Vacation in Arkansas
I'm spending the week in Arkansas for my neice's one year old birthday (easily the cutest baby ever born.) We are also residence hunting, and decided to rent a house for a few months until we can decide exactly what we want to buy, and where. It means moving twice, but if it avoids making a bad purchase decision, its worth it. I had a TRUE Arkansas dining experience last night. We went to a joint called the "Backwoods Barn Catfish Buffet." It was called "Backwoods" for a damned good reason. This place was so remote, out this two lane highway, down this barely two laned just-better-than-gravel road, in Goshen, Arkansas (population 762) I am surprised anyone can find it. Its in this old barn, is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights only, and had a line out the door. The buffet is salads (including green tomato relish, usually, I beleive, only served with squirrel stew), corn served in a VAT of butter, and then fried: okra, hush puppies, hashed potatoes, chicken and catfish. I'm hopeful that the entire staff is CPR trained, because they must have at minium one cardiac incident there a day. And the food was incredible. I have more teeth in my mouth than any other 4 other people in there combined. I had a guy in line behind me, easily 400 pounds, who said (in reference to how hungry he was), and I quote, "[to be read with a serious hillbilly accent] I'm so hungry, my backbone is about to rub a hole through my belly button." It don't get no more Arkansas than that there, folks.
Its gonna be good to be home.
Ok, so, I mentioned in a post entitled "Freaked Out" a few days ago that there was a major title issue with selling my home. There appeared on title a judgment lien for $96,000 plus costs and interest (about $122,000 total). At first I was bown-away by this issue, but, after some reason, I thought it was all just a paperwork snag, and that the lien really had already been removed and just not filed. WRONG. The lien existed. It SHOULD have been dealt with at the time of my BK filing by my BK attorney. "Somehow" the secured position of this creditor got "overlooked", the the lien was never figured into the secured position against my home and never faced the homestead exemption and preferential transfer hurdles. WHAT?!?!?! SO, I really DO have a F***ing $122,000 lien against my house which will have to be paid at closing, leaving me with NO EQUITY? It seemed so. The horizon was DARK indeed.
I was able to get in touch with my BK attorney, after camping on his phone line for a day and a half. I think he saw pretty quickly that he had dropped the ball and had his reputation, as well as his malpractice policy, on the line. We could have re-opened the BK case and had the lien removed, but that would bring the trustee back into the matter and, with my house being worth $80,000 more now (3 years later) than it was then, there was a chance that he would remove or lessen the lien, but that HE would want part of the equity. Things seemed dismal, and Melissa and I were just zombied with stress. There were a couple of VERY dark days. Days in which it seemed that we basically had zero net worth (because our net worth is equal to our home equity.) My BK attorney assured me that, at worst, we could negotiate a compromised settlement, and only give away half of our equity. Yahoo!
My BK attorney was able to contact the attorney on the other side (the other attorney wouldn't talk to me) and convince him that if he reopened the case, the creditors would likely get nothing. The creditors, not wanting to spend the moeny to fight about it, offered that, if we would draft the paperwork, they would release the lien. I had expected to have to negotiate SOME buyout lesser than the lien value. We got out for ZERO, nothing, nada. Some good news, at last! Needless to say, I was exctatic. I ran, whooping and hollaring, through my front yard (if you know me...not my personality) in excitement (although reserving some excitment for the time at which I actually had the signed and filed Release in my possession.) Much angst, many lost hours of sleep, and several new gray hairs came free with this ordeal. Today, I got copied on the signed and filed Release. Relief!!
An equally great feature of all of this stress and tension is that, through it all, my mood held fast. Yep, I was stressed, and worried, but I was focused and thinking of ways to work out of this problem, and what we could do in the worst case scenario (not giving up, quitting, and seeing doom in everything in life.) A situation even a fraction of this magnitude a year ago would have sent me into an endless tailspin and I would have been no help at all getting it worked out. ECT has its problems, but it DOES work against depression.
On another topic,
Its gonna be good to be home.
Ok, so, I mentioned in a post entitled "Freaked Out" a few days ago that there was a major title issue with selling my home. There appeared on title a judgment lien for $96,000 plus costs and interest (about $122,000 total). At first I was bown-away by this issue, but, after some reason, I thought it was all just a paperwork snag, and that the lien really had already been removed and just not filed. WRONG. The lien existed. It SHOULD have been dealt with at the time of my BK filing by my BK attorney. "Somehow" the secured position of this creditor got "overlooked", the the lien was never figured into the secured position against my home and never faced the homestead exemption and preferential transfer hurdles. WHAT?!?!?! SO, I really DO have a F***ing $122,000 lien against my house which will have to be paid at closing, leaving me with NO EQUITY? It seemed so. The horizon was DARK indeed.
