Hawaiian Prisons and Traveling Light

Earlier this week I told you to stay tuned to find out the most common form of mortgage fraud. Since then I have received emails from near and far from readers telling me they haven’t been able to sleep in anticipation. One lady from Illinois even showed up at the office demanding me to tell her, said she couldn’t stand the suspense. Oh kidding. I don’t want to talk about mortgages any more than you want to hear about them, but y’all know they’ll fire me if I don’t talk about this stuff, so here it goes. The most common form of mortgage fraud is lying about whether or not you’ll be living in the house you are buying. They call it lying about occupancy. The reason people do it is because mortgage interest rates are lower when you’re buying a home that will be your primary residence. But vacay and investment homes come with slightly higher rates. So some folks are like, “Uh, this second house in Hawaii, we’ll be living there permanently.” And we’re like, “Mm hmm. Hope you enjoy the prison system in Hawaii, pal.” Then we send them to jail.

Did you hear that, ole Bosses? I talked about mortgages. You can stop reading now.

Okay, for the rest of you, let’s move on. When I dogsit for my friend Kristie’s dog, Wags, Kristie arrives at my house with Wags, Wags’ bed, Wags’ favorite stuffed animals and organic snacks, and a monogrammed backpack full of Wags’ categorized medical records. I am not making any of this up. Also in the backpack are individual Ziploc sandwich bags filled with single servings of Wags’ food to ensure this golden retriever receives the proper nutrition. Wags also has her name woven into her collar, and she has her picture made with Santa every Christmas.

Here’s The Wagger at a lake trip I took with Kristie last year (she was none to pleased to pose for me while she could have been swimming):

When I keep my ole Boss James’ dog, Cosmo, though, things are different. No bed, no toys, no snacks. Sometimes there’s not even food. This morning I met James at Memorial Park so I could keep Cosmo for the weekend. James opened his back door for Cosmo to jump out and I noticed Cosmo wore no collar. Then I inquired about a leash of sorts. “Yeah, I couldn’t find them,” James said.

“He doesn’t even have a collar?” I replied, trying to wrangle Cosmo by his fur so that he wouldn’t run into oncoming traffic. “I think we already packed our spare, James. How am I supposed to walk him?”

My husband and I were packing up the living room a few weeks ago (we’re moving next month) and I found our spare collar. “Should we even keep this?” Benson had asked.

“Yeah, let’s keep it because it comes in handy when we find stray dogs,” I said (seriously, people in my neighborhood lose their dogs all the time and I’ve lost count of the number of mutts I’ve returned to stupefied neighbors). “Besides, the next time we keep Cosmo he might not even have a collar!” I said to Benson, laughing. He laughed, too. “Ha ha! Funny ole Cosmo! He travels light!” we said.

“Don’t worry about it. Just don’t take him on walks. Let him play in the backyard,” James hurriedly said as he loaded Cosmo’s bin of food in my trunk (at least we’ve got food). So now I’ve got this poor dog with nowhere to go but the backyard.

He seems to be adjusting well, though, despite his limited luggage situation.

Here he is enjoying dinner. Nah, don’t get up for us, Cosmo. You just do your thing.

Finally, check it out! This is me holding my latest fancy edition of Houston Woman Magazine, open conveniently to the column they let me write.

Look-a-me!

Alright folks, come back here next week for the final installment of the Emily Series (get caught up here and here and here and here). And while you all enjoy your weekend, I’m off to deliver some Houston Woman Magazines to a Hawaiian prison.