Home ownership. You kind of suck.

Oh y’all.  What a weekend.  And I don’t mean that in the good “what a weekend” way.  But it ended in a good way.  In a very sappy kind of good way. 

On Friday morning, guess what I did?  I paid for another house repair!  Awesome!  Because I just have all of this extra money that I need to spend.  I’m going to be taking a rather long road trip next week (don’t bother robbers and thieves…I have a house sitter, a great security system, neighbors who will be looking after things, and security bars on all of my doors - not to mention a vicious attack cat) and I’ve mentioned approximately 46468798 times that I’ve planted a bunch of flowers and spent a small fortune on my yard.  So I spent another chunk of money getting my sprinkler system repaired so that I don’t have to pray my house sitter remembers to water every other day while I’m gone and I don’t come back to dead plants. 

Actually, I couldn’t figure out how to turn my sprinkler system on if I’m being honest. 

My brother and I had gotten into the lock box with the controls for the sprinkler system (he busted the lock with a screwdriver is what we did since I was not given a key when I bought the house.  My brother is a police officer and he said he was going to bring his lock pick kit but he forgot it so he did it in the common criminal kind of way) and we found one “box” thingie in the ground with a bunch of wires.  And we turned some knobs and acted like we had some idea of what we were doing. 

(Note:  I had no idea what I was doing as I've never used a sprinkler system in my life.)

Turns out there was another box “thingie” in the ground someplace else that we didn’t know about which has the valve in it that actually turns the water on.  Helpful to do that it turns out.  It was kind of like the blind leading the blind as much as either of us knows about sprinkler systems.  So the system works and yet I had called a repairman out at $80/hour to tell me that I had to turn the dadgum water on.  Sometimes I think I’m kind of smart, but then a sprinkler system tells me otherwise. 

He did replace a few things and cap some sprinklers that were basically watering the back of my garage so I paid him WAY more than $80.  I'm not sure, but I think I felt better having him do some more stuff even though it was more money just so he couldn't tell people a lady paid him $80 to come turn on the water faucet.

After he had been there for about an hour and a half and we had been chatting and he realized I’m a pretty laid back person, I suppose he felt comfortable criticizing my choice of neighborhoods.  I say that because he just came right out and asked me, “so what in the world made you buy a house in this neighborhood?”  And I really didn't have a very good answer because the God's honest truth is that I had never even been in my neighborhood until the week before I made the offer on my house.  It's really just because I got a very good deal in the 'hood.

Then he said, “I was driving down your street and kept thinking I must be on the wrong road.  I’m pretty sure you own the only house on this street that would have a sprinkler system.”  And he’s probably right about that.  But I still love my ‘hood and it’s crazy people. 

I then got needled again in physical therapy on Friday night.  Ooh.  Aah.  Exciting weekend starting out, huh?  Criticizing sprinkler system dudes and physical therapy. 

Don’t worry.  It gets even worse. 

You will all be jealous of  how I spent my Saturday.  I spent almost 13 hours unpacking nine more boxes from my move, sorting and organizing photos, office stuff and paperwork, and staying inside to avoid the 93 degree day.  I suppose it’s a good thing I spent a fortune and got my air repaired two weekends ago, huh? 

And if my Saturday rocked your world, just wait until you hear about Sunday!  I mowed the grass at 9:00 a.m. since it was only 80 degrees at that point, and I still sweated buckets.  Then I spent 4.5 hours scraping plastic film covered in paint off of 120 french door panes.  If you’re friends with me on the face, I said I cleaned 110 panes.  It was actually 120.  And I want credit for every blasted one.  

I’ve never done a more sucky job in my life. 

The doors were new and still had the plastic film on them when I moved in.  My painters took them down, sprayed them with paint and put them back up.  They charge extra to remove the plastic and I thought it wouldn’t be that big of a deal so I didn’t pay them to do it.  Ha!  I am the biggest fool I know.  I now know I would have paid them a thousand dollars at least to have done that horrid, horrid task.  Have any of you had to do this before?  If not, pay someone.  But not me.  Because I will never do it again. 

I was covered literally from head to toe in a bazillion flakes of white paint.  I had them in my hair, on my eyelids, all over my face, down my shirt, all over my arms, hands, legs, feet, etc.  I was pouring sweat which made the paint stick to me even more, two of my fingers are so effin’ sore today from peeling, and I stabbed my finger with the razor blade.  Twice.  I took a shower when I was finished and another one this morning and I’m still finding paint flakes on my arm.  I’m pretty sure it will take me months or years to get all of the paint flakes scraped off my tile and hardwood.  And then I organized more paperwork. 

Oh, it was such a fun filled weekend!  I never left my house and yet I finally sat down to relax at 10:00 last night.  When I did sit down, I checked my emails and Hot Brazilian had sent me one of the sweetest emails I’ve ever gotten.  It was full of sap and he linked to a You Tube video of a super romantic song and he told me how much he misses me and I sat there and cried like a fool.  They were happy tears but I could not stop crying.  I think it was partly because I probably still had a paint flake or two in my eyes.  No really, it was one of the sweetest and most meaningful notes I’ve ever gotten from anyone and it kind of made me forget about how much my weekend had sucked. 

So if you’ve read June today, you know that she and Marvin will be officially divorced in less than 30 minutes.  And I’m all sickly in love and missing my guy.  So today’s Music Monday is going to be a rather broad theme.  Let’s make it about relationships.  You can pick songs that have any word in the title having to do with relationships:  love, divorce, engagement, marriage, beginning, end, missing someone, etc.  As always, I have a few songs in mind but let’s see what y’all can come up with!

And I hope each and every person reading had a weekend better than mine.  If you spent half the weekend cleaning toilets you had a better weekend than me.