I am tongue-tied. I will miss National City when it is gone. I wasn’t all that crazy about NCC when it took over 1st of America. An early go-round with customer service where I called to complain about something and the woman gave me a *sales* job did not do anything to endear me to NCC. But it was a minor issue and arguably my “fault” for not reading some random piece of junky looking mail spelling out the new “policies” for my checking account. I was too busy to research other banks and the folks at my little local branch in Maple Village are the best and so I went on. And then they created a top-notch on-line banking application and I could do probably 90% of my banking that way. Y’all know I was sold at that point.

I am dumb-founded at what’s going on in recent days. I grew up in a household where, until I was about 10, the sole wage earner was a bank executive. Make that small-town bank executive. We lived in a little house with a persnickety old oil furnace and the scariest basement on earth. Toward the end of our residence there, I remember the Commander slogging through a couple feet of water down there on a couple of occasions. But life wasn’t that bad, really. That house was comfortable and we always had what we needed and more, including a college education, and a tiny little cabin on Fin Family Moominbeach. Fancy vee-hickles and designer clothing and all the latest lucky-shuckial gadgetry? No. Because our banker was a conservative. He didn’t loan money to people he knew couldn’t or wouldn’t pay it back.

Somebody hit the fast-forward button and it was 1984 and Stormy and I were living in a $400/month two bedroom apartment here on the Planet and it was a nice apartment but Lizard Breath was on the way, so we decided we needed to buy a house. I *hated* the whole process. We figured out how much we thought we could spend based on the fact that I planned to quit working for a few years (I didn’t end up quitting until much later but that’s a whole nother story). Everyone involved kept telling us we could afford more. Not in my opinion. We ended up buying The Landfill for $65,000. We put one third down (our parents did help us a bit but we had quite a lot saved up). We gambled on an adjustable rate mortgage and, at that particular time, it was a good gamble. Interest rates dropped sharply and we paid off our mortgage in 13 years instead of 30. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t an easy slog even without a mortgage. And an ARM *is* a gamble. We won that one but we have lost some others, albeit small ones. And still. Throughout the whole buying process, I would lie awake many nights, counting in thousands. How much money do we have in which account and is it enough? And, despite how often I complain about it, I *love* the Landfill.

I dunno what’s next. I am not an economist or a political pundit. Cycles. Things go up and things go down. We are not close to retirement, at least I am not. Our current employment situations don’t seem to be in the direct line of fire, but who knows?

As the daughter of a small-town banker who was capable of collecting cow collateral if he had too to, I am re-thinking the whole mattress strategy. Are you?

Ice cubes were rattling like crazy here a few minutes ago and nobody but me was home. Love you guys. We’re doing the best we can here on the Earth. We’ll come through okay. Love you!!

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