Oh, Home. Sweet (Old) Home.

My goal for the day is to get some laundry done.  I managed to wash the kitchen floor on Tuesday morning, which was a huge success that lasted about an hour before Thing 2 (insert laughter here) started tossing her snacks from her high chair.  Then Thing 1 came home and wouldn't take off her shoes.  The dog came in, and the floor was again covered in dirt.  Good times.  Mommy swept for the 3rd time, then got out the vacuum again.  Boy, that was so much fun.

When adults foster the dreams of children, they create this perception that life as a grown up is so much fucking fun.  Some day, you are going to grow up and be whatever you want to be.  You can do what you love, you can have your own home.  So romantic.

Owning a home is a lot of work, and my husband and I have a "shit that needs to get done" list which continues to grow longer with each passing year.  It's not that we haven't tackled any of the items on the list, but when one item finally gets crossed off, another two or three are added.  It's endless.

I love our house.  It's older than any living person in my family (except Babci), but it's lovely.

You can see in this picture that my husband needs to get some work done on weeding the walkway.  It's a total pain in the ass.  I've attempted to help, but I really don't like doing yard work.  Anyhow, we fell in love with the house as soon as we saw it.  It's a 1922 Colonial Revival, and so much of the original detail remains intact, like the slate roof, the glass door handles, the hardwood floors.  It even has a garage, which is more than I ever dreamed of in a home.

One fun detail about the garage is that the door opener sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.  So, on a day when I have somewhere to be--like today when I had to drop off my daughter at school--I sat holding the remote pressing the button relentlessly, looking I'm sure like a freaking maniac as I banged the damn thing in my hand.  Bang. Press.  Aim.  Shake.  Press.  Nothing.  I drove off with the garage door wide open.

What is also a really good time, is that our driveway doubles as a swimming pool when it rains.  You can see the drain in this picture above, but you shouldn't make the mistake of believing that the drain actually works to run the water out of the driveway into some far off land.  There was one storm when my husband got out there with a broom and was trying to swish the water off to the side yard so that it didn't overflow into the bulkhead.  We bought Thing 1 a pair of rain boots so that she could jump in the driveway "puddle", but it collects so much water, it's actually more like a pond and is too deep for her to stand in.  So. Much. Fun.

Above you can see that the breezeway door might fall down with the next gentle breeze that flows through.  The door needs to be replaced, then the roof because it too leaks when it rains, thereby serving the valuable purpose of protecting us from inclement weather as we pass from garage to home sweet home.  Yes, that's our dog Mary.  She's barking at me.  We have a deep love-hate relationship.

What really burns my ass is when shit like this happens.

Putting up a fence in the back yard was a HUGE accomplishment.  It was great to get that off the list.  Then a tree falls on it?  Really?  While it seems that there is little to no damage to the fence (thank the sweet LORD), it does add "remove tree" to our growing list of shit to get done.

Another fantastic finish was replacing the toilet in the downstairs half bath.  So exciting.  We no longer need to turn the water on and pull the top off to flush when the little one has to pee and won't make it upstairs.  As luck would have it--and I'm not kidding--it wasn't even a week before that new toilet was installed when the sink in the upstairs bath started leaking!  Sweet child of mine.

And so it goes, right.  This is what being a grown up is all about.  Sure, all of this is in part due to the fact that the house is so old, but my sister's house isn't nearly as old, and they have had to do a lot of work in the few years they have lived there as well.  It's just part of owning a home.  

I love my house.  I do.  I just wish that This Old House would come here and fix things up for us (before the tree falls on a neighbor's house) so that we can start a new list of things that need fixin'.