Happy first day of Fall!
It’s been months since I have tended to my sweet little blog-baby. Sadly, I’m turning into a horrible mother! No excuses… I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had much chance to sit down for any extended period of time and write a post. Womp-womp! I haven’t even had any vacation time in over a year! I’m dyin’!
Things have been on fire lately at the house. Travis quit his job and started his own company! You know… no biggie. Ha! And with all of that new business stuff, there were some legal issues and other unpleasantries. It has been very, very, very stressful. And it came at a time where we have a lot of other issues on our plate. While it would be very easy to become defeated and believe the whole world is against us, we know the best thing we can do is shake shit off and prove the nay-sayers wrong by succeeding. And that’s what we’re doing. BAM!
With the business being out of our house, Trav needed an office space to put his 3 monitors and 8 THOUSAND Post-It notes. I’m not kidding, we are single handedly keeping the Post-It company in business! And if you’re not already aware, space is at a major premium in our house since we lack a garage or an attic and our crawl space in our basement is stuffed to the gills… with Kevin Bacon references.
Our master bedroom also lacks a closet, so a few years ago, I turned our smallest spare bedroom into a “walk-in closet.” But now it’s doubling as Travis’ office. It’s only a temporary solution, but it’s actually pretty cozy!
And now it’s the last week of September and fall is beginning to reveal herself in small peeks here and there. I LOVE fall! And I especially love October! I LOVE the changing of leaves and bonfires, hot cider, caramel apples, pumpkin pie and hoodies. I love the chilly mornings and evenings! I LOVE decorating for Halloween and going to haunted houses (the attractions, not ghost-haunted houses! I even have a short list of some of the haunted houses we’ve visited and reviewed here!) and passing out candy for Trick-or-Treat!
We’ve also decided that this year we’re bringing back our infamous Halloween party! We’ve had one every year since we moved into our house, but took a short hiatus last year to recover from a particularly terrible party in ’13. This year our Halloween spirit is fully recharged and we’re back at it. And we actually started decorating on Labor Day weekend.
It’s a pretty big deal for us. We have a lot of decorations (our entire front yard becomes a full-scale grave yard), I make food, I spend weeks making the perfect party music playlist, we get beer and have a bonfire. In 2013, we even had our first “drive-in movie!” We used our projector to show classic horror movies on a homemade movie screen that we constructed out of PVC pipe.
We spend countless hours and probably way more money than we should to put on this party every year. We’ve spent years buying and building decorations and we break our asses for weeks beforehand to get ready. We put our blood, sweat and tears into it. To say the least, it’s a big deal to us!
So when our guests started doing stupid shit like drunkenly peeing all over everything, splattering whipped cream on the ceiling, accosting the female guests and their I-still-live-in-my-mom’s-basement asses used our house as their personal mating grounds… we had to step back and re-evaluate some relationships and rethink things a little bit. Am I bitter about it? Absolutely.
Travis and I usually spend the entire next day on the couch in recovery watching horror movies on TV! This year I took off the whole week after. It will be my first vacation since our honeymoon/anniversary trip last year in September! I am so excited I can hardly contain myself! I am in dire need of a few days of rest and recuperation!
But back to the house topic: We’re getting some seemingly small but BIG things checked off our to-do list! We FINALLY got the electric fixed in the kitchen and the back porch. We had two mini track-light fixtures with 3 lights a piece on them. The year we moved in, one whole fixture went out. (It was the electrical box, not just the fixture.) Over the years, each of the lights on the other track went out one by one. Then a few weeks ago, we were left with one SINGLE tiny light. Making dinner and cleaning up each night like what I imagine Colonial times were like… without having to crap in the woods. It was making me crazier than I already am!
Seemingly, everything in this house has broken. This is not a plea for sympathy… It’s a part of home-ownership that we anticipated!
- Roof in ’09 (Luckily, covered by insurance after Hurricane Ike rolled through Ohio. Seriously.)
- A/C in ’11
- Refrigerator in ’12
- Washer and dryer in ’13
- Water heater in ’14
Not to mention a string of surgeries and 2 cars totally crapping out on us. So we anticipated the electric being another pricey item that we’d have to live lean for a while to pay for. But we bit the bullet, the electrician came and spent about an hour and half, replaced a light switch and re-connected some electrical lines that were mysteriously disconnected from the breaker box, and voila – Lights! And we only spent about $150! That’s a fantastic day in my book!
We also bought a couple new light fixtures that would make the kitchen brighter, and one to replace the “boob light” on the low ceiling of our stairwell that has a metal “nipple” that pokes out and frequently stabs Travis in the head on his way down the stairs. No one wants to be stabbed in the head by a metal nipple… At least I don’t think they do…
We also replaced the bamboo blinds in the newly renovated spare bedroom. They sounded like shrieking eels when you opened and closed them…
And a few weeks ago, the cat, who loves to bat the pull-strings around, somehow broke them. So we went and got some new ones (the same style as the old ones, just new and no shrieking eel sounds). Have you ever seen how they cut these things!? It’s amazing! They slap ’em up on the saw table right there in the window shade aisle still in the box and cut them to size! Freaking awesome! It’s free and only took 5 minutes! I love technology!
Next paycheck, we’re finally getting a new screen door. One that doesn’t sound like a sonic boom every time someone lets it slam shut. We priced them out and discovered the installation cost at about $100, is worth the hassle to us and will finally fix our wonky ass door frame. Something that we have zero interest or knowledge in doing. I know it has to be flush and plumb or something in order for your door to work right. I don’t know what flush and plumb means… Sounds like a toilet reference to me.
After that, we have to reseal the driveway and touch up some spots on our foundation with fresh paint before winter and we’ll be all set for mother nature to wreak her havoc on us. But hopefully with it being an El Niño year, we won’t have the -117 degree winter again. Here’s hoping!
unhipdotcom 