Summer Bummer

It's been largely quiet the past couple of weeks. The blogging has slacked off because my radio show launched and not much has happened since the one car slowed down to look at the sign in my front yard a few weeks back.

I'm starting to think I just got in too late. I waited too long and most of the people who were going to buy this summer have already started the tedious, yet soul-crushing process of dealing with the banks.

Still, I hear the Chinese are buying up property in the U.S. Maybe I can talk my realtor into sending some brochures to Beijing. They could put an embassy here or maybe a prison work camp. Whatever works. I'm sure the county commission would be happy to have them. 

I also got my lawnmower back, but I'm sick of yard work. I'm sick of it and would be happy to pave the whole damned thing and turn the backyard into a trailer park, if I just had the money.

Money is the new, old worry. My mortgage went up in July. This happens, apparently. Taxes go up. The value of property goes up, which means taxes go up some more. Then there's insurance which probably goes up with the increase in value, inflation or just because Jesus said so.

I have no idea what the reason is. I got a note about it a couple of months ago, warning me it was coming, explaining in detail why this was happening and how I could avert it by simply giving them the money up front.

I didn't study the reasons, I just looked at the number and said, "Fuck, like I need this."

When they raised the monthly two years ago, I had the money. I paid it and that felt good. This time around, there is no extra money. I stay in a perpetual state of tension. There's barely enough just to get by, let alone take a handful of well-earned days to just relax.



I can hardly stand to look at all the pictures of people on vacation this summer. You see them on Facebook. Old friends who are in France and not for the first time, guys I knew in college taking their kids to Italy and vague acquaintances headed like lemmings to the ocean.


Envy is unbecoming in someone who has been so very much blessed, who has been given so many wonderful things, and I am so grateful for what I have, but I am envious and it makes my heart bitter.

Just not bitter enough to start going to Tea Party rallies. Those fools are crazy.

So, the new normal is to pay $60 more a month, raising my mortgage it to $750 a month, which well-meaning friends tell me is the going rate for a decent two-bedroom apartment in Charleston --at least in the parts where you don't have to worry too much about getting stuck in the ribs with a sharpened screwdriver.

That's what they tell me. For what I have, I'm getting a bargain they say.

"Plus you've got all that land."


They're probably right. This is what everybody wants. This is paradise.