It is possible to own a home and be homeless. We're about to do it! Here's how:
We do not have enough money to get a decent mortgage for a decent house. We were also too poor to carry cash to a city tax auction and compete with contractors and "investors" for dregs. We are, however, clever enough to dig into the system and buy a city tax auction house outside of the auction so we could prepare and get a personal loan to pay for it. We are also persistent enough to make it work! However...
The city said the house was in "normal" condition. It is not. The city said they had NO inspection reports, they said they did NOT go inside, and they could not tell us anything about the property. We can tell them that there is no plumbing, no heat, no doorknobs, a roof that needs complete replacement, and a back porch that is dragging off the back of the house. We have also found out that the only reason the home was boarded over was because of neighbors begging for it--for years. Lesson learned: the city knew the condition of the house, they let it get worse, and they had the nerve to ask for any money for it.
We love our house! We spent all our first months, from September to December, cleaning out the garbage, attempting to get contractors to give us estimates, and bringing over boxes of our stuff we won't need right away. We tried to apply for the grant that would get us just about everything we'd need to fix the house and live in it, but you have to live in the house to get the grant. ?!? After a HUGE struggle, we got special house insurance for a house that was being fixed up that was cancelled after a month because they said the house needs to be fixed up and we need to live in it. ?!?
So we're now renting our apartment, paying for a personal loan, and paying taxes on our house. We haven't been to the house in over a week because temperatures are less than 10 degrees, and, as you may remember, we have no heat. The struggles of low-income people to make it out of their low-income living conditions is real. Really real. Because what happens when we can't afford to rent? We use up all the money we've managed to save for fixing our house. We can't move in if we can't fix it. We can't get a home equity loan or house insurance or a grant until we live in it. What do we do?
The plan: visit the department that manages the grants and tell them we're about to become homeless homeowners unless they put us on the grant waiting list (yes, there's still waiting!) We look to rent a scary-cheap apartment in the same city as our house. We wait until the temperatures go to above freezing, go back, keep cleaning, keep moving, try to fix more windows, try to remediate the basement ourselves, and maybe even try to dismantle the back porch ourselves. In the meantime, keep plugging along, trying to increase our income.
Homeless with a home. In 10 degree weather (lows below zero. Fahrenheit, in case you were wondering.) How does it happen? People like us struggle to get up. How will we make it work? Through ingenuity and persistence, like we've always done.
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Ordinary Day
It's always an ordinary day. Seasonal weather. Routine morning. Breakfast, shower, pack up for work, get in the car, go. Regular traffic. A slow pedestrian. A four-way stop that irritates. A slow truck. Cows. Cup of tea, still hot. Reviewing the work to come, watching the road, thinking of turning on the radio. Normal.
A patch of ice. A car running through a stop sign. A suddenly stopped truck. These are the things that can throw in a bit of panic, but they are easily overcome. Or it's a traffic accident. Automatic systems kick in and the heart beats faster and steps are taken until it's normal again.
But when it's not really a normal day, that's when there is cognitive dissonance. Those are the days that separate people into categories they never even knew existed: Survivor, Victim. Hero, Human. Searcher, Lost. Witness, Runner.
A patch of ice. A car running through a stop sign. A suddenly stopped truck. These are the things that can throw in a bit of panic, but they are easily overcome. Or it's a traffic accident. Automatic systems kick in and the heart beats faster and steps are taken until it's normal again.
But when it's not really a normal day, that's when there is cognitive dissonance. Those are the days that separate people into categories they never even knew existed: Survivor, Victim. Hero, Human. Searcher, Lost. Witness, Runner.
Monday, December 11, 2017
Ready Player One Movie Opening
OPEN: An ideal, ivy-league-style SCHOOL. Wood paneling, polished floors, statuary, paintings, etc. Rooms and rooms of learning--seeing inside some appear "normal" and others fantastic--just a glimpse, enough to see it's "futuristic". A bell rings and clean, good-looking STUDENTS flood the hallways. Most either go to lockers and then out the nearest door, or they just leave. It sounds busy, like you'd expect in a high school. Perhaps unnoticed, there are several boys and girls who are dressed exactly the same--plain black t-shirts and jeans, black Converse sneakers. Above all their heads, ghostly, float their names in boxes that point down at them. Lockers look normal, if extra-deep. WADE WATTS, a teenage boy in the plain clothes, is at a locker. He is good-looking if a bit nondescript. Opening his knapsack, he taps on book icons that reappear floating over the top shelf of his locker. His backpack appears lighter with every tap. The locker slams and an even better-looking boy in fancy clothes is behind the door, several friends behind him.
