A Very Interesting Story About Gutters

Since we purchased this house over a year ago, we have come to find that each and every time we want to start a project, we are blocked or thrown off course by a previous owner's half-assed job. I know this tends to be typical when you buy a "fixer upper," but damn, we didn't really think we had much to fix up other than a fresh coat of paint everywhere and some new floors, and even those things have been halted by uneven ground and layer upon layer of wallpaper.

Yesterday I called someone to come clean out our gutters. He arrived today in a big unmarked truck-- an old guy in baggy jeans, a wife-beater, and a dirty, floppy white(ish) hat. The estimate was reasonable, and so I figured the strangeness of it all far outweighed the possibility of having to call another guy and schedule another estimate. Plus this guy could do the work today.

As he inspected the back of my house to make the estimate, he questioned me about a missing endcap and downspout, and which point I shrugged my shoulders and told him he could go ahead and fix that too, if it wasn't too expensive, and it wasn't.

When he was finished the work, he came around to report that the reason for the missing endcap is because when the woodstove (which we hate and want to get rid of because it is big and ugly and we are not Add-wood-Set-fire-Sweep-ashes type of people when we have a perfectly good heater that warms the house just fine, thank you) was installed, they built the chimney right on top of the gutters. When the water, which was supposed to flow to the right, had no where to go, they simply took the endcap off the left side and figured that would be fine, as long as the water had somewhere to go.

I'm pretty sure this is the cause of the cracked cement under where (heh heh... underwear) we usually have a nice waterfall when it rains.

And because I had nothing better to do, I took a picture, along with some others, for your viewing enjoyment:


Click me to see bigger!

Psycho organization of kitchen cabinets as procrastination for job search

Pissed off dog who does NOT want to be in this picture, thankyouverymuch!

Laundry Day

Today was spent doing load after load of laundry. There were actually sweaters at the bottom of that pile! It has probably been about 2 months since I have worn a sweater, so that just tells you how long it's been since I have washed clothes. Or rather, it tells you how long it has been since I washed ALL my clothes, because there have been a couple of underwear and t-shirt loads in there. No joke.

Alex keeps trying to get me to wash his clothes, and except for throwing in a couple of his t-shirts that make their way over to my side of the closet, I have refrained. I already do most of everything around the house, and I am afraid that if I do his laundry even once, I will be doing it for the rest of my life. His suggestion today was that if I catch him up on his laundry (his pile is even bigger than mine was), "we can just throw all our laundry into one hamper and we'd only have to do like one or two loads a week!" Um, "we?" I doubt that was a Royal We, but rather he meant to say "you." So no. I will not do his laundry.

In addition to washing clothes, I also did some purging. I threw out 20 pairs of shoes (14 flip-flops, 3 sneakers, 3 dress flats) and a bunch of clothes. I plan on digging even deeper, into my 2 under-bed boxes of "skinny clothes" (if you consider a size 12 skinny) and just getting rid of all of it. If I lose enough weight to get back into those clothes, I think I actually deserve to get new clothes. Also, um, I wore those clothes like 4 years ago. At this point, they probably aren't all that. If I gain any more weight, I deserve the punishment of spending money on even bigger sizes. So there, Self! HowdoyalikeTHAT! I do.