7 Things Down, 50 Zillion to Go

After having a small meltdown this week related to home repairs and my finances, I am finally starting to breathe again.  Sort of.  It helps that the heating/cooling people came this morning and fixed the bedroom heating and cooling unit.  I have a brand new unit for free courtesy of my home warranty.  One item scratched off my list.   

I am also starting to see some light at the end of my tree limb, weed, crazy yard tunnel.  A great guy named Jim has been showing some yard love at my house.  Jim is the type of guy who sees what the tree wants and does it.  He thinks of the emotional baggage that comes with a misplaced rosebush and doesn't hesitate to say, "Let's rip it out."

Really?  We can rip it out?  Phew.  I thought the world was going to end if I ripped it out. 

Jim is a yard magician, the Yard Whisperer, the friend to tree and cactus alike.  While I hesitated to hire someone to landscape my house and help me get control of this yard, I honestly don't know when I would have the time because I'm so busy trying to keep random shit working.  It's kind of hard to do yard work when I'm trying to keep the hot water heater from burning my house down.  Fire and destruction or pulling weeds?  Tough call. 

Thanks to Jim, I can mark several things off my list, including:
Landscape
Landscape More
Landscape Again
Cut tree from above fireplace

The total is now 5 things off the list. 

Kip saved the day this weekend by scratching off the 6th thing on my list: haul broken outside furniture left here by the former evil spawns of Satan to the dump.  Thanks Kip.  Goodbye double lounge chair thing that has been in my way and bothering me for months. 

Tomorrow I will mark off item 7: replace broken hot water heater.  Once again, free hot water heater a la home warranty.  Unfortunately, I will have to shell out some cash to avoid future home-burning-down issues.  The cash outlay definitely adds to the feeling that I am hemorrhaging money faster than they can print it. 

When will I have to stop paying for unexpected stuff?  Never?  Crap. 

The List. The Ever-Growing List

I have an ongoing list of things to deal with related to my house.  This list is in addition to the normal things that must be done, like cleaning the floor or using the vacuum.  Some of the things are not pressing but need to be done at some point. Other things are improvements that I may or may not get to in the distant future.  I would cry but I'm too busy continuously adding things to the list that I don't have time to cry. 

I have contacted the Oxford English Dictionary people to explain that the following list should be the new official definition of "home ownership":

Replace hot water heater
Redo tile in guest shower
Replace screens in 3 windows, 2 doors
Overhead lighting in living room
Replace garage door
Haul broken outside furniture to dump
Cat door to save cat from being eaten by dogs
Remove wallpaper
Remove popcorn ceiling
Reseal tile in kitchen
Have carpet cleaned
Chimney Sweep
Order fire wood
New flooring in guest area
Repaint everywhere
Buy furniture (which has its own sub-list)
Replace guest toilet
Reseal pool
Landscape
Landscape more
Landscape again
Remove weird carpet glued to bar area
French doors, 2 places
Install wood stove
Have furnace checked
Order propane
Get rid of awful curtains
Re screen porch
Fix door on screened-in porch
Organize crap in garage left by old owners
Go through boxes of cleaners, sealing goop, etc... left by old owners
Remove bizarre kitchen shelf feature
Get ac unit in bedroom fixed
Replace door in back
Get file cabinet to organize mountains of home-related paperwork
Sand and reseal counter top
Replace kitchen sink
Order size-appropriate fireplace screens
WTF with the weird electrical outlet in the middle of my floor?
Remove weird half-wall stupid bedroom thingy
Fix pocket door
Skylight handle?
Trim tree from over fireplace
Pump for fountain
Tear down fake room lean-to thing
Goodbye fake well
More outside lighting
Outdoor shower area
Fix fence
Fix sun-shade area
Rotten porch beams
Descale toilet bowl rings
Replace guest sink faucet
Rat traps

Reason 5,678 Why I Hate the Former Owners

Yesterday morning the shower in my bathroom refused to get hot.  Yes.  Yes, I did let it run for a while.  Nothing.  I moved the shower knob around.  Nothing.  I stood there praying.  Nothing. 

Logically, I knew it wasn't the hot water heater.  It couldn't have been because the rest of the house has hot water.  It must be the stupid knob.  Stupid, stupid, stupid knob. 

There must have been indications before that the knob had failure tendencies.  Much like other things that were either broken by the owners after my home inspection or that were about to break but they didn't say anything, the knob must have been on their "I hope she doesn't notice and ask us to fix it" list.  Bastard.  Cruel, old, decrepit bastards. (I realize how irrational that is.  Maybe they didn't know.  That is what my rational mind says.  However, my former-owner-hating mind says they knew and decided to say 'screw it. not my problem anymore.')

