wet myself this would be it.  I’m in the shower.  The cleanup would be effortless.  I listen intently to the next set of knocks trying to decipher the intentions of whoever waits on the other side of my front door.  The speed at which one knock follows another does not suggest an emergency.  I know what that knock sounds like from a previous experience (you can read about it here).

 “Gawd, I’m getting good at decyphering thuds on the front door,” I think to myself and consider applying for a government economic stimulus research grant to study the sound qualities of knocking.  There’s gotta be good money in that right?  The knocking continues and I come to only one conclusion:  if these knocks could talk they’d be saying something like this, “Answer this goddamn door right now. There's some serious shit we need to discuss.”  Oh gawd, that’s how a sheriff knocks during an eviction process I bet.  Can they hear the shower running?  Probably not.  I worry the sound of the water hitting my body will sound like... um... water hitting my body and decide to move out from underneath it.  This is just a precaution in case the person on my front porch possesses superhuman hearing abilities and determines that in fact, someone is home.  Why such a person with this kind of talent would be working for the sheriff’s department never enters my mind.  During my clumsy attempt to avoid the deluge of water streaming down upon me I knock over the shower squeegee perched precariously at the edge of the tub.  It clangs and bounces around against the cast iron tub surface for what feels like an eternity and at a decibel level equivalent to the detonation of an Atom Bomb.  Normally this seemingly harmless device’s sole purpose is to prevent hard water stains from living on my glass shower doors but on this particular night it wants to prevent me from living one extra day in my house.  I’m a kind and thoughtful person so I choose not to blame the squeegee and turn my ire toward the hard water provided to me by the city – the same city that is providing the sheriff I assume is standing on my front porch.  In that moment I promise myself if I make it through just one more night in the house I’ll run for mayor in the next election and do something about all of this… after I’ve moved into the mayor’s mansion, declared a 2-day work week, instructed the servants how I like my underwear folded and hired Bobby Flay as my personal Mayoral Chef.

I stand waiting in the shower for…ever.  That’s the same amount of time in which it takes whoever is knocking at my door to give up and go home.  For the next hour I gingerly walk around the house certain that the source of the knock is still waiting either on the porch or on the sidewalk.  I feel ridiculous and cowardly.  If I had any guts at all I’d have turned off the shower at the first knock and faced the evictors in all of my naked splendor.  At this point going naked in public somehow feels more dignified than the stigma of foreclosure.  I wait about an hour or so before daring to peek outside.  9:00pm is the cutoff time for telemarketers and bill collectors so I’m hoping the rule applies to process servers or sheriff’s deputies.  Opening the door slowly I expect to find a big, fat foreclosure notice slapped on the front of it.  My eyes are closed.  I am fully clothed but not fully prepared to gaze upon what will amount to the last chapter in this book on foreclosure.  Unable and unwilling to look at the door I choose instead to scan the street for suspicious activity.  Nothing.  Gulp.  “Face the door.  Just do it, you fool.  Get this over with,” I say to myself.  And so I do. 

Staring me in the face is a small, yellow and brown notice pasted near the door handle.  My heart sinks as I peel the flimsy paper from its resting place.  A UPS logo in the upper right corner catches my eye.  I’m stunned.  Why and how is UPS in the foreclosure business?  Are they the new owners of my house?  I hope so.  I’m going to need a big discount on ground shipping my possessions to the mental hospital I plan to take up residence in once the foreclosure is completed.  I’m not good at math so it takes me a moment to add 2 and 2 together and realize the UPS notice is for a shipment I’ve been expecting.  My mismanagement of numbers is probably how I lost an inordinate sum of money in the stock market but I like to tell myself each morning it’s because I didn’t properly insert the pins into my Ben Bernanke voodoo doll.  If I had the guts to answer the UPS knock at the door this wouldn’t matter as I’m expecting a Timothy Geithner doll in time for this weekend’s pin-sticking party. 

Seriously though, it’s time to call Bank of America and get a few answers lest I experience a heart attack the next time there’s a knock at the front door.  Perhaps today should be that day.  The cat is staring at me.  I think he wants another go at fetching.  I think the lender can wait… I think.