**interaction just as in book**
STUDENTS leave quickly and the HALLWAY quiets. WADE walks slowly to a door. Just outside a couple STUDENTS blink out of existence. WADE walks beyond the school grounds and keeps going until he is on rolling, beautiful green hills on a gorgeous fall late afternoon. Empty of people, there is a gentle breeze, forest in the distance, blue skies with just a few clouds. WADE sits on the hill and watches for a while. He sighs, reaches up, logs out.
Suddenly, WADE appears on the floor in the corner of a noisy, dirty laundry room. It is dark grey inside and out. It is cramped. WADE is no longer good-looking. He appears a little younger than before. He is overweight and looks unhealthy. He has acne, he is pale, he is dirty. WADE is wearing dirty, patched clothes. WADE pulls off a plain-looking set of goggles and worn-looking gloves. He puts them lovingly into a vintage metal Star Wars lunchbox. There is the sound of fighting, shouting, sirens, music, television, and more. WADE tucks the lunchbox into his knapsack (a filthy, sewn-up version of the one he has in school) and pulls himself into a ball, shivering a little. A fight on the other side of the thin wall is disturbing. WADE pulls out a beat up laptop and plugs in headphones. He watches Family Ties. The sound of theme song is first nice and loud, comforting; WADE smiles, wiping his eyes. The camera pulls back and as the song fades out for the audience, the fighting fades in. We see the relatives and renters who live in the trailer, many plugged in, some doing drugs. The camera pulls back and back until we can see the STACKS: mostly trailer homes with some RVs or vans mixed in. Lots of sounds and sights of extreme poverty, drugs, crime, economic and ecologic devastation.
NOTE: the characters are all real actors. There will be three WADE actors:
YOUNG WADE: overweight, short, acne, normal, but not overtly attractive.
OASIS WADE: tall, good-looking, fit. Has same general coloring and the idea of real WADE, but an ideal WADE.
OLDER WADE: taller than YOUNG, very fit, acne gone, normal, but not overtly attractive though better than he was, extremely pale and devoid of hair.
CONTINUATION:
Pulling back from the STACKS, you get a view of the further devastation. The trailer homes, in multiple neighborhoods, surround an over-packed, poverty-riddled, energy-lacking city. The roads do not have private vehicles, and many roads are overgrown and crumbling back to nature, some with homeless living in lean-to shelters or makeshift tents. The only vehicles are buses with solar panels, and even those are patched together. Pulling back further, there are dead zones from ecological disaster and abandonment, and, even further, some US cities have been destroyed (either crumbling and abandoned, burned, or nuked and are cordoned off holes). Pulling back further, the ash-filled, polluted sky gives way through the clouds to blue, then up to a cluttered layer of satellites, abandoned space program paraphernalia, and rocks. Pulling back further, only starfield is visible.
The actual starfield seamlessly transforms into an old video game starfield--opening credits roll over decades of video game scenes.
AFTER OPENING CREDITS:
WADE wakes early in the LAUNDRY ROOM. He powers up just the laptop (not the goggles and gloves) to scroll through old family pictures. He stops at one of his mother and father: a selfie his mother took with his father holding a hand on her pregnant belly. They look thin and dirty, but smiling. He has a FLASHBACK to his childhood (**if flashbacks are used, there will be one more WADE: a little kid who is thin and dirty**.)
FLASHBACK: LITTLE WADE is sitting with his MOTHER on their filthy, old, torn couch in a dark single-wide trailer (at the bottom of the STACKS). There is a cardboard box labeled **FATHER'S NAME** on a dirty coffee table also strewn with take out food containers, pop bottles, and subtle drug paraphernalia. She is showing him the same picture of his father on her phone, scrolling to it through a couple other pictures.
MOTHER This is your daddy, Wade. He loved you very much. (She pauses to hold back tears.) Your daddy's the one who named you, you know? (She reaches into the box and pulls out some superhero comics, including Spiderman.) Like Peter Parker, you know? "Wade Watts". The first letters are the same. Like you're a superhero, because you are. You're my little superhero! (She tickles him and they laugh.) Come on (she drops the comics back into the box), it's time for you to play your games. I gotta go to work.
MOTHER puts WADE in old fashioned VR goggles and little gloves. She logs in for him via an old laptop and sets him more firmly on the couch. Before putting the large headphones over his ears, she whispers to him.