So, in the midst of one of the busiest weeks at work, I will have to figure out how to change a shower faucet knobymajig.  The upside to all of this is I get to use the guest bathroom.  It is a good quality control step to make sure that shower is in proper working order.  If that fails, though, I am in a world of shower-less hurt because there are only 2 bathroom.  I can't abandon that one and move on to the third.

Bring on the Light Brigade

Keith Graham is an electrician wizard of destiny.  For all of you in and around Nogales, remember his name.  Keith Graham.  He and his army of trained professionals will be coming to my house on Thursday to install flood lights, motion detectors, and some new switches.  The cost is so reasonable that it is practically free. 

We talked on the phone about his estimate, and he was almost apologetic about the cost because he saw how (un)furnished my house is, must have noticed I was on day 4 of my favorite jeans, and figured that since it didn't look like I had brushed my hair, I must have sold my brush to buy ramen noodles. 

My theory of electricity:  hire someone who is actually trained to do electrical work.  If the company has the word "Electric" in the name and it is backed up by some kind of bonding or licensing process, even better.  Especially hire that person when no less than 5 of your friends recommend that person. 

I explained to Keith that I could find some two-bit schmo to do some wiring and electrical work, and then I would die in my sleep as the house burned down.  I could also do the work myself and skip all the "will I or won't I die" drama by just electrocuting myself during installation.  What would Bhodi do if I electrocuted myself?  Keith's reasonable estimate will be cheaper in the long run and a lot less deathy. 

So, if you have been saving up your pennies for a private trip into space, wait until this weekend when you will be able to identify my house from the most distant reaches of the galaxy. 

There's no C in the Pool...or P for that matter.

So I finally decided to delve into the whole pool maintenance thing.  The former owners were kind enough to leave me a broken pool vacuum, a broken pool vacuum stick, a broken vacuum hose, and a pump with an automatic timer.  After some online searching, I decided to invest in all of these things plus some crazy bags of stuff called "pool shock" and a deluxe testing kit. 

I figured testing the water was a good place to start.  Step one: put some pool water in the testing thing.  Add 5 drops of this and 5 drops of that, match water color to the indicator thingy to know how much chlorine I have in the pool.  The answer: Zero.  No chlorine.  None.  Not a drop.  Not a part per million. 

Step 2, check the ph of the pool.  Add more pool water to the tester.  A few more drops of something else.  Match the color.  Too much ph. I am over-ph'd.  Ph to the max. 

All of the things I have to add to fix these problems of course rely on knowing how many gallons of water the pool has.  After some measuring and some online easy converters, I found total volume, did some more math, found some chemicals, and now the pool is stewing outside.   

The moral of this story is: having a pool is a pain.  I might have to do some soul searching and could decide that while a pool sucks, a huge fish pond might be easier. 

Vacuuming the pool, however, is fascinating, like peeling dried glue off your hands or getting a Zen rock garden.  I could vacuum a pool all day.  And skimming...don't even get me started on the joys of skimming. 

Baby Rattlesnake Born Again

I found the coffee can with the rattlesnake.  The good news for the snake...it was still alive.  The bad news for me...it was still alive AND they hadn't bothered to put a lid on the can.  I can't recall how many times I messed around in that area of the garage and walked by that can without knowing the snake was there, watching, thinking about getting out, dreaming of food because it was probably freaking starving. 

I quickly found a lid and closed up the can.  Then I started to feel sad for the baby snake.  What a horrible way to go, trapped in a cheap coffee can, hungry, suffocating, sliding around in your own pooh.  So, I put the can in my car, drove and drove and drove until I found a nice area, and I did the rattlesnake fling, launching it into a nice little wash with some vegetation and rattlesnake hiding crevices. 

Dear Rattlesnake Gods, please know that I spared one of your own.  If you could draft the memo to all other rattlesnakes in the county that they should stay out of my yard and my house and my pool, I would greatly appreciate it. 

Time to Sell the House

In case you haven't heard, I officially closed on the House with Character.  I was in the process of shuttling my meager belonging over there, checking on the new cat, tidying up the place, and whatnot.  Unfortunately, I am going to have to undo all of that work because I have to sell my new house. 

It seems that the former owners' son found a baby rattlesnake in the pool.  That's right folks.  A baby rattlesnake...the size of a worm, hard to detect, and full of venom.  I don't think I can ever swim in the pool, go in the yard, or close my eyes to sleep in the house. 

The true joy is that the son put the rattlesnake in a coffee can in the garage and forgot to throw it away when the final move happened.  I am hoping it is dead in the coffee can, but even so, its ghost is there to haunt me for the rest of my rattlesnake fearing days.