wow.

Okay, I know I’m at work and I know I am buried in projects and I know I really should not be flinging all my folders into the air and abandoning my duties in favor of OD…. but hey, I am. I am also very very very happy that it is Friday afternoon. And I get to escape for two days!

I am still plowing though the graduation audits, but I seem to be on an endless run of Art students. You would think Art would be my favorite department, since I am all arty and right-brained myself. Boy is it SO not my favorite department. Art, being all arty and stuff, has the most bizarre, crazy-making, idiotic Checksheets From Hell there could possibly be. Nothing makes any sense at all. Nothing is in any sort of order whatsoever. Some classes show up three times on the same checksheet in three different places. Other classes never show up at all even though they are acceptable classes. We just kind of have to be able to pluck that handy info out of the arty ether. And the advisors always make substitutions for about half the required classes and then don’t tell us. It is really really awful. And I’ve worked and worked and worked today, fighting my way through Art major after Art major after Art major… and just pulled out yet another Art major who is also doing the Nightmare General Education program that is even WORSE than trying to figure out Art, and on top of THAT, she is minoring in not one, but TWO subjects that I have never even heard of. How is that even possible?!? Damned if I know! I have decided that is IT, I GIVE UP!! Time for a very long break.

Where the hell are all the Communication majors?? They’re easy.

It’s been a difficult week all around. And I should really not be whining about my job and the mean old Art Department, because at least I am not going through what poor Miss Artsy has been going through. Miss Artsy’s situation has contributed hugely to the difficulty of the week, because it has been DRAMA!!!FEST!!!! all.week.LONG. And unlike our long departed Draaaaaaaaama Queen, this drama is not Miss Artsy’s fault. Well, in a way it is, but mostly it’s because she is too trusting and has ignored a situation that has now become a massive crisis. Miss Artsy is not ordinarily a draaaaaaama queen at ALL. But Miss Artsy is having a way way worse week than any of us… not just week, but month. Not just month either- this has drug on for nearly two years now. 

Okay. I will try to be brief. Hahahahaha! Quite some time ago- maybe a year and a half, maybe a little more- Miss Artsy came in to work in a state of panic. The evening before, she had picked up her kid at school, arrived at their house, and found a foreclosure sign on the door. Miss Artsy had no clue in this whole world that her husband had NOT BEEN PAYING THE MORTGAGE. None whatsoever. She also had no clue as to exactly where the mortgage money went, since as far as she knew they were not so short of funds that they couldn’t pay the mortgage. 

Miss Artsy confronted her husband, who is the Bill Payer, and pretty much got nothing out of him other than tears (apparently the husband weeps when she’s all mean to him like that. It seems to be a pattern). He had made several incomplete payments, and then had not made a payment at all in a couple of months. Hence the foreclosure notice on the door. The long and short of it is that Miss Artsy never did find out where the money meant for the mortgage went. Maybe it never existed. He is a private contractor and business was slow. She didn’t really know exactly how much money he was bringing in. And does not have access to her own bank account. And he wouldn’t tell her anything. She finally deduced (rationalized) that he just is terrible at paying the bills and he fell apart and quit paying the mortgage because he was afraid they would run out of money and he felt so much guilt at being a bad provider that he couldn’t admit it. 

Yeah. Right. 

Anyhow, oddly this all kind of faded away as they did some sort of attempt at a mortgage modification and nothing ever happened. I’d ask her about it periodically and things were always still up in the air but they were getting a modification and the husband was taking care of it! So that drama kind of faded away and she went to counseling by herself because he would not go, and she did NOT take MY advice and take over the bill paying herself and make sure she knew exactly what was going on with their finances. I told her my own MUCH less horrifying tale about when Baker B and I were first married, he took on the Bill Payer role because I really really REALLY hate it, and it took about six months and a number of late payments and a cancelled credit card for me to jerk the bill paying duties right back from him. Baker B’s idea of bill-paying was to wait for the cut-off notice to appear on the door, and then go down to the electric company’s office and pay all the electric bills at once. And then start the cycle over. So I’ve paid the bills for 20-whatever years, hating it the entire time, but our credit is sterling.

Miss Artsy is a devout Christian and I am pretty certain a lot of this has to do with that whole Husband is The Boss! thing and The Man Takes Care Of The Money Stuff! thing and how she’s the wife so has to be all submissive and stuff. I of course don’t get that at all, but I did try to enlighten her as to how duties in a marriage need to be divided up by who is actually good at them, as opposed to who is the man and who is the inferior submissive woman, even if you’re into that kind of division of the sexes. 

But whatever. Nothing happened for ages. Which did seem odd, but I know the banks are bogged down in foreclosures. She went back to being all understanding and forgiving and didn’t even have much of a freak out when her debit card got declined at the grocery store not long ago, despite the fact that they REALLY should have plenty of money since they hadn’t even been PAYING the mortgage for all this time. 

Nothing happened until about two weeks ago. When they had another notice on their door saying they had 10 days to get out. That was on a Friday, and on Saturday she found out that her house had been sold at auction that morning. Monday she still didn’t know what was going on. The Husband was working things out! They do have a lawyer and the lawyer was working on it too. Now I can’t remember the exact order of events, but since then it has been a constant wildly swinging pendulum (or wrecking ball) of "We have to move!" "We don’t have to move – the auction was illegal!" "We do have to move – the bank gave our paperwork to Freddy Mac and we have to get out!" "We don’t have to move — the bank made a mistake!!" 

Seriously. Every.Single.Day. Miss Artsy has been about to lose her mind, and we’re all about to lose ours right along with her. She stayed home and packed yesterday, thinking they had to move. Then found out yet again that there was some other mistake somewhere and they DON’T have to move. 

Since everything that has happened is coming to her via her husband, who is "taking care of it", I kind of expect her to come home and find a big lock on the door. She doesn’t seem to have anything at all in writing other than the initial foreclosure letter and the "ten days to get out" notice. I’m sure the husband is not telling her anywhere near all of the story. And I have no clue as to why she has allowed it to come to this state. I told her way back when it started to BE SURE she is in on ALL the developments, and to take control of the finances. Stop letting him handle it!!! Even if he is just incompetent and not a lying devious son of a bitch, she needs to have equal access to all the financial stuff. 

Oh, and when this all exploded last week, she was blaming evil Bank of America because the husband had only paid two payments late, and they foreclosed!!! 

Ummm, yeah- changed her story totally. She is completely delusional. And I am SO SORRY for her, but this is what happens when you just sit back and wait for your Superior God-Assigned husband to fix a catastrophe that he caused in the first place. And I’m not berating her for her beliefs- I just think you have got to take responsibility for your own life and not wait for God or your husband or whoever to take care of everything for you. She’s just had this "God will take care of it!" attitude, when I’m kind of thinking she may be finding herself living in a cardboard box because God is trying to teach her to think for herself. 

Well, I’ve certainly spent enough time telling The Sad Tale of Miss Artsy. I really really REALLY hope that the modification DID go through and she’s not going to get booted out of her house. And I am SO GLAD it’s Friday.