MOTHER (whispering) I love you, Wade Watts.
WADE I love you, Mommy.
As WADE's hands lift and make passes in the air as he plays, MOTHER stands, pockets some drug paraphernalia, and is already taking down her hair and unbuttoning her shirt. She exits to the next room and closes the door.
WADE takes off his headphones and goggles so he can look in the box of his father's belongings. He finds more pictures that show his father was very young, his mother was very young, they were very, very poor and struggling. He finds pictures of a happier, younger father with his own family in a suburban home. He finds notebooks. He finds an obituary page filled with listings, all who died of influenza, that includes his grandparents together. Finally he finds a newspaper article about his father being killed while looting during a blackout. As he's looking, he begins to hear his MOTHER making sex noises in the other room, as she is an online escort. WADE puts the papers away and his headphones and goggles back on, turning up the volume to drown out the sounds.
CONTINUATION:
WADE comes out of this flashback, scrubbing his wet eyes with the end of his sweater sleeve. At that moment, his AUNT enters, carrying an armload of filthy laundry. She is thin, with sores on her face. She starts the process of doing laundry and notices WADE, frozen in the act of trying to cover his laptop. The AUNT's eyes widen and she bellows for her husband.
AUNT **NAME**! NAME! Get in here! The little asshole's got a laptop!
WADE No, Aunt XXX. Please, I need this.
AUNT You owe me and your uncle, for taking care of you.
WADE But you get my food vouchers...
UNCLE enters and stands at the door, unseen by AUNT. He is also filthy, tattooed, wearing a shirt that shows off his muscles and track marks.
AUNT NAME!
UNCLE What!
AUNT Wade's got a laptop.
WADE surreptitiously executes a program that deletes all of his information off the laptop.
UNCLE Hand it over, freak.
WADE Just a minute...
UNCLE enters fully, flexing and making a fist.
UNCLE Now!
WADE just manages to let go when his UNCLE yanks it from his grip. AUNT and UNCLE smile at their fortune. AUNT speaks as they both exit.
AUNT Let's see how much we can get...
WADE crouches for a moment longer, then packs away the rest of his belongings with one eye on the door. He opens a window and climbs out onto a metal rail that helps hold the trailer home onto its perch near the very top of the stack. WADE looks out and sees desolation in the still-dark, grey morning. A cold wind whips at his clothes and too-long hair. WADE pulls his pack all the way on and shuffles sideways holding onto a rope he tied onto the metal to help him escape on this more dangerous route. WADE makes it to the end where he can climb down the scaffolding, and he does.
Along his climb, he sees men, women, and children plugged into their computers, wearing old goggles and gloves. Some only have huge computer screens showing scenes of shopping or entertainment, some violent and/or vile. No one is moving much, and no one is very fit--either over or underweight. WADE stops at one window where the scene is a bit more homey and decorated in an old-fashioned, grandmotherly style. There is an old sofa with an afghan, doilies, kitchy pictures on the wall, many cats, and a TV showing an evangelical Christian service.
CONTINUATION
WADE taps on the window. An old woman, NAME, enters, sees WADE and smiles. They both wave and NAME opens her kitchen window.
Interaction is same as in the book.
As WADE climbs down the stack, it gets darker and darker. Dirtier and dirtier. The bottom is filled with litter, dirt, and mud. All the drippings and grossness of being at the bottom of a vertical trailer park, plus a few hulks of rotting vehicles, pushed to the side and used for other purposes. Paths lead through the stacks, and WADE keeps his hood up and his head down, but his eyes wary. People lurk in the dark, selling drugs, selling themselves, looking for a target, or looking at absolutely nothing.
The stacks get a little shorter and the path opens up to a junkyard, filled with the other vehicles that were towed away and piled up to make room to build the stacks. WADE looks around furtively, then hurries into the junkyard, taking a winding path. Sure he's not been followed, WADE pulls a key out from around his neck, takes one final, hidden turn, and slides up to the back of a Ford Econoline van with blank back windows and framed all around with other junk cars. The top of the van has been saved because the vehicles on either side were just a little taller than the van and a vehicle on top was dropped sideways, balanced on the side vehicles.
WADE unlocks the back, climbs in quickly and quietly, and shuts the door. It is completely dark, but we hear WADE pick up a crank-powered flashlight and grind it into use.
