10 Reasons I will never, EVER, buy another house:

1)  Yard work.  I hate it.  You may have seen my blog posts about gardening.  I do like gardening - but you can have a pot of tomatoes or a raised bed anywhere.  You don't need a yard for that.  I'd rather dig my eye out with a spoon than trim another Crepe Myrtle.  I'd love for someone to come remove all of mine.  Or poison them.  Whichever.

2)  Disposal Repair.  This is one of the most disgusting tasks ever.  Mine breaks every other week when I make the egregious error of throwing a vegetable peel of some sort down it.  My disposal says, "Aw, HAIL no" and refuses to work any further.  This leads to a backed up sink, plunging, draining and snaking.  I want  back the days when a maintenance man would deal with this situation.

3)  Foundation drama.  I had the misfortune to buy a home in a part of Dallas, Texas where the ground moves. every. freaking. day.  I swear every other house on my street has a sign out front of some foundation company that's doing work.  We actually benefit (if you can call it that) by owning a pier and beam rather than a slab.  So instead of my foundation work costing 15K, it (only?) cost me 6K.  Yay!?
Bad news?  Texas has zero regulation on foundation repair companies.  Hell, I could start a business and say I do foundation repair.  I might just do that. 

4) Size. So everything's bigger in Texas, right?  That's why my household of 2, plus 3 dogs, needs 2400 square feet of living space - Of which, we've somehow managed to fill every nook and cranny.  If there's an empty counter space, then by God, we need to set something on it.  I absolutely cannot stand it.  I'm currently trying to figure out how to downsize EVERYTHING.  Somehow the brother I don't speak to can cram his wife and four children in a 1000 square foot town home.  That's 6 living, breathing human bodies in 1000 square feet.  Why do we need 2 times that? 

5) Cleaning.  This goes along with #4.   Look I'm a pretty clean person.  In fact, a little OCD at times.  I would love for my house to be perfectly organized and smell like pine sol.  How can I manage to do this when I work full time and have outside activities that keep me occupied?  Simply, I can't.  It would take me no time at all to clean my apartment but the house is too much.  I've entertained the idea of getting some help with the cleaning work.  For a house my size, it would cost at least $125 for someone to come once every 2 weeks.  That's $250 a month, roughly 3K a year.  I can go on a trip for that kind of money (which I'd much rather do).

6) Cost.  In no way do I think the cost of owning a home beats living in an apartment.  People like to talk about equity.  Equity is a word mortgage brokers use to con people into home ownership.  Whatever money you supposedly build in equity, you're putting right back into your home with all the upkeep.  Having a handyman and someone else to maintain the common areas is worth whatever "equity" I have in my current home.

7) Vinyl Siding.  Do yourself a favor and keep the hell away from this crap.  Many a time I've had to climb up on my roof to put the siding back in place after a strong wind or storm blows through.  J won't climb up on the roof because he's scared of falling.  The last time I had to do it, I made him hand me a bunch of nails and I spent a good hour banging away with a hammer to make sure it never moved again.  Its junk and I don't want any part of it.

8) Pest control.  There was a snake - a SNAKE - in my yard one time when I was forced to rake leaves.  I took one look at it, screamed and ran into the house where I promptly locked the door on J and all the dogs.  Granted I think it was a grass snake but I know for a fact there are at least 12 different kinds of poisonous snakes in Texas.  I need to live in a setting where my chances of encountering one of these are slim to none.  Also, in my apartment, a nice note would appear on my door every few months or so, that said they would be in my apartment to spray for bugs.  Now I have to pay for someone to come make sure I don't have roaches, termites, and other such vermin.  I just want the nice note!

9)  Mail delivery.  At my old place, the office folks would sign for all the packages.  When something went missing, I could direct my wrath at the apartment complex if needed.  But I actually had great success with receiving my packages during my apartment dwelling days.  Nowadays, its a different story.  I ordered some medication for my poor, arthritic pug.  When I checked the USPS, it said they were delivered when in fact they were not.  I set up a claim with USPS (truly a worthless endeavor) and wrote a note to my mail carrier about the mishap.  Almost a week later, whoever opened the package must have realized they didn't want to keep the arthritis meds, and finally put it back into the hands of the post office. 

10) Getting rid of the Damn Thing.  Now that I've realized home ownership is not for me, I've also come to the very disappointing conclusion that I'm stuck with it.  Ah the days when I could simply turn in a notice and be gone!  Now, its a freaking ordeal to get rid of it.  Because we did an FHA loan, we're prohibited from selling the house until the end of this year.  On top of that, You have to make it look all nice and shit so someone will actually be interested in buying it.  This means I have to finish painting and decorating (which I have SO much free time to do).  Nothing but a hassle. 

I realize this was a rant but I honestly feel if I had it to do all over again I'd tell myself, RUN, don't walk, away from this home buying business.

New Year...New way to utilize my break time at the office...

...and take out some frustrations. This site is fun!

The Elements of F*cking Style

Not too long ago, my half-brother belittled my blog and writing skills in general.  I actually considered his criticism for a brief moment and didn't think about it again until I ran across this little gem:

I immediately ordered it thinking that if my skills needed some improvement, this was the book to do it.  I have to say, it is pretty awesome so far.  How could I not like a book that advises me to:
"Use strong, definite language in your writing.  Make that sentence your bitch."   

It also gives examples of words that are commonly used in error, proper comma placement, semi-colons and hyphens. PLUS its MUCH more interesting than the original Elements of Style.  Strunk and White could put a corpse to sleep.  Apparently I am a moron because I thought you had to put a comma before you called someone Jr. or Sr.  The book literally says people who do this are idiots.  Guilty.

Expect better writing from here forward, people!

(SIDENOTE...Per this book, Its perfectly acceptable to refer to those who would belittle my blog and/or writing an: ass hole, ass-hole or asshole - although the latter is the preferred form.)

Pet Peeves

The ladies at our office decided to have a weight loss contest.  A mass message was sent out to the 50 something people I work with that said,

"BIGGEST LOOSER CONTEST:  Sign up for the Biggest Looser Contest to see who can loose the most weight!"

I don't know why things like this make me crazy but they do.  I didn't say anything when the inital message was sent, but after two reminders about the "Biggest Looser" Contest, I lost it and sent the following message to the sender:

"FYI - screws are loose. you LOSE weight"

She called me, laughing, to say that she didn't realize the mistake and she would be sure to correct it in the next email.  Later that week, we got another reminder about the contest:

"BIGGEST LOSER CONTEST:  Starts Monday.  Please advice me if you will be participating."

Sigh.