I was able to get in touch with my BK attorney, after camping on his phone line for a day and a half. I think he saw pretty quickly that he had dropped the ball and had his reputation, as well as his malpractice policy, on the line. We could have re-opened the BK case and had the lien removed, but that would bring the trustee back into the matter and, with my house being worth $80,000 more now (3 years later) than it was then, there was a chance that he would remove or lessen the lien, but that HE would want part of the equity. Things seemed dismal, and Melissa and I were just zombied with stress. There were a couple of VERY dark days. Days in which it seemed that we basically had zero net worth (because our net worth is equal to our home equity.) My BK attorney assured me that, at worst, we could negotiate a compromised settlement, and only give away half of our equity. Yahoo!
My BK attorney was able to contact the attorney on the other side (the other attorney wouldn't talk to me) and convince him that if he reopened the case, the creditors would likely get nothing. The creditors, not wanting to spend the moeny to fight about it, offered that, if we would draft the paperwork, they would release the lien. I had expected to have to negotiate SOME buyout lesser than the lien value. We got out for ZERO, nothing, nada. Some good news, at last! Needless to say, I was exctatic. I ran, whooping and hollaring, through my front yard (if you know me...not my personality) in excitement (although reserving some excitment for the time at which I actually had the signed and filed Release in my possession.) Much angst, many lost hours of sleep, and several new gray hairs came free with this ordeal. Today, I got copied on the signed and filed Release. Relief!!
An equally great feature of all of this stress and tension is that, through it all, my mood held fast. Yep, I was stressed, and worried, but I was focused and thinking of ways to work out of this problem, and what we could do in the worst case scenario (not giving up, quitting, and seeing doom in everything in life.) A situation even a fraction of this magnitude a year ago would have sent me into an endless tailspin and I would have been no help at all getting it worked out. ECT has its problems, but it DOES work against depression.
On another topic,
posted by DeMental at 6:58 PM
6 Comments:
Give yourself some credit, Mike. It can't be the ECT. All the research says its beneficial effects last for only one month, and it's been more than a month since you had it. Also, no research says it has the effects you describe, i.e. being able to better cope with stressful situations.
Well, Grandma, research be damned (and, in many cases, wrong), something has made me better for more than a couple of months now than I have been in 6 or 7 years. I'm not one to beleive in the power of suggestion. So, think what you like, and find ways to support your oppososition to ECT however makes you feel best. But its helped me no matter how you slice it. Alll the research you can dig up can't possibly make YOU more of an expert than ME on my situation.
and I actually said something nice to you!
Believe me, if they could find some way to say ECT does what you claim, they would. But nobody ever has.
You are the one who made yourself better, not some machine.
I appreciate your compliment (and your posts), but I simply don't beleive your conclusion.
I am one strong willed person. I'm too big to run marathons, I've run 6, including one to the top of a 14,000 mountain and back. Just because I decided its what I wanted to do. People don't do 20 mile continuous pool swims (that's 1320 links of a 25 yard pool). I have. No one in my famly has ever graduated from college, much less gotten a law degree and a masters. I did. When I decide to do something, I DO it. If I could have just MADE myself better, I would have.
You really insult the mentally ill with the concept that a mental illness is something that an ill person can just make themselves rid of. I would love to take credit for improving my mental health. As you can see, I like to take pride in my accomplishments. If it wasn't the ECT, then your suggestion seems to be that I just decided to be better. I wish that were true. But it would have happened long before ECT. I wanted to be better. So much so that I wanted to die to end what I was living with.
And, you know as well as I, that I could go out there and find data that says that ECT benefits last longer than a couple of weeks. I've found it before. But so what. You also know as well as I that its no challenge to find research that supports whatever point you are trying to make. Finding data that is meaningful is a different story.
FYI Everyone eats green tomato relish and slaw with fried catfish.
And the only way to eat squirl is to cut it up into strips bread it and fry. Everything is good after it has been battered and fried.
Soooo...about your vacation in Arkansas. tell me more about the old barn catfish place.
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