The Home Ownership Blues (and Purples!)

Agility tonight with the new dog from the intermediate class -- I was expecting Ginger and Trinket to be horrible to the new dog and they didn't disappoint. Trinket's owner refers to them as the "mean girls". I guess that's better than going with the slightly more accurate "assholes". Oh well. At some point I'll be able to claim that Ginger's just a crotchety old dog. She's already ten -- maybe in a couple years that excuse will work?

But today's post is about home ownership. It definitely has its upsides because nobody in the entire world would rent a house to me and all my animals, plus I can paint my bedroom purple and there are no consequences other than my designer's smile getting a little tight around the edges.

However, it also means that when something goes wrong I have to deal with it, and that's always just a complete pain in the butt. Right now, for instance, the blower on my heater keeps coming on at random times when the thermostat says it shouldn't, just for a few seconds, and then cuts out again. Other than that, it's working just fine. It's probably some sensor connected to the blower that needs to be replaced, but the damn thing is on the roof and I don't do heights, so it doesn't really matter if it's something I could theoretically fix myself.

I could, of course, ignore the problem except that when it turns on like that it's sucking against a vacuum, so the whole furnace vibrates and it sounds like a dying moose. A loud dying moose. (No, I haven't ever actually heard a moose die before. We didn't treat them during my residency. But if we had seen them, it almost certainly would have died on me just like everything else...) Once a day I could deal with. Every five minutes when I'm trying to go to sleep, not so much. My neighbors probably aren't too thrilled about the sound either. The repair guy is supposed to come by... tomorrow? He was a little noncommittal.

Speaking of my designer -- for the most part she tries really hard to come up with things that I like and that look good. We were talking about getting some sort of art to put on the bathroom wall, and I pointed out that everything I have on my walls is something I or someone in my family has made. Some of it is, um, not so professional looking (eg, the oompa loompa portrait on the side of this website), but I like it all because it means something to me.

So she listened to me talk about this, and I showed her a few things, and then she finally suggested that I look for something on Etsy. I think I laughed for about ten minutes after she left. I mean, I really do feel sorry for her -- how do you handle a client like me with obviously deficient taste while still being polite?

Whatever. I've decided to make a mosaic for the bathroom wall. I mean, really, how hard can it be?