Oh, Canada.

Anyone who's known me for more than 10 minutes knows that I'm really unlucky. I'm grateful that in a truly big-picture sense - I have my health, and a loving family - I am doing fine, but I endure far more than my share of ironic indignities. I know people for whom things almost always go smoothly. I am not one of them. I just sort of expect bad things to happen to me.

I'm not sure why I thought buying a house would be any different. We THOUGHT that we were buying near the bottom of a garden variety real-estate cycle. In fact, we thought that not only were we buying low, we managed to benefit from some lucky timing: two days before we closed, the government announced that they were going to guarantee Fannie and Freddie, which resulted in a sudden, sharp dip in mortgage rates (we locked in at 5.85. Today, a 30 year fixed is hovering around 7). For once, I thought I had actually had a stroke of serendipity.

Ha. Of course not.

What that means, for those of you who have been following the news over the last month, is that we literally bought this house the day before the economy imploded. I'm not exaggerating. The very, ever loving day. One month and about 2 trillion in bailouts later, with no end in sight to the economic destruction, it turns out that once again, the universe takes particular delight in hating on me. We bought a house we could juuust barely afford. It was a bit of a stretch. But hey! we bought when the market was down! our salaries will only go up! the house will appreciate! And we'll be in great shape in five years!

Please, let me share with you some of the the high points of today's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/business/economy/16housing.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/business/economy/15leonhardt.html?scp=1&sq=salary&st=cse

In particular, that first article is really worrisome. The house that we can barely afford right now (the two bedroom! house! that we can barely afford right now! but that's a rant for another day) - it looks like, with the coming recession, that we'll be barely able to afford it, if we can afford it at all, for the forseeable future.

the kid to-be-named-later I was planning on delivering in March 2010? Forget him/her. A second kid is a financial impossibility if neither of our salaries rise. Selling this house and moving to a lower cost of living area? Forget about it, if housing prices really have another 30% to fall. We'll be stuck here for the rest of our lives, unable to move.

I'm angry about a lot of things. But mostly, I'm angry about the brother(s) or sister(s) that I planned on giving Owen that I really think he won't get now. I'm angry that we have a government that let us get this far down the road to destruction. I'm angry because I think Obama will win the election, and the economy will continue to implode, because no one could stop this ship from sinking - and we'll end up with a facist, xenophobic dictator in four years because people will have an excuse to blame Obama and by extension poor people and minorities for problems caused by the rich and greedy, so they'll vote for the next Sarah Palin that comes along and tells them that the scary, evil, terrorists posing as Mexicans and gays are destroying the American dream.

I'm angry about a lot of things. And right now, I'm taking it out on having bought this house. Because when I was 8 months pregnant, I took a book out from the library titled "A guide for Americans wishing to relocate to Canada."

I'm really sorry I returned that book.