American woman, stay away from me
American woman, mama let me be
Don’t come hangin’ around my door
I don’t wanna see your face no more
I got more important things to do
Than spend my time growin’ old with you,
American woman, listen what I say.-The Guess Who
Just happened to receive an update on a woman I know. She is sort of a friend of a friend who used to be part of a group that would hang out together. I believe I wrote about her peripherally once way back in the early days of this blog. I won’t force any of you to go back and reread that post, so I’ll just provide the details with a little more depth.
Kim is a short, blockish shaped woman of about 5-feet tall. Her long blond hair is straight and utilitarian. I’m sure she spends exorbitant amount of time fixing her hair, but from my perspective, it doesn’t change much. Kim would be an HB4 at best. Her nose is a little big, her lips are thin, her jaw a tad too strong, and her eyes set just a little too close together for my tastes. She also has a thick nasally accent that is an utter turn off for me.
Now my impression of this gal is that she’s always been a bit of a walking disaster. Let’s see, there was the time with the doper boyfriend. The time with a corrupt cop boyfriend, and her involvement with illegally imported retail goods. Each I suppose seemed like a good idea at the time.
Back in 2005, Kim was a mortgage broker riding the cresting wave of refinanced houses, helocs, cash outs, and move up home buying. These were good times for Kim and she was making money hand over fist. Kim decided to get in on the frenzy and was in the process of purchasing a 4000+ square foot home on an acre of land.
When I inquired as to how she could afford said property, she informed me that she was taking out an option-ARM (that’s adjustable rate mortgage) and that the payments were quite reasonable. I asked her how she was going to be able to afford the loan payment when interest rates reset or the loan was recast. She informed me that no one stays in their homes for very long anymore and that she would just sell the place and take the appreciation money and buy another home. When I asked her what would happen if home prices fell, she told me that they never fall. That made me laugh, which I suspect she didn’t appreciate.
Fast forward to 2008. The housing market has crashed. Nothing and no one is getting funded. Approximately 90% of the mortgage applications they were processing dry up. The company she works for has to downsize and her position is cut. Kim coasts on unemployment, making her minimum payments, but she sees the writing on the wall. She decides to stop payment on her house and wait for the bank to foreclose. All the while she’s running up debt on her credit cards and living like there is no tomorrow. By the beginning of 2009 she’s ready to file for bankruptcy and does so. Her plan is to liquidate everything (except for personal items, don’t you know) and move back in with her mother.
Kim is relieved to have this weight lifted from her shoulders. She goes back to working as an office administrator for a doctor. A job she has done before albeit a bit less prestigious than her former job (at least in her eyes). Kim also meets a new guy who seems like a solid individual. A solid, dependable, white knight.
But trouble does seem to follow this girl, or rather is in a constant state of creation. The loan on her mother’s home, which Kim helped her mother obtain was in default and the bank foreclosed on the property. Kim had helped her mother get an option-ARM too. Her mother had cashed out on her home, and then proceeded to pay the minimum payments. When the loan recast, she couldn’t afford the payments. To top it off, Kim and her mother somehow either didn’t understand the paper work and notices they received, or thought they could work things out with the bank. They then discovered that those notices to appear actually mean something. They found out the bank had completed the foreclosure and auctioned the home off at the courthouse steps. The new owners generously gave them a couple of days to move out.
Does it end there? Need you ask? Kim has discovered that she is pregnant. Still in the first trimester. According to her story she ‘forgot’ to take her birth control pills for a couple of days, and voila, a baby was conceived. The white knight was clearly willing to fall on his sword and asked Kim to marry him. She said no. He is being persistent about it though.
So stay tuned. The soap opera that is Kim’s life will continue.
