Denied!

Half our homeowners claim was officially denied today. Feeling deflated....and poorer....and completely angry again at the previous owners of our house. The roof repairs and rot in the wall were deemed previous, long-term damage, and not covered by our policy. I was afraid of this. I was also hopeful that we could squeeze past the clause. What a great feeling to be out not only our deductible, but another 2 1/2times it to boot. Ahh..."more fuel for the fire", as Mike says. Our fire is quickly turning into an inferno.

What's that Bulge?

Got up this morning and noticed a big black bulge hanging down beneath my sofa. Hmmm....did the cat get under there and rip the lining so it's hanging down? Nope. As I reach down to feel it I realize the entire middle section of our couch is hanging near the floor. Wonder if my magic hammer can fix that one? Guess I'll flip the couch upside down today and see. Anything to avoid having to purchase new living room furniture right now. Don't get me wrong, it is in our plans to replace our sofa and loveseat in the near future, but I am not ready to look around and choose something right now...and even more not ready to spend money on it.

Seems like it's our stuff brought to this home that it failing us now. Lawn mower broke, washing machine agitator broke, and our clothes dryer takes no less than 3 complete cycles to dry our stuff. Joy. Hopefully that means that our "house surprises" have ended. That also means that if you come for a visit you might be sleeping on dirty sheets.

It's called flip-flopping, according to Property Ladder

Should I be surprised that more stuff is broken, or that things are even worse than anticipated? At this point I'd like to say the element of surprise is gone, yet, seems like it still shocks the heck out of me. Yesterday the back fence gate fell off the fence. The post is completely rotted out and the gate just literally fell off. Great. This morning our contractors started repairs in our living room and upon opening up the wall found, yet, another unsuspecting surprise.....not one, but two rotted out studs. Yep, rotted completely through from the ceiling to the floor. They fell apart when tapped with a hammer. That would be several years of continuous water leaks that would cause those bad boys to disintegrate like that. Feeling sick to my stomach. I suppose the good thing is that the innerds of the wall are repaired and the sheetrock is back up and mudded and taped (is that how you would say it in past tense?). The bad part is that the drywallers did something to my DirecTV wires so we have no TV until DTV can get out here on Wednesday to fix the problem (hello Hulu...please have my shows up promptly). The good part is that my two broken outdoor outlets (redundant) are no longer broken which means I can put up my orange Halloween lights around my front door now and they can light up...and Mike can plug the weed eater in out back without running an extension cord through the house.

Mike thinks our house is a lemon. Ella is worried it is going to fall down. Owen is indifferent. I just say the people before us had no clue how to take care of a house....that they neglected everything, patch fixed what they could, and covered up things and hoped it would not backfire. Once we clean up their mess (hopefully at their expense) we will take care of things the way they should be and this house will love us more than any homeowner before. Can't wait to get to that point....hopefully it's soon. Not sure my stomach can handle many more U-Turns.

It's hot down there!

Curse our lawn mower to hell! My half-bathroom toilet can also go there.

Silence!

My new fridge of 2 months is beautiful but I hate it! It is the noisiest piece of metal I have ever heard. I am completely annoyed by constant sounds like humming or buzzing. I want quiet! Not to mention that when the ice drops from the ice maker it sounds like a gun shot. Seriously. If you don't believe me, you should totally come for a visit. (and if it matters, the guest room is on the second floor where it's much quieter). If my house were filled with more kids that were incredibly noisy they would drown out the loud refrigerator. Perhaps I should invite my nephews for a visit. I sure love them and miss them, but they really are noisier than my noisy fridge.

Blah-blah-blah with a side of blah

I can honestly say today is my first "down" day since we moved. Not sure if I have a little bug or if my body is just plain exhausted, but I seriously have been a bum all day, with little energy to spare. Woke up to a brisk, chilly morning and put some capri's on Owen (seriously, NONE of his pants fit!). Feeling a little embarassed about it, but, hey, he looks cute in his glasses so who will even notice his ankles catching a breeze down there, right? Spent some time in the morning sweeping and mopping, and trying to convince my contractor that he wants to throw in more work for the amount my insurance company has agreed to pay. Starting to wonder if I should just sub-contract out the repairs myself....think I could get more for the money. Whatever....too exhausted to worry anymore about that today. The highlight of my day was being hugged by a stranger at Target this afternoon and told that I was doing a good job as a mom. She must've known I needed that today. I'm sure if you had noticed the glazed look in my eyes as I watched my cranky 4-year-old throw a complete fit in my shopping cart and then have a melt down because I needed him to try on one stinkin' pair of pants, you'd have felt the need to hug me too.

On Hold again

My friend, Autumn, gets the entire cake when it comes to dealing with billing errors. Myself, I take a close second....really close. I think she and I should go into business together and charge other people a fee to take care of their billing problems for them. I swear, since we moved I have spent several hours each month trying to negotiate rates and fees that I was promised when setting up new services. After three calls to AT&T I think I finally have what was promised, although the rebates have not physically appeared in my mailbox (they said give them 4-6 weeks). Today was my fourth lengthy call to DirecTV and I honestly still have not gotten what I was promised in the beginning. Whatever. After my call today they have agreed to give me a significant credit from a past purchase which will end up to be about the same as the monthly savings I was promised. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will not have to call either of these companies again in the near future or I might have to poke my eyeball out with a dull stick - seriously.

I suppose the good news is that I got my electric bill today and it is less than last months bill (although, don't read too much into my excitement, it's still quite steep).

Friday!!

The toilet is fixed, hopefully, once and for all. Very grateful for the plumber who also showed me where all of my outside plumbing vents were and where my water main is. Now to tackle a leak near my shower door. Nothing a little caulking can't fix!

Also contemplating today if our lawn mower and I will ever be BFF's. Last week it hated me and didn't want to start. This week it ran out of gas and then I think I flooded it when I put more gas in it. Sigh. After sharing some profanities at it for, like, 30 minutes it finally started. The lawn is mowed, I've torn out two rose bushes, and moved a topiary. Now if I can only convince the edger and weedeater to be my friends....perhaps next week.

Right now I'm glad it's Friday, that there's football tonight, and that for this moment, nothing new is broken in my house.

The Sh!tter is Full

The toilet is clogged....AGAIN. I need both my fingers and Mikes to count the number of times we have had toilet issues since we moved into our house two months ago. After the first $75 spent to a plumber I quickly aquired a toilet auger from Home Depot. Love the thing! That is, until this week. Spent money on Monday to have a plumber come again, remove an entire toilet, replace said toilet, and make it work. Same toilet is now stopped up again. Apparently we have small pipes....at least that's what a neighbor told me. I guess that means we have huge crap. Huge.

Welcome to my life.

Our house has opened our eyes to a whole new journey. A journey that might be constantly turning right now, but I'm hell-bent on making that journey a straight line. Seems like every day brings us a new set of problems. I am determined to overcome all of them....while possibly learning some new skills along the way. I suppose the good thing is that I'm not afraid of a challenge, the bad thing is that our front trees do not have money growing on them.

My husband always tells me I am a complainer. Indeed. I can't disagree. It's my way of dealing with things. On the flip side I am, for the most part, a very positive person. I thought I'd take a stab at this new blog to help vent some of my daily frustrations. I also think that most of my challenges are quite humorous....even if they don't seem that way at the time.