Homeowner's Blues

The joy of owning your own house -- well, you and and the mortgage company owning it -- is large. Space between you and your neighbors, a permanent place for your stuff, a sense of belonging that bespeaks home in a way an apartment or rented house seldom, if ever, achieves.

The downside is the upkeep. Your house, you take care of it. House, yard, bushes, trees, lawn. Fortunately, I have bark-dusted enough so there isn't any lawn, but I'm still sawing up tree branches that fell during the last windstorm ...

Which is why, for the next few days, I will be doing work around the house more than on the computer.

The little things start to add up. The washerless faucet in the bathroom is dripping, and what that means is that, unlike the old kinds of valves you could take apart and just stick in a new rubber washer to fix, you now have to replace the whole thing. And because the chances of finding one that matches the rest of the still-working hardware on the sink are slim and snowball, that means the whole shebang has to be replaced.

So, a trip to Home Depot.

The meeting place of the driveway and the street has become mis-aligned, due to the roots of the gumball trees next to the curb. The cheapest and quickest fix is to rent a concrete grinder to smooth things. Neighborhood association won't let us take down the trees if they are healthy, aside from which, we like them. Ordinarily, I wouldn't care about the problem, since it's only the sidewalk I have to keep to city code, but the shift in tectonic plates there now causes all the water that used to run down the gutter on a rainy day to slosh over the curb and detour through my front yard. Somewhat distressing to step out the door and find yourself ankle-deep in swirling water lapping at your threshold ...

Another item to check into at Home Depot.

The newly cleaned-out garage which now hosts the new car requires a garage door opener if it is to be useful, and while these are relatively inexpensive, the chance of me being able to install one are probably not real good. Way I use tools, I'd hit the button on the garage door opener, all my toilets would flush, and I'd still be on the driveway trying to avoid drowning from the onrush of sloshed-over-the-curb rainwater.

Something else to look at whilst at Home Depot.

And the clearing of the garage resulted in a pile of junk on the side of the house. Moving Peter in order to pull Paul in out of the weather, so I have to get one of those dumpster thingees and see how much of a dent filling it up will make in the accreted household detritus. (The other joy of householding is that empty space fills up with junk. That spare, Japanese look I enjoy, has, over a few years, turned into a bargain-basement version of Hearst Castle. I wouldn't be surprised if my epitaph reflected this: Local Man Killed by Falling Debris Inside Own Home.)

Then, of course, it is time to do our income taxes ...

Never a dull moment.