Home ownership is not what its cracked up to be…

Ok, so I put up a post a while back about paying off my mortgage and how fantastic things are. Well these last few weeks have proved quite challenging on the home ownership front.

Firstly, my water heater finally died. It didn’t make a huge mess. There wasn’t water all over my basement, I just woke up one morning with no hot water. I called my friend’s husband who’s a plumber and he replaced it. Not a huge fuss at all. So, instead of having my first month without a mortgage payment, I had to buy a new water heater and have it installed. It cost me pretty much the equivalent of the mortgage payment. But I was thankful that there wasn’t a huge mess, and I moved on with my life.

Secondly, this past Saturday I was out on my deck checking on my flowers when I noticed that some leaves on the grapevine I have growing over my deck were completely eaten. Upon further inspection, I noticed these huge black beetles on the leaves. I took the hose and sprayed the vine and I saw hundreds of beetles fly around. GREAT!! Another problem!! At that point, I called a pest control company to see if they could come out and take care of the problem. As it turns out, they don’t care for these types of problems. So, I went off to my nearest plant nursery and bought some insecticide.

I initially sprayed some insecticide on the plant and saw some results. Lots of dead little beetles lying dead on my deck!! Good times! We had some rain, so tonight I sprayed some more insecticide on the plant and I have some more little dead bodies on the deck. But what I didn’t expect was that I would have some critters eating the remains. This evening I discovered 2 small raccoons on my deck eating at a buffet.

I can’t just have a week of quiet around here. I am constantly tending to some problem or another. I guess that’s the joys of home ownership. Sigh….

Happy Cinco de Mayo…

I have to mark the holiday and say Happy May 5, to everyone!!  I am guessing that May 5 is some sort of Mexican Independence day.  Whatever is behind the day being a holiday, good times!!  I’ll have a Margarita or a Tecate to commemorate the day.

In other news, I had a really great weekend with my BF.  I drove up to Michigan Friday night and spent a great weekend with my man!!  I drove up Friday night and attended one of my BF’s co-worker’s house party.  It was a good time!  We got drunk then decided to go to a bar called The Boathouse.  On our way out of the house party we (me, BF, Whore-hey, and Hairy Chuck) noticed that the garage door was open, so “the boys” decided that it would be a good idea to empty some of the contents of the garage onto the lawn, roof, bushes and trees.  Needless to say, the owner of the house was not happy and it was the best laugh I had had in months. 

The BF house “sprucing up” project is coming along quite nicely.  I have been driving up to Michigan every weekend for the past month to help move things along.  We have gotten the cabinets, doors and drawers primed and painted.  The walls in the kitchen are primed, sanded and ready for paint.  All the new appliances have arrived.  The stove was set into place and on Saturday we hung the microwave/oven hood combo.  (That was definitely a 2-person jobber)  We also went and picked up the new counter top.  So, yesterday, we pulled up the old counter-top (actually the BF worked on that while I touched up the cabinet doors).  Then we measured, re-measured, taped and measured again on where to cut out the hole in the new counter-top.  After an hour and a half of careful planning, we cut out the hole and safely inserted the sink.  PHEW…  We set down glue and quickly mounted the new counter-top on top of the old cabinets.  All that is left to do, in the kitchen, that is, paint the walls and lay the new floor!  I’m very excited about this, and it isn’t even my house. 

All in all, it was a great weekend with the BF, hanging out with his friends and making real visual progress on his house.  I look forward to having a kick-ass party when we’re done!!