I no longer have any idea how many days remain until my house is foreclosed upon by Bank of America.  What a weird lender they are losing all of this money with their backwards bureaucracy of dealing with homeowners unable to make their mortgage payments.  I’ve spent the past year making dozens and dozens of phone calls proposing all sorts of solutions to our problem to no avail.  The next time I speak with them I’m going to propose the following loan modification:  they should forgive both the first and second mortgage on my house.  We’ll call it even for all the bureaucratic hell I’ve been through over the last year of my life.  That’s the same year I will never get back.  They’ll probably say ‘no’ but it’s worth a shot.  I could hire a loan modification expert.  Every day there’s a new flyer in the mail trying to get me to pay some firm gobs of money to “save my house and modify my mortgage”.  No thank you I’m too busy thinking about what it’s going to be like when I have to move out of this house.

It’s December 31st, 2008.  I’m helping two friends move into a beautiful bungalow in the hills they’ve just rented.  I want to live there.  They have a swimming pool.  I have a swimming pool.  That’s no big deal.  Theirs is solar-heated and costs nothing to turn to bathwater.  Mine is gas-heated and costs me a fortune every time I turn on the heater (mostly because I leave it on for a week before remembering to turn it off).  Their neighborhood is quaint.  My neighborhood is quaint but with a BIG FOOTNOTE (here’s why and here’s another reason why).  They’re in the hills.  I’m in the hills – sort of.  That’s where the similarities end and here’s where the differences begin:  They have a view of the city.  I do not.  They’re renters and when something goes awry it is fixed on the landlord’s dime.  I’m a homeowner and when repairs are required it goes unfixed because I’m my own landlord who can’t rub two pennies together let alone two dimes.  I pay twice as much a month for my mortgage as they do for their rent and I’d rather live in their house.  This picture is so wrong I can’t see right.  Something is wonky about the housing market (obviously) and if my hands weren’t wrapped around a moving box I might be able to put one of my fingers on the reason why.

Helping good friends move their worldly possessions from one locale to another is my idea of a good time, especially on this occasion.  The ordeal was like a life-size game of Tetris.  I really like Tetris.  If there were a singular image that represented what goes on in my brain at any given moment it would be a perpetual game of Tetris… played in reverse.  I like taking stuff apart.  I don’t like putting it back together.  I’ve done that with my life and it’s working out pretty well so far if you ask me.  Between an unresolved foreclosure, decimated retirement savings from stupid gambles in the stock market and a freelance career that sometimes makes me wish I just could be satisfied with working at kinkos I've got more balls dangling in midair than—well, I’d rather not say.  This is why I’m drawn to a game like Tetris whether it be life-size or otherwise.  Did you know that if you turn a couch on end and rotate it 45 degrees toward the rear corner of a Uhaul a queen-sized, rolled-up memory foam mattress will fit perfectly inside it?  That sort of knowledge must be worth something… somewhere… someday.  And to think it only took me four tries to figure it out.  Actually, I think it was the moving guy who figured it out but in all honesty I was the one sipping on a bottle of Evian while telling him to take stuff out and then put it back in and then take stuff out again and put it back in so I deserve the credit. Thank you.

This moving guy is awesome and came straight from the pages of craigslist.  We’ll call him Tony to protect the innocent.  I’m the innocent in this instance because Tony is a big strong guy who could take me apart tooth by tooth with his right pinky finger.  For my machismo part, I’m reasonably confident I could get in a hair pull or two and maybe even a few bites to Tony’s arm or leg before crying uncle to save my last tooth from extraction by his fist.  Also, I will soon require Tony’s services for my move and cannot afford to spoil the relationship.  He’s very, very reasonably priced.

Over a quick break for some lunch Tony and I got to chatting.  I was curious to know what made this guy tick.  Again, I like to take things apart and what lived inside Tony’s brain was my project du jour.  I asked him how he got into the freelance moving business and he muttered something about being laid off from a mattress delivery job when business went bust, working at a gym and so on and so forth.  I’d almost stopped listening at this point until I caught the words “mortgage broker” somewhere at the tail end of his elevator speech.  If his mouth had just one more piece of chicken shawarma crammed in it I’d have missed the mention altogether.  If there were a phone within arm’s reach I’d hold it.  Mortgage broker?!  I peppered him with questions about going from mortgage broker to freelance “man with a van” on craigslist.  His story was what one would expect:  When the housing market started to fail and lending dried up the brokerage company he worked for did too.  Now he makes ends meet by working part time as a trainer at a gym and helping people move their stuff with his truck.  Some might see this as depressing.  I see it as refreshing.  Talk about good old-fashioned pull yourself up by your boot straps.  I admire that but I don’t aspire to it.  Blech.  Sounds like too much effort to someone with such an impractical approach to life as me.  I like my American dream in the form of one big score without a lot of work, especially when it comes to manual labor.  As we wrapped up lunch Tony confided in me that he wasn’t going to be in the freelance moving business much longer.  His buddy just got hired as a loan modification consultant at an unscrupulous law firm and he intended to follow in his friend’s footsteps.  For $3500 they (like many other loan mod places) will unsuccessfully attempt to modify your loan.  As we parted ways I told him I’d be calling him the next time I needed a mover and wished him luck in his new endeavor.

The irony of the situation was almost lost on me until I gave it some thought the other day while helping a friend move into a new apartment.  The guy you hire to get the loan to buy the house you can’t afford is the same guy you hire to help you make it more affordable is also the same guy you’ll hire to help you move out when the bank forecloses on you.  Man, Tony’s got it all figured out.

I think it’s time to troll craigslist – not for apartments or movers but for a used van.  One day I might need a few shekels and having a van might help.  So would bigger arms.  I think I’ll just show up with the van and let those that hire me do all the heavy lifting while I sip on a bottle of Evian.