Great News

We have wind damage over 50% of our roof. That’s fantastic!

I’m actually not being sarcastic. The claims dude reassured me that with the pictures he took of the amount of damage we have thanks to two very windy spring seasons, he just can’t see how they could possibly deny his recommendation of a whole new roof. And all we have to do is pay the deductible. Not an insignificant amount of money to be sure, but far far less than the cost of a new roof. Oh and I think we also get our bedroom repainted thanks to the leak from last week. Which is fortunate for us because we never painted our room and we have been wanting to, and we might get it done professionally with no work on our part.

Score!

Now This Is Just Not Funny Anymore

Y’all know how I have the worst house luck, right? Shit always goes wrong in our house. We bought a semi-new house to avoid this sort of thing. But the worst part of it is that the shit always goes down when Jake is out of town.

The issue du jour? The roof.

Tonight, after an especially rough bedtime, I went into our room to get the baby monitor and threw myself prostrate on the bed. I was exhausted, frustrated, and just wrung out. I had half an hour before I had to start working and in that time I also had to figure out what to feed myself for dinner. Then I looked up and saw it. A wet spot on the wall where it meets the ceiling.

Fuuuuuuuuck. I so don’t have the reserves to deal with this. Thankfully I have my brother who is calmer than I am. He reminded me to just call the insurance company. So I’ll do that tomorrow. Thankfully I don’t have a drip situation but it needs to get dealt with. And hopefully we don’t need a new roof. I’d hate to think about what our homeowner’s insurance will do if we have a roof replacement.

I’m going to go find some chocolate now.

Homeowner Woes: Part 2,487,398

Sigh. I am so sick of this homeowner shit. I’m just over it.

Yesterday in a ridiculous windstorm, a section of our fence blew over. Now, we have known for a while we were living on borrowed time with that fence. But sadly right now a new fence is simply not in the budget. And yet we have to have something or else our poor dog will be everywhere in the neighborhood, as he’s a bit of a wanderer. Jake thinks he can replace just the two posts that snapped and nail the whole section back up. I like that idea, but at the same time wonder if we should just dig deep and figure out a way to afford the fence now so we don’t go wasting money on a temporary fix.

Oh, and this morning on the lawn I found a shingle. From a roof. Ours? Who knows? Our house is two stories so we can’t see all of our roof. But as my luck would have it, it probably is from our roof.

Why did we want to buy a house again?

Way Too Excited About Flooring

I’m getting tile in the two bathrooms upstairs! I am so flippin’ excited about that I can’t stand it. Never mind that one of the bathrooms needs it because the cheap vinyl the builder put in was pulling up and cats have defiled the flooring underneath. I’m going to bleach the ever-loving hell out of the sub-floor before the tile goes down. Never mind that the only reason I care about fixing that floor is that the once or twice a year that we get overnight company, it stresses me beyond belief to have anyone stay back there. It’s totally worth the money to just not have to worry about it anymore. And Jake’s mom is coming to stay two nights with us in a couple of weeks for Bridget’s birthday and I just need it to be done and over with so I can sleep at night. Plus it’ll need to be done before we sell this damn money pit hell-hole anyway.

My wonderful brother is doing the work for us. Not out of the goodness of his heart or anything - we are paying him. But he’s quite a perfectionist and I know that he’ll do the best job that could be done on it.  Today we went and picked out tile and grout and the work will begin on Thursday.

I haven’t been this excited about home improvement since May when we got new carpet. Hmmm…. maybe it’s just flooring that excites me. My hardwoods downstairs also need replacing too. If that ever got done, you might just have to peel me off the ceiling.

Way Too Excited

My brother has just changed careers and is going into business as a home inspector. So if anyone around the DFW area is buying or selling a home and needs a home inspection, be sure to let me know, ok? I know a guy.

Anyway, as a favor to us and a way for him to get used to writing up the reports, he performed a complimentary home inspection for us last week. I knew it would be trouble. We need a new dishwasher. OK, OK, I knew we needed one. I suspected for a while that there was a leak in our dishwasher, because the hardwood floors underneath it were buckling. But to have someone officially tell me we did was what it took to get me off my ass and out to Lowe’s to pick out a new one. Well, that and the fact that Sunday night I turned it on and smelled something burning. I have this rule about convenience appliances not burning down my house.

And just this very second, the installer guy left and I have a brand spankin’ new dishwasher. One that actually gets dishes clean and that you could run while watching TV. Woo hoo!

How old do I feel that the installation of a new dishwasher makes me giddy like a schoolgirl?

Here are the pictures of my newest toy:

Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead

Trashy Neighbor’s tree is no more. Good riddance. And just in time too because we saw that the entire center of it is rotten. Any good storm really could have taken it down.

Here is a picture of the guy up in the tree as they were cutting:

And here is what is left:

AWOL

Sorry to have been missing for so long. I am strangely busy for someone with no job. Oh wait, I have two jobs. Never mind. I’m not strangely busy. I’m understandably busy.

It seems the house is a never-ending project. The whole HVAC system project is almost complete and should not require any further outlay of cash by us. This thanks to the guy who promised us if we bought the new furnace and evaporator coil and duct work that we would not need further equipment for at least three years. He apparently should have looked at our zone control board before he made that promise. Any other time, I’d feel bad about holding his feet to the fire about that but not this time.

