I recently applied to refinance my mortgage, on which I've been paying a whopping 8.25 per cent interest up to now. When I first got my first mortgage, it was when I was not working, as I was still spending my days with the infant Kat in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. That loan was a no-income-verification loan, and so carries a higher interest rate than the typical at the time, which I think was closer to 6.25 per cent.
The loan application process has been taking some doing. For some reason, the lender wants to know not only my marital status, but they want a copy of the divorce decree! I asked the woman on the phone, Well, I owned the property before I was married, had it through the marriage, and kept it after the divorce. Why is my marital status an issue? to which she could offer no explanation. I suppose most people just fill out the paperwork to get it over with. I contacted the County Clerk of Lycoming County, PA, where the divorce would have been registered. It's going to coast fifty cents per page to copy any official legal paperwork, which this happens to be. So I mailed off the fifty cent check with the letter and a self-addressed envelope in this morning's mail. I'll wait to talk to the mortgage company, as I won't submit the divorce decree until after they ask for it again, which they might or might not, depending on how the woman I talked to relays my reaction to the underwriters. Why are mortgage underwriters so damn f*cking nosy, anyway? What difference does it make whether someone is married to one's partner or not?
Now I understand why Peter has been putting off finalizing his divorce (he's been separated from his wife for a few years now). It's such a pain in the f*cking ass, whereas it's easy enough to get married...
Financial information makes sense. My finances were never mixed with John's (or Chris's, when we were married), and I've never missed a mortgage payment, which must count for something. When I talked to a friend about this, she agreed that the requirements for obtaining a mortgage seem quite onerous, and she said that the regular mortgage payments do count for something. My regular payoff of my credit cards count for something, as well. We talked to another student in Pastries & Desserts on Wednesday about obtaining credit. She has no credit record, because she recently relocated to San Diego from Korea, where she was working before she married and moved here. Someone recommended to her that she get a credit card from her bank, then just make lots of charges, as long as she pays them off as well. From that conversation, I gathered that one charges everything, then pays it off at the end of the month, showing responsibility with rotating credit. Long-term debts, like mortgages and car loans, are harder, I suppose, to get because they're a much larger commitment. I understand that they want a copy of the most recent lease with the current tenant, who just renewed their lease, which makes me happy, because it's a real estate listing fee that I can avoid for another year.
On another, completely unrelated note, I just formed some homemade chocolates using 7 ounces of baker's chocolate (100% cacao), an ounce and a half of sugar, and hazelnuts that I roasted earlier this morning. They're cooling on the stovetop and in the fridge. I'm hoping to try one and take some to Peter's this afternoon, as we'll be making final preparations to dive tomorrow morning. I'm only mildly nervous that the rest of the chocolates will disappear when Kat comes home from school, as she has a minimum day today and therefore will be coming home just around lunchtime, meaning she'll be hungry. Though, realistically, I probably ought to worry about their melting before I get to Peter's as it's already a quite warm day. I'll prepare a green salad for lunch, with butter lettuce and blanched green beans (from the CSA box) and chilled hard-boiled eggs which I'll slice with my new KitchenAid brand egg slicer. I'd tried to slice eggs with a knife when my first egg slicer broke, but there's too much drag from the blade, so I totally understand the wire. like cheese, right?
Well, today's rant came, at least, with something good that has happened, and that is my first chocolate-making experience. I'll probably be more likely to make something more akin to fudge again, as I really, really did enjoy the orange fudge I'd made around New Year's (the recipe is in an earlier post). I'm still trying to use up ingredients from my pantry, as the fumigation is on Tuesday and I will want to empty out my food as much as possible before then.
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