Wait. Are those people under your stairs?

I like to start all of my blogs with the following sentence: The greatest part about being a homeowner is x, y, blah, blah, blah, followed by a brief rant. This formula is a pretty successful way for me to get enough content to make the page scroll down. With that in mind, the greatest thing about being a homeowner is....

Oh wait, no matter what, owning a home is not great. I lied. We put up Christmas ornaments the other day (Shaq is dunking on Santa) and played some Josh Groban and Amy Grant and it pretty much felt like home. And yes, I complained a few times about not having a fireplace, but I didn't so much mind owning a home.

However, in a related story, who cares? This blog depends upon my dissatisfaction. Ergo; our Saturday house chores were spent on two major tasks. Unfortunately, I only have time for one because tasks always take longer than you'd think.

1) Putting caulk around the wire that leads into our electrical box. Why? I guess because water and electricity don't mix as well as you think they might. Okay, really I'm hoping that one day I touch some switch in the electric box and it shocks me and terms me into some super genius with really crazy hair. And I would use my super genius to enslave the human race and put everyone to work mining diamonds. Also, I would make all currency 1980's mom jeans.

Unfortunately, the chances of that happening are slim. Unlike the jeans....I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your servers.

S and I blissfully stepped out into the twenty eight degree weather like so:

S: It's so bright and cheery outside.

M: I love it when it's this brisk. Can you smell that mountain air honey?

S: We don't live in the mountains.

M: What the f did you just say to me!!! You take that back!!!

Ah, weekends. Anyhow, we crawled underneath our porch into the little shanty, (Aside: just a fantastic place to store bodies, like top notch. Like the Ritz Carlton of places to put inconvenient neighbors. And yes, it smelled like feces down there. All the better. Nobody wants to check if someone has bodies underneath a porch if it smells like poop.

Cop: Let's check under here for those missing folks.

M: I wouldn't go down there.

Cop: Why not?

M: You'll see.

Cop: They've just got poop down here.

Low humor is the best. Read your Shakespeare. Anyhow, we climbed down underneath the porch past the detritus of owners long gone and looked at the hole in our wall. But, oh wait, the hole in the cement was way too big to do anything about. And just like every problem in a new/old home it turns from something small into something slightly to moderately to way larger, and always less convenient than you thought.

For instance. The toilet is leaking. No, the toilet is now flooding my bathroom.

Once I just get up the last of these leaves we'll be done for the season. No, the tree behind our house was holding onto leaves just to spite me.

I think we might need to fill in some of the cement on our steps to keep it from cracking. No, we bought a house entirely comprised of graham crackers and icing.

The shower is leaking a bit. The shower is holding on to water and then vindictively spitting it out at random times because it feels left out now that you have a new baby.


And it became clear why the Russian River was flowing into our electrical box and that we didn't have the tools to deal with it. We concluded after huddling in the dark around broken rakes and old lawnmowers with Lord only knows how many varieties of brown recluse spiders we left the job undone.

M: I can't wait to put people under the stairs.