Scary Future Plans

I have just sent off an e-mail to my step-father, telling him that I want to seriously talk to him about buying his old house, and I feel completely out of my depth. 

Last night, he said that he didn't care if he made a profit off of the sale of the house so long as he didn't have to continue paying two mortgages.  I know he and my dad have been struggling these last six months with not being able to sell their old place. Once we went over the numbers (down payments, interest, taxes, insurance, etc) it looked like a monthly mortgage payment would be about $40 more than I pay for my half of the rent right now.  Sure I'd have to pay full utilities myself, but if it's not that much more than my current budgeted housing costs, why not?

There are things to consider, like maintenance and repairs, but I can also deduct the mortgage interest on my taxes next year. (Unless they change the tax code - but with the housing market as it is that's not likely)  All I need to do is determine how much money I can use as a down payment and to cover closing costs.

Question 6 in Maryland

Question 6
Referendum Petition
(Ch. 2 of the 2012 Legislative Session)
Civil Marriage Protection Act

Establishes that Maryland’s civil marriage laws allow gay and lesbian couples to obtain a civil marriage license, provided they are not otherwise prohibited from marrying; protects clergy from having to perform any particular marriage ceremony in violation of their religious beliefs; affirms that each religious faith has exclusive control over its own theological doctrine regarding who may marry within that faith; and provides that religious organizations and certain related entities are not required to provide goods, services, or benefits to an individual related to the celebration or promotion of marriage in violation of their religious beliefs.

I have had an interesting discussion about marriage today.  My sister and her girlfriend have recently moved in together and they were discussing the future.  As the mature adults they are, they've decided that they aren't going to seriously consider marriage until they see how the next year goes.  Living with someone is entirely different from dating and you learn so much more about the person when you have to work through everyday challenges and problems.  But the idea is on the table for future discussion and is not disagreeable to either of them.  However, they don't want to just have a Wedding and then think of themselves as married.  They want their marriage to be legally recognized and protected.  So I now have completely selfish reasons to want Maryland to pass the Same-Sex Marriage legislation on Tuesday.

They also discussed what happens if legislation is passed that will not recognize Same-Sex Marriages on the Federal level.  The possibility, given careers and other life events, of my sister and her girlfriend moving to another country for these legal protections is not out of the question.  I've written before about how close my sister and I are and that I wish we lived closer to each other.  So if our country fails to recognize this civil right of its citizens, they will push my sister further away from the family.  For so many people, the Same-Sex Marriage legislation is an abstract concept.  It's something that has no bearing on their lives whatsoever, except to say that it does or does not hold with their belief system.  This will directly affect my family and it makes me so nervous about the outcome of Tuesday's election. 

My Business Law professor has talked about it several times in class.  He brings it up every time we study a law that has the marriage caveat.  He doesn't give his opinion or tell us what we should think, he just offers us the facts and tells us to make up our own minds.  Right now we're studying property law.  I didn't realize that if my father were to get in a car accident and be sued for medical bills, that he and my step-father would be forced to sell their house so that dad's half of the assets would cover that debt.  If their marriage were legally recognized in the state of Maryland, their house would be protected. And there are so many instances where a marriage license provides this automatic protection or entitlement.  Yes, there are a lot of other legal protections a same-sex couple could put in place without a marriage license but there isn't an alternative for this property right.  My dad and his husband would be treated the same as if my sister and I owned a house together no matter what.

Our entire society is structured to encourage people to get married, for religious purposes or not.  A read through Samhita Mukhopadhyay's Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life provides excellent examples of how we're taught that one is not really an adult or successful until one is married.  Yet, as a society, we deny homosexuals the ability to do so.  How can one look at our society, with its social and legal structures, and tell me that marriage is strictly a religious thing? 

30 days to live....

The theme of the Easter sermon I heard on Sunday was "30 days to live" and the pastor asked everyone what they would do if they found out they only had that long left in their lives.  He was trying to make a point about how we live our lives on a daily basis and what we should be focused on instead.  Basically, stop worrying about keeping up with the Joneses and start thinking about the legacy you're leaving here on Earth.  Pastor Skip, I'll call him, gave a list of things that he would do if he only had 30 days to live and, though they were admirable, they were not the first things that popped into my mind.

If I were told, with absolute certainty, that I was going to die in 30 days and there wasn't anything I could do about it, I would probably spend the first day completely shell shocked.  The next day I'd probably cry, the third I'd fall apart completely, and by the fourth I would make a list of all the things I wanted to do before my final day.

1. I'd fly my mother up to Maryland.
2. I'd fly my sister up to Maryland.
3. Take the trip to Japan with my sister.
4. See Paris one more time and actually go to the Louvre.
5. Give my 15 year old cousin a driving lesson.
6. Buy the most expensive bottle of Scotch I can find and drink it with my family and friends.
7. Get in a bar fight, knock someone over the head with a bottle, and throw a stool through a window.
8. Go home with a stranger.
9. Get a tattoo.
10. Ride a horse.
11. Swim in the Pacific Ocean.
12. Have a photo session with my photographer friend
13. Challenge my dad to see who can eat the most Goll's Bakery Donuts and Apple Turnovers before getting sick.
14. Break all of my dishes.
15. Throw a huge party and invite everyone.  And the biggest gift had better have a card attached that says, "Thank you, for being a friend." 

