Housework

Not the vacuuming and dusting kind. The repairing and repainting kind. The list keeps growing. The funds don't. We need to re-tile the floors in both the bathroom and the kitchen. That means pulling out the toilet, ripping up the old linoleum, laying down rock board, laying the tile, grouting it, replacing the toilet. There's a week's worth of work and about $500. We also need to re-tile around the bath tub. That'll be a chore. Then the hardwood floors need refinishing. More work and more ka-CHING! We need to put an exhaust fan in the bathroom too, and I'd love to replace the mirror and the sink counters. Oh yeah, and there's that bathroom sink that I can't get to drain and can't see why. We also want to put ceiling fans in the living room and bedrooms. The exterior of the house needs repainting, and there are some shingles at the bottoms of the corners, where rain water splashes, need replacing. We need new storm windows and doors, and both the front and back door need replacing. I want to put in a brick patio out back, because we have no grass out there anyway. And we really need a garden shed so we have someplace other than the garage to store all of the yard tools. Well, that's quite a list, and like I said, it keeps growing.

Owning a house is an expensive proposition, especially when money is tight and the house is older. Our house was built in 1957. The man who built it was a master carpenter, and he did a really good job throughout. He built it for his family, so he built it to last. But 54 years will take their toll on a house. Time does its sure work. Things age. They fall apart. They quit working. No way around that. And the last 20 years, well, the original owner was an old man. He wasn't able to do much. Then he died several years back. Not much was done at all after that. The house sat empty for over a year. That's the worst thing that can happen to a house. Don't know why, but houses just start falling apart when no one lives in them. It's as if the house knows that no one's there, as if it feels neglected, lonely. It begins crumbling. I goes back to nature. We've all seen it happen. Anyway, then we bought the house and all of its little problems. None of them are serious in and of themselves, and I could fix them all in one summer...if I had the funds to do so. I'm pretty handy with a hammer and a screw driver. I can fix or build almost anything. For now, though, the list keeps growing.

Still, my problems seem small when compared with others around the country and around the world. I have both a job and a house, and that's a lot more than a lot of other people in this old world have right now. I know that there are hundreds of millions of homeless people around the world, and probably a billion people who live in substandard housing. And here I am complaining because one of the bathroom sinks won't drain. Ain't I the spoilt one? I need to be more grateful for what I've got. We all need to be. The things that need fixing? They'll get taken care of in time. Everything usually does. And for now, at least I have a roof over my head and food on my table. Something I thank GOd for every night.