Homeownership smonership

The American dream: owning your own home. The American nightmare: owning your own home.

I currently am living in my first house. The one I truly own, all by my lonesome. I can paint it whatever color I want, walk around naked, bang on some pots and pans..... oh wait. I think that's my nine month old nephews mantra. But anyway.... I had lived in apartments for so long and had put up with all the mass living shenanigans that all I could dream of was the promised land of private home ownership. You know the shenanigans like the lawn mowing service that never hesitates to give you the good old early morning rise at 7 am on Saturday morning. Of course they can't come during the week to make sure you're up and at 'em for work. They want to make double sure you keep up that good 'ole circadian rhythm on the weekends. And then there is the past decade of tenant's mail that you receive from the day you lease until the day you leave. I got more of their mail than I did my own. I would get people's tax return information, just to sit and wonder how the heck their employer doesn't know their correct address and how bad I would get in trouble for opening it. And rest assured your mail will go there too, long past your death certificate is issued. My adoption agency was sending letters to my former rental residence (that I pleasantly called Smurf Village due to its fashionable cornflower blue exterior) to inform me that a birth sibling was trying to get in contact with me. Hope they didn't need any bone marrow- they couldn't find my real address for months even though I hadn't lived there in six years. And of course- your overhead neighbors having sex. Nothing that a good beating to the ceiling with a mop handle couldn't fix.

All those things that seemed so awful, you dreamed of leaving behind you forever. Sucker.

I now live in a condo next to a man who loves to watch air force movies on his surround sound speakers. At 8 am. I still get people's mail, including current credit card bills, which I open because I know now, for certain, no one is coming for them. And screw the lawn mowers. I have to mow my own lawn, which I hate more than hell itself. I'd rather eat my own barf then to weed eat. Since I have been a homeowner, I have: killed 2 snakes, one which entered my home, smelled dead mice in the walls, been infested with brown reclouse, had my dog have an anxiety attack and chew two foot holes in the carpet in every room of the house. My fence has blown away, my outdoor water faucet torn off while honking like a Canadian goose in heat. I've had my window shattered by a hot grill and goatheads in my grass. A tarantula was found under my pillow. My air conditioner drips condensation like an incontinent old woman. My garage door opener requires a person with polydactyly and psychic powers to get it to operate. The water tubes under the kitchen sink spewed for hours before I came home from church one day. I came home to an episode of Swamp People after my yard spewed water for an entire weekend from a broken water main. I have had a rat in my garage. My dog door was chewed off by the dog. The bathroom door was chewed through by another dog. My house had 1985 blue trim and a fake butcher block kitchen. My washing machine vibrated its drain tube out of the wall on an oversized load. My washer is upstairs. I now have a new downstairs, and upstairs, sub floors, carpet and tile. I have weed-eated frogs during a reenactment of the plagues of the Old Testament in 2008. I have endured a weed eater to the ankle while attempting to coif my grass. I have moles in my yard that are talented enough to make my lawn look like a scaled-down model of the World War II trenches in Germany.

Let me tell you my friend, I thought this was just my world. It is not. Every house gets its share of crazy, which is not what I bargained for. And when you own it, you get to fix it. And the longer you wait, hoping and dreaming that a landlord will pop up at your door to take care of it, the more you become the white trash, redneck hillbilly on the street. The days of apartment living now look like the land flowing with wine and cheese. So is there any reward to home ownership? Sure! Raise your glasses! Here's to being able to paint your hallway metallic orange! Here's to running around naked in your house! Here's to banging pots and pans at 8 AM to enact revenge upon your neighbors! And here's to the government paying you extra in deductions just to endure it all! Cheers!

B is for Brothers

If you are a female who grew up in a house of brothers, you have a glimpse into the reality of what its like to be kidnapped by psychopaths and tortured until your release. I had two of them and I was right in the middle. Not a day went by that there wasn't some sort of suffering either verbal or physical.

My younger brother mainly just annoyed me. I spent much time alleviating my frustrations from my older brother by taking them out on him. I once gave him a wedgie that ripped his underoos. I was shocked at how easily they split and how strong I was. He was not. But mostly we screamed and yelled at each other. My older brother was a much different story.

I had a cowlick. It was slapped daily. He had a bull whip. It was used daily (until confiscation). He had a science kit. My hair was blue. He found that if you touched the rim of the stove and the metal strip on the toaster, you could restart your heart. I got to test it. I threatened to tell mom about his girlfriend coming over while he babysat. I spent 4 hours locked in a toy chest. The first time I ever shaved my legs with a razor, I clipped an artery. Too bad for me, my bathroom was on the backside of the house across a great expanse of carpet upon which he was sprawled watching TV. With blood cascading across my foot, I shakily asked him to go get mom. He took a look at my foot then told me to go get her myself. He brought home a snake that was loose in the house for a month. He skipped Thanksgiving to play basketball. He lit the neighbors yard and a rivals tree house on fire with fireworks. He shot my toddler brother with a BB gun at point blank range. Never a dull day.

Now that I am older, my brothers are 180's from their former selves. My older brother gives me golf lessons and financial advice. My little brother and I can now speak and is my greatest protector. He's also the greatest source of motivation for my spiritual life. The trials and tribulations they bestowed upon me made me the woman I am today.