I can't help giggling inwardly every time I mention to someone that we're in the process of refinancing our mortgage. It just sounds so damned grown-up. The fact that we have a mortgage at all is still baffling to me at times, but now -- going and refinancing it? As if we're on top of our finances and financial planning? Ha! Ha. But I guess we are, because at some point a few months back, we noticed that rates seemed to be dropping, and asked our mortgage broker (hee hee!) if maybe we should consider refinancing, and here we are, with all the papers signed and much lower rate, and somehow Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the government are involved, and the upshot is, we're going to save a few hundred bucks a month. This is good, right?
OK, but here's what's not good: taking your two-year-old children to the closing.
Some -- many -- will say, well, yeah. No shit, Sherlock. Why would you make toddlers a part of an important financial/legal transaction? With all the money you're theoretically going to save by doing this, wouldn't you be justified in hiring a babysitter for a couple of hours to watch your kids while you go into the attorney's office and take care of the paperwork? What's twenty or thirty bucks when you're going to be saving a few grand per year on your payments?
It's a good question. And a fair one. But one we, stupidly, didn't ask ourselves. We tried to set up an appointment at a time when our regular sitter was available, but it didn't work out, and we didn't bother trying to line up someone else. I guess you could say we were feeling a little cocky. A few weeks ago, we actually successfully signed the paperwork for a new (used) car with the girls in tow. So we figured hey, how hard can it be? We did a car, why not a mortgage? Hell, let's bring 'em with us next time one of us gets called for jury duty!
And so, on Friday afternoon, we found ourselves driving into Boston -- all four of us -- eking out a parking space on Boylston, walking through bitter cold to the attorney's office, herding Elsa and Clio into the elevator and attempting to keep them quiet and occupied while we signed approximately ten thousand different documents, almost none of which we understood. We might have signed the girls away to be the brides of Bedouin herdsmen when they turn 16. I wouldn't know.
I do know that for the half hour that we sat there with Mr. Slick Lawyer, signing our names, the girls were in almost perpetual motion: climbing up onto the swivel chairs and asking for help to get down. Grabbing at vaious office supplies. Doing laps around the conference table. Asking us to read them the books we'd brought in a vain attempt to keep them occupied. Fighting over the calculator that Mr. Slick -- and, to be fair, very patient -- Lawyer gave them to play with. Asking to be picked up. Asking to go. Asking for grapes. (?)
We have until tomorrow to review all the paperwork and cancel if we discover any terms that we don't like, i.e. Bedouin bride prices. So, we'll do that tonight after the girls go to bed, though I don't honestly expect to find anything objectionable. Rather, not anything that I would be able to recognize as objectionable ahead of time. (Flash forward a year to us getting foreclosed on, due to some arcane technicality. We'd plead our case to the collectors: "But we brought our two-year olds with us to the closing! We were quite clearly not of sound mind and body when we signed these documents!")
Anyway, learn from our mistake, gentle readers. When large amounts of money, credit or real-estate are changing hands, shell out for a sitter. And if for some reason you can't, at the very least -- BRING GRAPES.
By the way, thanks so much to everyone who has aleady downloaded and reviewed my novel excerpt in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest. I am so grateful for your support and your reviews. At one point on Thursday, my book was actually ranked #61 in Amazon books! (What are the chances I'll ever see that again??) They won't announce the semi-finalists until April 15, so I'll have to bite my nails until then. But even if I don't make it to the next round (the big deciding factor will be a review from a Publisher's Weekly critic), it's been a real treat to finally have people reading a bit of the book and (for the most part) seeming to like it. Thank you! Grazie! Merci! Gracias! Spaseeba! Domo arrigato! Danke!
