This is not David Finch. According to the photo name, he's Domenico.

It seemed like such a great deal, who could resist?

All I had to do was re-post the free iPod Touch offer on my Facebook account, and fulfill a deal, and bam! I’d get a free iPod Touch. Or maybe it was an iPad? Or a digital camcorder? Wait, no, the offer was for weight loss! A local area woman lost 40 lbs using this one simple trick. Or with Acai berry juice or something. All we have to do is click through and give up some personal information to find out!

Internet scams are so cheesily delicious, aren’t they? They follow you from site to site, nagging, pulling, promising the delivery of some tasty little nugget all for absolutely nothing. Intelligent, thoughtful, persistent people ignore them. And then there’s the rest of us.

These online offers are so intoxicating in their promises, and play so deftly on our desire to receive something—ANYTHING—for nothing, that we can’t help but be swayed by the mere inkling of a possibility of their truth. It’s so easy to be lured in.

I stared at the free iPod offer for all of 2 seconds. Being a writer and a dreamer, I thought I’d play along. Why not give it a try, see if I actually get the free iPod? Either way, it makes good fodder for a column, right? If I get the iPod, I could impress you all with a shocking bit of hope; and if I didn’t get it, well, honestly: did you expect any different?

So I responded to the free iPod Touch offer. I admit I was impressed by the picture of young David Finch, a friendly, college-age-looking kid, followed by the explaination of his offer. How could he give away such a pricey item? It was simple marketing! Apple WANTED us to have free iPods.

I posted the blurb to my Facebook page. I completed an associated offer (signing up for a text service) and voila! Requirements filled, gadget mine. It was so easy, I did it in seconds. In fact, I overdid it. After I Facebooked, I completed the initial offer… which sent me to another offer page (signing up for a “little know facts” text service), and yet another (a “this day in history” text service) and suddenly, 3 IQ tests, a “Is your relationship healthy?” quiz and “Who’s looking for you on the Internet” questionnaire later, I realized I’d completed several offers. If this were the Olympics, I’d have won a gold medal in Stupid.

And so I set about staring at my mailbox for the next 5 to 7 days. Awesome.

On day 11, I wrote an e-mail to the “webmaster” of the original offer site, inquiring as to when I would receive my hard-earned iPod. No response. On day 19, I tried again. Finally, by day 34, I decided to sleuth.

Googling revealed that the friendly college student was not, in fact, the real David Finch. The real David Finch  is a comic book artist. Or a director. Or someone… but whomever he is, he wasn’t that kid in the picture. Googling also revealed that the company listed in the copyright was not, in fact, in any way related to the industry offering the iPod Touch. Gosh. How odd.

Running the URL through Whois.net, the domain-owner lookup service, sent me in circles. The short story: no listing of a parent company, site owner, or point of contact.

In the end, I resorted to reading the site’s source code which, dear reader, is one of those things we web geeks like to do. It’s akin to sifting through someone’s laundry room; developers only like it to happen when their code is clean.  Suffice it to say I located the actual company in charge of the scam—ahem—SPECIAL INTERNET OFFER and called them. As expected, the phone tree sent me to a line answered by a robotic voice recording. As further expected, no one returned my message.

So there you have it. I’ll admit there is a secret part of me that really wanted a free goodie. Sadly, the pessimistic truth is, I knew it all along. Thus I remind myself as much as I warn you now: nothing in life is free—including completing offers on the internet for some “free” gift. Now then. If you’ll excuse me, I have a form I need to finish for this “Better than Botox” lotion I’ve been seeing ads for all over the place.

Job Stewart and The Daily Show reports.

This was the result:

I bet sensible parents would have yelled and grounded her. We lame’os were just glad she wasn’t hurt. Oh, and hopeful that GAP insurance really works. (Or that it can be revived on life support.)

I drive to work and hear stories of a failed US economy, of a housing crisis that continues to unfold, and of a banking system that refuses to lend money to consumers.

*gulp*

What if they change their mind? What the lending company decides not to fund our mortgage today and we won’t close escrow tomorrow?

Can they do that? Can they decide not to fund a loan, even though we’ve paid our down and another lending institution has decided to purchase the loan already? Could we find another lender, or does the whole deal fall apart?

What happens to our down payment? What happens to all the plans we made: the emergency cards we filled out, the school transfers, the address changes?

What happens to our dreams?

*pause*

I guess that is the crux of it right there: our dreams. The visions of swim parties and a barbecues; of graduation parties and breakfasts at the kitchen table and family dinners. It’s the house we wanted grow our family in and the home we envisioned retiring in. We imagine being grandparents in this house.

Does time move more slowly when dreaming is involved? Does the Universe inherently sense when intense amounts of desire are invested, and does that terrific dose of energy throw off the space/time continuum?

*breathe*

It’s just a house. A building. And the best thing about dreams is that they can fit anywhere; they’re pliable. If the loan doesn’t fund, if the deal collapses, if we have to stay where we are… it’s not preferable, but it is doable. Very doable.

My anxiety ebbs as I release my attachment to the outcome. There’s no knowing what can happen, what will happen, what myriad of possibilities awaits. But I do know I am safe. My family is safe. Our life is fine.

No matter what happens, no matter what disaster may befall us… we’re together. We’re all good.

*relax.*

“TV Movie of the Week starring Shaun Cassidy and Linda Purl. The WORST movie ever made about mentally disabled people with some of the WORST acting EVER.”