So most of these things are not what Pastor Skip had in mind and I did clean up the list a little bit for this entry.  I can't even say my list is that outrageous.  There isn't anything like Sky-Diving or Bull Fighting on here.  Mostly, I would do all the things I was afraid of doing because of the long term consequences.  I would go after the life experiences I wanted but hadn't been able to fit in.  I wouldn't go to work, not even to make it easier for everyone else, and I wouldn't do anything I didn't want to just to make someone else happy.

Which is probably Pastor Skip's entire point.  It's important to take a look at one's life and really question why we do the things we do.  What is important?  How do we waste our time and how could we use that time more effectively?    We are not guaranteed tomorrow, at any age, and we shouldn't take the days we have for granted.

Le Weekend - Or - Revisiting a Childhood You'd Rather Forget

I came off of last weekend, with my sister, feeling very positive and happy.  She really went out of her way to make it special and it meant more than I can say.  This most recent weekend, in contrast, was very disappointing.  It made me feel very alone in a place where I have both family and a social network.  I was headed out to meet the dads for my birthday dinner.   Which sounds like it should be a happy occasion and something that would propel me even further into a good mood, but it didn't end up that way at all.

The dinner reservations were made for 3:00pm on Saturday and I was supposed to meet everyone at the Dads' house at 2:30pm so we could all drive together.  Between getting over this cold that won't seem to go away and trying to catch up on laundry from the trip, I knew I wouldn't make it to my dad's by 2:30.  So I called them as I was headed out of my neighborhood and asked them to text me the address for the restaurant.  I wouldn't make it to their place on time but, as I live closer, I wouldn't be late to the restaurant.  Dad agreed to send the address and ended the call but didn't hang up.  He has this problem of not hitting the "end call" button on his phone and I've gotten numerous phone messages with a lot of background chatter.  Normally this is just amusing, but on Saturday he proceeded to complain after he thought he'd hung up.

I heard him tell the other people in the car that I "always do this" and "couldn't be on time for anything."  His friend, O, offers the suggestion of telling me to meet a half an hour earlier, like she does with her son, so I'll get there in time.  At this point, he realized that his phone was still on and quickly hung up.  Had I not been using the blue tooth feature in my car, I would never have heard the details of the conversation but I did and I proceeded to lose my shit.  I thought about calling back and saying I couldn't make it after all but I knew they had people coming.  So I called my sister in an effort to calm down before I would have to pretend was normal.

I am not a person who is habitually late to things.  I value promptness and see chronic lateness to events as a waste of my time.  I get this from my father.  However, more often than not I will be ready to go at their house and have to wait for one or the other to finish getting ready.  The times I have been late, or called to say I'll meet you there instead, have been due to traffic or having to work late - things completely out of my control.  At first, I felt like my dad's comments were very two-faced and he was putting on some kind of act for his friend.  Second, it made me feel like I was 5 years old again and he had told me he was very disappointed.  I was the kind of kid who would punish herself if told her parents were disappointed in her behavior.

But the part that caused me to have a complete meltdown in my car was the residual effects of living with his last partner.  It was like he was saying I was irresponsible to his friend.  I have a gut reaction to anyone implying or outright saying I am irresponsible, careless, worthless, or stupid.  I know most people would have a strong reaction to this as well, so it shouldn't be surprising.  But I spent almost every day of ten years being told how terrible I was, but never to my face.  My dad's old partner would wait until I was just out of the room, but still in earshot, to say what he really thought of me.  He would wait until my dad wasn't around so that no one would catch him.  He would belittle me and make me feel like I was a terrible person because I came out of my room.  And this is was exactly how this situation on Saturday felt to me.

I know that my dad doesn't intentionally leave his cell phone on after ending a call, but my knee-jerk reaction was feeling like it had been done on purpose.  And then I was 15 years old again, just waiting for someone else to come home so I could breathe, so I didn't feel so alone.  It wrecked that entire feeling I had from the previous weekend and I just wanted to curl up in my room.  But I went to the dinner and I even went to the wine bar with everyone afterwards.  Still, I went home earlier than I would have and just hid in my room the rest of the night.

It was the worst feeling.  And, of course, I haven't said anything to my dad about it.  This is not the type of family we are.  We don't even talk about what happened when he was with his old partner.  We just pretend like everything's okay until it is.

Beach Time with the Fam



At the Lemon Drop - courtesy of Litlesam

 I just spent the last week at the beach with my family.  It was definitely an experience and a break I really needed.

The photo to the right was taken on our last day after we'd packed up the cars and were getting ready to leave for our respective homes.  My dad thinks it looks like a promo shot for a bad family sitcom.  Personally, I think television needs our smiling faces and positive outlook.  Or perhaps that's just me....