**interaction just as in book**
STUDENTS leave quickly and the HALLWAY quiets. WADE walks slowly to a door. Just outside a couple STUDENTS blink out of existence. WADE walks beyond the school grounds and keeps going until he is on rolling, beautiful green hills on a gorgeous fall late afternoon. Empty of people, there is a gentle breeze, forest in the distance, blue skies with just a few clouds. WADE sits on the hill and watches for a while. He sighs, reaches up, logs out.
Suddenly, WADE appears on the floor in the corner of a noisy, dirty laundry room. It is dark grey inside and out. It is cramped. WADE is no longer good-looking. He appears a little younger than before. He is overweight and looks unhealthy. He has acne, he is pale, he is dirty. WADE is wearing dirty, patched clothes. WADE pulls off a plain-looking set of goggles and worn-looking gloves. He puts them lovingly into a vintage metal Star Wars lunchbox. There is the sound of fighting, shouting, sirens, music, television, and more. WADE tucks the lunchbox into his knapsack (a filthy, sewn-up version of the one he has in school) and pulls himself into a ball, shivering a little. A fight on the other side of the thin wall is disturbing. WADE pulls out a beat up laptop and plugs in headphones. He watches Family Ties. The sound of theme song is first nice and loud, comforting; WADE smiles, wiping his eyes. The camera pulls back and as the song fades out for the audience, the fighting fades in. We see the relatives and renters who live in the trailer, many plugged in, some doing drugs. The camera pulls back and back until we can see the STACKS: mostly trailer homes with some RVs or vans mixed in. Lots of sounds and sights of extreme poverty, drugs, crime, economic and ecologic devastation.
NOTE: the characters are all real actors. There will be three WADE actors:
YOUNG WADE: overweight, short, acne, normal, but not overtly attractive.
OASIS WADE: tall, good-looking, fit. Has same general coloring and the idea of real WADE, but an ideal WADE.
OLDER WADE: taller than YOUNG, very fit, acne gone, normal, but not overtly attractive though better than he was, extremely pale and devoid of hair.
CONTINUATION:
Pulling back from the STACKS, you get a view of the further devastation. The trailer homes, in multiple neighborhoods, surround an over-packed, poverty-riddled, energy-lacking city. The roads do not have private vehicles, and many roads are overgrown and crumbling back to nature, some with homeless living in lean-to shelters or makeshift tents. The only vehicles are buses with solar panels, and even those are patched together. Pulling back further, there are dead zones from ecological disaster and abandonment, and, even further, some US cities have been destroyed (either crumbling and abandoned, burned, or nuked and are cordoned off holes). Pulling back further, the ash-filled, polluted sky gives way through the clouds to blue, then up to a cluttered layer of satellites, abandoned space program paraphernalia, and rocks. Pulling back further, only starfield is visible.
The actual starfield seamlessly transforms into an old video game starfield--opening credits roll over decades of video game scenes.
AFTER OPENING CREDITS:
WADE wakes early in the LAUNDRY ROOM. He powers up just the laptop (not the goggles and gloves) to scroll through old family pictures. He stops at one of his mother and father: a selfie his mother took with his father holding a hand on her pregnant belly. They look thin and dirty, but smiling. He has a FLASHBACK to his childhood (**if flashbacks are used, there will be one more WADE: a little kid who is thin and dirty**.)
FLASHBACK: LITTLE WADE is sitting with his MOTHER on their filthy, old, torn couch in a dark single-wide trailer (at the bottom of the STACKS). There is a cardboard box labeled **FATHER'S NAME** on a dirty coffee table also strewn with take out food containers, pop bottles, and subtle drug paraphernalia. She is showing him the same picture of his father on her phone, scrolling to it through a couple other pictures.
MOTHER This is your daddy, Wade. He loved you very much. (She pauses to hold back tears.) Your daddy's the one who named you, you know? (She reaches into the box and pulls out some superhero comics, including Spiderman.) Like Peter Parker, you know? "Wade Watts". The first letters are the same. Like you're a superhero, because you are. You're my little superhero! (She tickles him and they laugh.) Come on (she drops the comics back into the box), it's time for you to play your games. I gotta go to work.
MOTHER puts WADE in old fashioned VR goggles and little gloves. She logs in for him via an old laptop and sets him more firmly on the couch. Before putting the large headphones over his ears, she whispers to him.
MOTHER (whispering) I love you, Wade Watts.
WADE I love you, Mommy.
As WADE's hands lift and make passes in the air as he plays, MOTHER stands, pockets some drug paraphernalia, and is already taking down her hair and unbuttoning her shirt. She exits to the next room and closes the door.