SIDE NOTE:  I remember seeing this movie on The Movie of the Week when I was 9-years-old. My brother and I watched it on the old black-and-white my parents kept in a back bedroom. I never did see the ending, because it went on past my bedtime.

But my 9-year-old self thought it was sad that the couple couldn’t get married. My 40-year-old self wishes I could get those two hours of my life back.

It’s heavy and dusty and I have to evaluate each item by the “Will I need it in the next 2 weeks” standard. If no, it gets boxed; if yes, it remains unpacked. But wow there are a ton of maybes…

Example: The Styrofoam tortilla holder I bought on a whim that functions to keep warmed tortillas warm; the one I haven’t used in 2 years? Am I going to need it in the next 15 days? I *could* use it on burrito night. I mean, we often have burrito night but I always forget to use it but that could change… yeah that’s a maybe.

The crystal goblets I know I can pack; we won’t be toasting any special events with champagne AT LEAST until the actual move-in day. I don’t think, anyway. I mean, hubs could get a promotion and a raise and maybe we win the lottery? Ooh…Another solid maybe.

Will I need the crockpot? Maybe.
The empty brandy snifter?
The decorative candles?
The bread machine?
Maybe.

Yeah. Packing is a drag. Plus I have all these stupid empty boxes.

As I mentioned a few times previously here and here and here, we are in the process of buying a house. I say in the process because it feels like, what with the daily requests for more and more documents by the underwriters, we are swirling in a vortex of unending ALMOST-THEREishness.

My Realtor assures me this is all part of the process; you get pre-qualified for the loan; the loan people request pay stubs and bank statements and tax returns; and then they get busy looking at all that mess and so the underwriters can come back and ask for documents to certify the documents that have been certified.

Call it survival (or, you know, insanity), but in these times of “ohmygawwd I want it so much I could scream”-like waiting, my flighty mind has gone into overdrive; I find myself struggling to keep up with my thoughts.

Example: The door. We need to build a door for the den, to transform the space into a little girls’ room. Thus, I begin all the machinations that I must go through to make sure the door gets created. Starting with, who do I call? (Besides Ghostbusters.) Who do I know that has ever had a door build before? I locate someone, call and get a reference. Then I call the recommended doorbuilder who needs to then meet with him to see the space but first we need permission to measure the space so I call the Realtor who has to call other seller’s Realtor to get an appointment to see the space to measure the door area to decide what to build and how much drywall work if any will be involved and then he (the doorbuilder) will need to place a bid and if I want to get other bids I have to repeat this same process in its entirety and eventually select a builder so he can measure and design and order the door and… look. Look, while we were standing here staring at the space for the door I noticed there, in the laundry room, another something that requires attention. Appliances. We need to buy a washer and dryer. So first I need to research what kind of washer to get…

…And on it goes. Everything is a process with a thousand steps and all of the steps seem to capture all of my attention until my mind is suddenly focused elsewhere. Then I completely drop the first obsession, for the next.

On the upside, my brains only figuratively hurts. Literally, it’s just fine

It would start with me actually remembering the vows I take daily at 4:00 pm, when I begin detailing my checklist of all the things I will accomplish when I get home:

I will start dinner ASAP!
I will clean the kitchen!
I will start packing for our move!
I WILL BE ORGANIZED BY BEDTIME.

Fast forward to 6:30, glass of wine in hand, as I sit at the kitchen table talking to the hubs. We laugh and chat about our day as dishes sit idly in the sink, collecting flies. Laundry lies in crumbled heaps in baskets in front of the TV. The sounds of iCarly fill the background as the 7-year-old approaches to ask what’s for dinner?

The stove has yet to be turned on.

By 9:00 I’m perched on the couch, watching Chef Ramsay verbally eviscerate some young hopeful. One hand dangles over the couch, gently petting Lucy’s velvet ears; the other rubs the 7-year-old’s back. The 11-year-old dozes next to me; the teenagers are upstairs keeping the world safe for democracy on the Xbox.

And the boxes we ordered online to aid in our household packing remain unassembled in the front room.

By 10:00 pm we crawl into bed, snuggling down with books and magazines and iPod apps and drift toward slumber.

Another night spent. Another day of delaying my 4:00 pm checklist.

Tomorrow, I vow. Tomorrow for sure.

It’s kind of like a trade school that offers a series of high school programs designed to teach HS students amazing and awesome skills in areas of their choosing. Communications; professional sciences; engineering and design… His choice: Film Production. He’d been on the wait-list, and found out today that he is officially enrolled.

The thing about having kids, see, is that it’s not until after you have them that you get the whole meaning-of-life thing. You become this willing, adoring slave totally dedicated to the happiness and personal fulfillment of some Kuato-like being that actually, fully popped out of your body.

You no longer care about what you look like. Showering? What’s that? Uninterrupted bathroom breaks? Is that even a thing anymore? Doesn’t matter, because you become consumed with their bathroom habits. You even wipe their noses with your bare hand and you don’t care.

And as they grow and develop personalities that other people can actually see, your devotion to their success just grows stronger. You want them to blossom. You want them to be happy. You want them to have just one really good friend, one really intense interest, one truly awesome skill.

My son got into this program, and I’m so excited for the possibilities it offers him, mostly because he is excited to learn. So, yeah. Wow. I’m beaming.