Today we are shelling out a chunk of cash to get the tree of death cut down. We were just going to have it trimmed because its branches are getting way too close to our roof for my comfort. We’ve had two or three really bad storms this spring that have left me completely convinced that POS tree was going to come crashing into our roof. Jake went over last night to tell Trashy Neighbor, out of courtesy since it is his tree and all, that we were having it trimmed today. And I guess out of bitterness toward his soon-to-be ex-wife, who always stood firm that it is a beautiful and healthy tree, he told Jake that he’d like to see it go. The guy just came to give us an estimate and they will be here today to cut that fucker down. Part of me thinks we should wait to get Trashy’s final approval, but I don’t want to give him a chance again to back out (he has said before he’d do it and backed out). Plus it’s always easier to beg forgiveness than to get permission. Or something like that. Trash Neighbor says he’ll pay part of it, but we know he won’t so we are just considering this an investment in our foundation. The thought that I could get grass to grow on that side of my yard just makes me feel downright giddy. I’m trying not to get my hopes up until the crew is here and going. But you can bet your butt I’ll be out there watching it come down. Maybe I’ll pop popcorn. I think the neighbors are going to throw a ticker-tape parade in our honor. Especially come fall when the entire street isn’t choked with the dead leaves of this tree. Oops, I think I just got my hopes up.

Anyway, I have more to say, I am sure, but I need to get in the shower and get Bridgie up from her nap. I don’t want to miss a single chainsaw cut or hack of the axe. Do they still use axes to cut down trees? I don’t think so. Stay tuned for Tree of Death II: Stump Removal coming later this summer to a yard near you.

The Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue

Sigh…. it’s been a rough couple of days. I don’t have a coherent post, just a litany of complaints.

In the last week, we have spent about $10,000 on the house. I knew we had two big ticket items to replace - the heating and air system and the carpet. I knew we could pay cash for one and would probably need to finance the other, but I didn’t know which was which because the estimates didn’t come at the same time. So we actually financed them both and I’ll be paying off one right away. But that does put a big crimp in our Caribbean vacation plans. I’m going to wait to see how it shakes out to see if we are going anywhere at all. We could still do a domestic beach vacation but I think Jake has his heart set on the Caribbean. He works so hard, I really want him to have the vacation he wants, but it just might not be doable this year. At least not exactly how he wants it.

In the quest to afford the Caribbean vacation and avoid finance charges for the aforementioned heating and air system and carpet, I have been working a lot, pretty much accepting any work they want to throw my way. Did I mention that I got promoted to project team leader on one project? I think I mentioned that I was offered the promotion, but I did eventually accept it. But I am pretty much the only one on my team who works on weekends, so I’ve been the ONLY one working weekends for a while now. And I have just agreed to be team leader on another project, which will be solely mine for the first week or so after it launches. The work is not hard and I am lucky to be able to do it and still pay attention to Bridget, but it does clog up the brain sometimes.

I’m still missing Neo. I had a dream about him last night. He was crying at the back door to be let in. Not too hard to decipher that one. I guess the hardest part for me is not knowing he’s ok. I hope that he got placed in a foster home right away, or maybe even adopted that day. But it’s possible that he is one of the cats that has to stay at Petsmart all week and that thought breaks my heart. So I have to try not to think about it. I am going to make a donation to the agency that took him back from us. I meant to do it on Saturday but things got confused and I was a blubbering mess and I forgot. I think the pets are a bit confused about where he went but seem to be adapting alright.

Sunday Jake and I went to see Spiderman 3. It was ….. eh. Fun I guess, but I thought the dialogue was very cheesy and villains were just too many. I think there should be a new rule in movies. ONE sequel maximum. I honestly can’t think of any part three that has been very good. But it was still fun to be out with Jake like real people.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with an orthodontist. Fun, huh? My dentist has been after me for ten years to go, saying that if I didn’t get some work done, my jaw would really bother me later in life. Of course he also said he’d like to see my jaw broken and reset so it would be perfect. I pretty much said he could piss off with the idea of breaking and resetting my jaw, and I tossed the idea of orthodontia as well. But lately I can feel my teeth shifting and it hurts. They don’t line up like they used to and I often wake up with a sore mouth. So I’m going tomorrow for a consultation to see what I need and how much it will cost and how long it would take. Ugh. Just what I wanted - braces at age 33. But I would like to get it taken care of, so I’ll suck it up. Although seriously if I had my jaw broken and reset, I bet I’d lose a ton of weight. Hmmmm…. something to consider.

Did I mention my visit to the vag doctor today? Well, I won’t go into details there, but being kept waiting there for an hour really made me just a ray of merry fucking sunshine.

But on the bright side of things, we have an efficiently running HVAC system now, which will hopefully mean the end of $500 electric bills in the summer (Gotta love summer in Texas!) The house is much more peaceful with Neo gone (as much as it pains me to admit that). Soon we’ll have new fresh carpet for Bridget to learn to crawl on (which scares me to even imagine).

It’s all about the looking on the bright side, I suppose.

We Should Not Be Allowed to Own a Home

All summer, I have been complaining of the heat in our bedroom. Part of that is that we were stupid enough to purchase a two-story house in Texas. Never again, I tell you. Live and learn. But at night, I couldn’t get comfortable, even though we had the AC turned to 70 degrees and the ceiling fan on.

So you know how ceiling fans are supposed to turn one way when it’s hot out and one way when it’s cold out? Yeah, ours was going the wrong way, basically pulling the hot air down on us.

Wanna hear something even more stupid? It took us a few hours after figuring that out to realize that maybe that was the same problem we were having in the office. We flipped the switch and suddenly it was cooler in the office. After we have suffered up there for three months.

On Sprinkling

As you might remember, our sprinkler system has been installed and is now up and running, showering our lawns in watery goodness, but only on our city-designated watering days, Wednesday and Saturday.

The good news? I have grass growing in places that hasn’t seen grass since we bought the house in July of 2003. Amazing what a little water will do for you.

The bad news? Apparently weeds like water too. I had thought our weed problem was minor. Turns out, the weeds were parched as well. Now they are living la vida loca in my yard.