Follow the Yellow (Brick) Road

Yesterday afternoon I was supposed to do a notary signing for a home refinance loan. I had had mixed feelings about whether it would happen at all because it had already been cancelled once before I was assigned and I had had trouble reaching the signer for confirmation of the appointment. Yesterday I was able to contact the signer and he confirmed he was ready and willing for me to come that afternoon. Everything was moving along as it should after that. I received the documents and prepared them. I had a bit of free time after that and was watching a video about doing long exposure light trails with an iPhone, when it briefly looked like the signer had tried to call me. So I called him back. At first he said he did not call me, but then said he wanted to cancel the appointment and had already let the loan officer he was working with know that was what he wanted to do. After ending the call, I still felt uncomfortable about this, so called the loan officer myself. He thought everything was fine and the signing could proceed, but he would call the signer himself and try to find out what was going on. To make a long story short, the signing was cancelled...for now. The signer apparently had not let his wife know about wanting to refinance the house, and she was pretty upset (not surprisingly because I would be, too). But it seems the signer had had a stroke a couple of weeks ago, and the wife was concerned that her husband's mental abilities were still impacted by the stroke. The cancellation makes perfect sense to me, and if the loan officer can get this rescheduled when things seem more secure with the borrowers, he "said" he would call me directly to set everything up again and that I should keep all the documents for now. That is a long story about how I came to be outside this afternoon taking all kinds of pictures of things that are flowering in my yard and neighborhood. This is no award winning photo, but it is fun and made me think of following the "yellow brick road" to Oz. And maybe this, my first cancellation of a signing is another example of why I just follow the lead in my new notary life. Sometimes the road ends up with a detour. But the road does continue. I have a signing today and another one on Friday, both of which, hopefully, will happen.