Autonomous Vehicle

An autonomo slowed down when it sensed Kate walking and pinged its mandatory after midnight inquiry.  Kate slashed down with her free hand and the vehicle continued on its way, probably back to its charging station for the night.  She hoisted her sliding pack back into position and cinched the straps over her shoulders.

A Sky Full of Ships

The stoplights blinked red, reflecting in the standing water on the cracked pavement.  A v-shape of at least a dozen ships whined by overhead making Anna's inner ear itch with subsonic sound.  She fought the urge to look and fought harder the urge to run.  

House Hunting Discoveries

When you look at houses for sale in our price range, which is low, you can see how people live in poverty.  Most of the houses are rental properties being sold by the landlords.  The descriptions include phrases like, "Investor's Dream!" and "Money Maker!"  Often they tout how much the tenants are paying, how much they would love to stay, and how much more you could charge them for the privilege.  My "low price range", by the way is less than $50,000, and usually much less.  If it goes under $20,000, however, tenants are usually no longer in the pictures, and you rather get description phrases like, "Ideal Fixer-Upper!" and "Choose Your Own Walls!" and still, "Investor's Dream!"

Looking at the pictures of these houses, aside from the trickery and outright lies realtors and homeowners are trying to push, you see the lives of the poor who are living in a house that may soon be yanked out from under them.  You see chairs surrounded a space heater whose vent has blackened the wall.  You see kitchens and bathrooms crammed under the eaves of the attic because there's another apartment crammed into a space that should have been for storage.  You see stoves in front of doors and windows.  You see futons or just plain mattresses for beds.  You see cheap metal and plastic clothing racks tilting with hangers.  You see fourteen toothbrushes in mugs in the bathroom.  You see four loaves of bread, ten boxes of cereal, and six bags of various cookies on the refrigerator, the microwave, and the counter.  You see cheap, hollow-metal tube furniture.  You see a 50" television covering the front window, and the TVs are always on Maury.  You see painted paneling.  You see grey indoor/outdoor carpeting in every room.  You see sloppily painted tan walls with grease marks at head and hand level.  You see gap-riddled, cheap, plastic flooring made to look like wood.  You nearly always see words on the walls: "Family", "Love", "Dream".  The toilets are open.  There are tubes and jars and jugs of personal products on the dressers.  There is laundry in every room.  Plates with food in the kitchen, on the coffee table, and in the bedrooms.  A slightly surprised child staring into the camera, wondering what it means that this person has been photographing their home.

Daddy, I love you, please don't die.  Please fight and get strong and live.  Please fight through it to come out and have a relaxing old age.  Please stay with me so I can visit more often.  Please stay long enough to see proof that I made it okay.  Please stay long enough for me to help support you and Mom.  Daddy, don't go.  I'm not old enough.  I'll never be old enough to lose you.  Please fight.  I've already missed you so much because you're far away.  I've already needed more time and if you go I'll never get it.  I'm selfish, but I want you to live.  You should have a relaxing old age filled with buffet breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.  You should enjoy every moment and not have to wonder if you'll have enough water or money or propane or gas for the car.  You should have a real house.  You worked so hard, you deserve to have a wonderful decade...or two...at the end.  Daddy, I miss you.  I love you.  I need my Daddy.  I should be able to take care of you.  To give you a vacation.  To give you a new car.  To give you dinner.  To bake you chocolate chip cookies.  To do you "a flavor" and get you ice cream again.  To watch Shirley Temple and Marx Brothers movies.  To read the Sunday funnies.  Please don't be lonely.  I am here.  I will keep you company.  You won't be alone.  I'll go with you.

I wanted to call today, but thought it was too soon, or that I might disturb you, or that I might interrupt you and Mom.  I will call tomorrow because I can't stand it and I'm so scared I'll miss you.  You'll never see this here, but I still shout it to the Universe: I love you, Daddy!  Thank you for my life and the part of your life you gave me.  I am grateful.  I am not done.  I can't lose you yet.  Not yet.  Please stay.  Please.

How to be Poor and Buy a House

Cash-poor people can buy a house.  It's a struggle, and many routes easy for those with money are closed, but if you can be patient and be okay with a house not-quite-of-your-dreams, you can do it.  I know because we finally did it ourselves.

I've read plenty of "inspirational" stories of people with "no money" flipping houses and getting rich, but their version of "no money" is not really no money.  They have a house they sold, or stocks they sold, or money they could borrow from family.  We had no house to sell, no major savings, and no family who could lend to us.  We pursued several avenues to a house, and while any could have possibly worked, only one finally did.  We tried:

• City auction
• "Homestead" housing
• Traditional bank lender
• Specialty "low-income" lender
• Asking to be given a city-owned house

Each of these paths had problems, but sometimes they have worked for other people so we tried them all.  To see how you match up with our personal version of "no money", you need to know our details:

• We make less than $25,000 a year and we need just about all of it to live (rent, food, gas, utilities, etc.)
• We have approximately $5,000 in money we can liquidate to cash (not IRAs, which I refuse to touch!)
• We have no debt--no credit cards, no car payments, no loan payments of any kind.

I understand others may be in more dire financial straights than we are, but you can see we are not in a position to lay down big bucks, nor do lenders offer us much in the way of a mortgage.  In the end, it was the "simple" use of huge balls of brass that got us a house, and even more gigantic balls that helped us to make it habitable.  The only way we got our house was by asking to have it from the city.  It had no plumbing, missing radiators, a leaking roof, and a back door that was wide open.  It was filled with garbage, including a stairway used as a feral cat litter box.  The first floor toilet was broken--in half!--and the iron fire escape was pulling free from the back of the house.  The sofits were see-through with rot and it was in a questionable neighborhood.  We asked for it.  We got it.

We cleared out the garbage, secured the doors and replaced broken windows, put a tarp on the roof leak, and lived without water or heat.  We couldn't afford to rent and fix a house, so we had no choice.  Our relatively low rent was to go to repair savings, and in the meantime, we were on a one-year waiting list to get a repair grant that could fix our roof.  We polished up our brass balls and started asking for free to cheap renovation help.

Obedience

She didn't know how old he was, but he was in school, so he was older and knew things.  He wanted to play doctor in her tree fort, and she loved to play doctor so she went with him.  He had his "doctor's tools", which were a couple of dark grey landscaping rocks from around her house.  She was good at following directions and was proud of it.  She lay down on the wood floor of the fort, only the top of her blonde curls to be glimpsed through the doorway, should anyone look.  Her brother was friends with his brother and they lived just a few houses down.  As directed, she pushed her shorts and underwear down to her ankles and lay still, arms at her sides, while the examination began.

Psychic Ear Ringing

Hendrick's left ear was ringing, but he refused to pick up.  It had taken years of diligence to learn how to block out the feelings, and sometimes images, that accompanied the ringing, but he had managed.  Unfortunately, his left ear was also the ear upon which sat the headset's cushioned speaker, and his ear's own ringing muffled the client, who had just begun to describe a computer problem.

"I'm sorry," Hendrick interrupted, "but could you please repeat that?"