The Joys of Homeownership: Cleaning the Garage

I spent one recent Sunday doing something I'm really good at. I cleaned and organized the garage:

This is my new "fun and games" section.

I don't know what a lot of those tools are for,
but I sure can hang 'em, can't I?

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The Joys of Homeownership: Clearing a Path

"Getting an inch of snow is like winning ten cents in the lottery." -Bill Watterson

With great property comes
great responsibility

Everyone says I should get a snowblower. Every time it snows, neighbors drive by and see me shoveling my never-ending sidewalk. They stop. They roll down the window and say, "It's time." My mother even bought me a sizable gift card for Lowe's last Christmas, specifically to put towards a snowblower. I have yet to spend it. Even My Director and I say we should get one. Then it snows like it just did and there we are, digging. Spring comes, and it seems we survived another winter without one. So why bother?

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The Joys of Homeownership: I Love Trash

It doesn't take much to make me happy. I find joy in the simplest things. Conversely, the most inane things can potentially ruin my otherwise satisfactory world. Inane things like this:

This foul creation was ruining my world.

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The Joys Of Homeownership: Heat Doesn't Rise

If only we knew then what we know now. Count me among the legions of homeowners who have said that countless times. We moved into our house in June 2008. Before then, we were apartment, then condo, people. I have documented before how I am not handy. So having a landlord and then a management company to take care of things was heaven.

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The Joys of Homeownership: Order from Chaos

Behold, what I am calling my greatest contribution as a homeowner, dad, and husband. (Hyperbole is a friend of mine.) Peanut's playroom was out of control and I couldn't take it anymore. The mess. The clutter. The disorganization. I was living my own little version of hoarders, and Peanut was the problem. The playroom was so nauseating to look at I couldn't even stomach being in there. I was physically incapable of sitting down and playing with her in there. It would give me a panic attack. This is just a small glimpse of how bad it was:

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The Joys of Homeownership: Water Down Below

My Director loves watching HGTV. She insists that had we gone on the show Holmes Inspection, that guy would have found all of the nonsense that our home inspector didn't find. (One day I will tell you how we came to find out we had no heat upstairs, for example.) But with hurricane season coming I think it's prudent to talk about the elephant in the basement.

The previous homeowner assured us there had never been water in the basement. They lied. (Rookie mistake on our part.) Our idiot inspector blindly agreed with their assessment. (He has since refunded us his entire fee.) To be clear, we're talking about water here, not flooding. Seepage, if you will. Then came Hurricane Irene last year, and this:

The Lake in the Basement

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The Joys of Homeownership: Jersey Chainsaw Miracle

It's not often someone knocks on your door holding a chainsaw and you're happy to see them. Two days before Halloween, no less. But that's exactly what happened last weekend during the freak snowstorm (complete with thunder) that hit us here in lovely northern New Jersey.

My wife and I were scrambling to salvage our annual Halloween party. Remember how crazy we are about Halloween, and the bounce house we had bought as an "investment?" The snow wiped out our hopes of a backyard party. So we were frantically preparing our basement. This was our backup plan. Jamming a hundred people (half of them children) into our hastily-decorated, unfinished basement.

I went upstairs to get something. That's when I looked out the window over the kitchen sink and saw this:

This was scary. And then...

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The Joys of Homeownership: Goodnight, Irene

I promise this is the last time I mention the hurricane. Why? Because the final remnants of the damage the storm did to our property are now on the curb awaiting pickup. The long weekend enabled procrastinating old me to finish the work that needed to be done.

First, the big branch that split and fell from this tree on our sidewalk:

Sad and breaky

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Shelter From the Storm

"If the sky above you should turn dark and full of clouds and that old north wind should begin to blow." -James Taylor

My daughter will only know how terrified I was of Hurricane Irene if she reads this post one day.

Terri. Fied.

Why? Because I just didn't know. I didn't know if I took all of the necessary precautions and stocked up on all of the necessary supplies. I didn't know if I was making the right decisions.

I didn't know if I could do it without my wife.

She had to work this weekend. This was move-in weekend at the college where she works and it's her event. She had to make sure everything went smoothly. Make sure everyone was safe.

But what about us?

I protested. I guilt-tripped her. I told her she was putting herself in harm's way by staying in the city, which was expecting a direct hit from the storm. I said her bosses were being stubborn. I laid it on thick.

She told me, "I have two words for you: nine eleven."

She was right. When 9/11 happened I was gone for nearly a week. I stayed in the city. I put myself in harm's way. We were on high alert. My station was a block from the United Nations, a potential target.

So I relented. I knew where she wanted to be. The same place where I wanted her to be.

Still terrified at the thought of enduring a hurricane alone with the Peanut, I thought about driving her west to my in-laws, dropping her off, then turning around to stay with the house. I thought they might not get it as bad. (Turns out they lost power and we didn't).

I imagined hugging her goodbye, knowing what was ahead of us, and I nearly broke down. The thought of abandoning her like that just broke my heart. Even though she would not have seen it that way. She would have loved staying at her grandparents' house.

No... we'd ride it out together. I'd put on my brave face. I'd pray. A lot. I'd think about my parents. How the hell did they seem so calm during Hurricane Gloria in 1985? Or were they filled with the same anxiety I was feeling now? Did I just not know it because they had put on a brave face?

Peanut hungry for pasta & chicken cutlets

Luckily, some friends were coming over to wait out the storm with us. So I told the Peanut it was going to be a party. We kept busy. We played games. We watched movies. I cooked two meals because apparently I cook when I'm nervous. We drank beer. (Not the Peanut.) Lots of beer.

As the storm picked up, whipping rain and wind against the house, we went through our normal bedtime routine. Potty. Brush teeth. Wash hands and face. Book. Silly shadows. Race down the hall. Kiss and hug goodnight. Brave face.

My biggest fear was something happening to the house, and Peanut freaking out. A power outage. Or worse... One of the many trees around our property crashing down. I woke up a few times during the night to check on everything. I looked out the windows, scanned the trees in the yard, checked on the Peanut, and inspected for possible Luna bombs on the living room carpet downstairs.

The little pump that could

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The Joys of Homeownership: Fixin' Stuff

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: I am not handy. I am, in fact, bad at fixing things. This makes owning a home quite the adventure. I am not afraid to admit I have a handyman on call to do things I won't even attempt.

For example, just this week he installed a new light fixture above the dining room table:

The Handyman liked the other one better

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Like a Good Neighbor

"Friendship isn't a big thing - it's a million little things." ~Author Unknown

I looked up, standing on the ground at the bottom of the ladder. It was a long way up. At that point I had no other choice but to be completely honest with my wife.
"I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do this."

We were hanging a tire swing on the tallest strongest tree in our backyard. Trust me... it was a long way up.

It's not that I didn't want to do it. I just didn't think I could.

A long way up... and down.

You see, I'm not so good with the heights. Actually, it's not so much the heights... it's the falling I'm afraid of. I climbed the ladder... the same ladder my next-door neighbor had left in our yard an hour or so earlier when he helped us measure how long of a chain we would need to hang this swing.

Climbing the ladder fifteen feet was an accomplishment. Granted, it took me about ninety seconds as I crawled up there one rung at a time, holding on for dear life to both sides with both hands. As I ascended. I scouted out the area on the branch where I'd place the swing. Then I looked down. Bad idea.

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