WADE takes off his headphones and goggles so he can look in the box of his father's belongings. He finds more pictures that show his father was very young, his mother was very young, they were very, very poor and struggling. He finds pictures of a happier, younger father with his own family in a suburban home. He finds notebooks. He finds an obituary page filled with listings, all who died of influenza, that includes his grandparents together. Finally he finds a newspaper article about his father being killed while looting during a blackout. As he's looking, he begins to hear his MOTHER making sex noises in the other room, as she is an online escort. WADE puts the papers away and his headphones and goggles back on, turning up the volume to drown out the sounds.
CONTINUATION:
WADE comes out of this flashback, scrubbing his wet eyes with the end of his sweater sleeve. At that moment, his AUNT enters, carrying an armload of filthy laundry. She is thin, with sores on her face. She starts the process of doing laundry and notices WADE, frozen in the act of trying to cover his laptop. The AUNT's eyes widen and she bellows for her husband.
AUNT **NAME**! NAME! Get in here! The little asshole's got a laptop!
WADE No, Aunt XXX. Please, I need this.
AUNT You owe me and your uncle, for taking care of you.
WADE But you get my food vouchers...
UNCLE enters and stands at the door, unseen by AUNT. He is also filthy, tattooed, wearing a shirt that shows off his muscles and track marks.
AUNT NAME!
UNCLE What!
AUNT Wade's got a laptop.
WADE surreptitiously executes a program that deletes all of his information off the laptop.
UNCLE Hand it over, freak.
WADE Just a minute...
UNCLE enters fully, flexing and making a fist.
UNCLE Now!
WADE just manages to let go when his UNCLE yanks it from his grip. AUNT and UNCLE smile at their fortune. AUNT speaks as they both exit.
AUNT Let's see how much we can get...
WADE crouches for a moment longer, then packs away the rest of his belongings with one eye on the door. He opens a window and climbs out onto a metal rail that helps hold the trailer home onto its perch near the very top of the stack. WADE looks out and sees desolation in the still-dark, grey morning. A cold wind whips at his clothes and too-long hair. WADE pulls his pack all the way on and shuffles sideways holding onto a rope he tied onto the metal to help him escape on this more dangerous route. WADE makes it to the end where he can climb down the scaffolding, and he does.
Along his climb, he sees men, women, and children plugged into their computers, wearing old goggles and gloves. Some only have huge computer screens showing scenes of shopping or entertainment, some violent and/or vile. No one is moving much, and no one is very fit--either over or underweight. WADE stops at one window where the scene is a bit more homey and decorated in an old-fashioned, grandmotherly style. There is an old sofa with an afghan, doilies, kitchy pictures on the wall, many cats, and a TV showing an evangelical Christian service.
CONTINUATION
WADE taps on the window. An old woman, NAME, enters, sees WADE and smiles. They both wave and NAME opens her kitchen window.
Interaction is same as in the book.
As WADE climbs down the stack, it gets darker and darker. Dirtier and dirtier. The bottom is filled with litter, dirt, and mud. All the drippings and grossness of being at the bottom of a vertical trailer park, plus a few hulks of rotting vehicles, pushed to the side and used for other purposes. Paths lead through the stacks, and WADE keeps his hood up and his head down, but his eyes wary. People lurk in the dark, selling drugs, selling themselves, looking for a target, or looking at absolutely nothing.
The stacks get a little shorter and the path opens up to a junkyard, filled with the other vehicles that were towed away and piled up to make room to build the stacks. WADE looks around furtively, then hurries into the junkyard, taking a winding path. Sure he's not been followed, WADE pulls a key out from around his neck, takes one final, hidden turn, and slides up to the back of a Ford Econoline van with blank back windows and framed all around with other junk cars. The top of the van has been saved because the vehicles on either side were just a little taller than the van and a vehicle on top was dropped sideways, balanced on the side vehicles.
WADE unlocks the back, climbs in quickly and quietly, and shuts the door. It is completely dark, but we hear WADE pick up a crank-powered flashlight and grind it into use.
Monday, December 4, 2017
Ultrasound
The ultrasound room is dim and has the low, gentle hum of equipment. The exam table is covered in cloth, not paper, and patients get a pink cloth gown. The technicians are soft-spoken and reassuring. They also have no news to give because the images are sent to a doctor to read, somewhere, in an office. It is warm, comfortable, and quiet.
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