Five Years and Fifty Thousand Dollars Later

The Crazy House has become crazier. We finally got the TV hooked up and the first thing I turned to was the movie with Shelly Long called "The Money Pit." Remember that one? She and her husband buy this historic home and they plan to fix it up in a few weeks and a few stops at Home Depot. But they end up pouring all their money into the house that never ends. I am afraid that this may be this house. When it comes to buying homes, Mike and I have lived by these two adages: Buy the worse house on the block, and the house doesn't matter-you can change a house, you can't change land. We are about to see if those two adages are really something we want to live by.

Mike took the toilet out of the middle of the laundry room. Now there is a piece of blue tarp duct taped to the floor; it will probably be there at least one year. Our shower, what I have NOT affectionately named "The Camp Shower," is tilted so that soap, shampoo and anything else you put on the shelf falls off. Ian's shower sinks about four inches when you stand in it because the floor is rotted out. You cannot open the freezer if you have the fridge open. You cannot get into the kitchen if the fridge is open unless you detour through the living room. We cannot figure out the complicated heating system thus we only have heat at five in the morning and ten at night. The wood stove is disconnected and sitting in the living room since our insurance wouldn't cover our house unless we got rid of it; it will probably be there at least one year. When I opened the barn door, it fell off its hinges.

But......I wash dishes in the kitchen and look directly at Smith Rock. I wake up in the morning to a view of Three Sisters. There are coyotes that talk and howl every evening. There is a small herd of Black tail deer that live in the trees in the middle of our pasture. We have a black and white barn cat that came with the property. There are a pair of doves that sit in the apple tree outside the dining room.

Overall, I do like it. It's starting to grow on me, somewhat like a wart - you keep putting duct tape on it since your science teacher told you it worked, but it doesn't so pretty soon the wart becomes a part of your body and you no longer notice it.  In other words, I will probably turn the wood stove into an accessory and the soap and shampoo will remain on the floor.

It's all good.