Threes

Mornin y'all,



American Gothic

Ok, so you know how things typically happen in threes?  It usually isn't good. You never hear of someone winning the lottery 3 times in a week.  It is more like 3 celebrities will die around the same time, or your car will have 3 things break down on it all at once.  In my case it is our house. 



Photos courtesy of Google images

Now we knew buying an older home came with maintenance and upkeep.  Dave is really handy which helps immensely.  We also have a very lovely family who pitches in graciously to help us redo the 6 layers of roof in 100 degree heat, remodel the kitchen before I pop out baby # 1, or whatever crazy hairbrained scheme I come up with after reading This Old House and Martha Stewart.  But I am officially beginning to feel like our house has turned into the money pit and we haven't even started the addition yet.

# 1  The barn foundation is crumbling.  What......it is only 101 yrs old.  It's not like they had rebar back then.  This can be fixed and we are digging trenches and pouring concrete to fortify it. 

# 2  The septic leach field is in the neighbors open space (which used to be our property 100 yrs ago) and it is failing.  We know this by the only trail of green grass in a brown field.  Yuck.  It doesn't even line up where ours is supposed to end on our property.  Backhoes, soil sample tests, permits and inspections with the county oh my!   

# 3  I come home after dropping off the girls at school yesterday and the mud room smelled like burnt plastic.  I of course start to freak out and wonder what is on fire.  Now because it is cold and we live in the country an occasional mouse usually finds its way into our basement cellar thing.  And for a couple of weeks now it has smelled like one had died in the basement, but the smell was off a tad and I couldn't find it.  Well last night because the smell was strong and just not right we tore the basement apart and still couldn't figure out where the smell was coming from.  The girls needed dinnerand were starting to get cranky.  I came upstairs to get settled and turned up the heat for the evening and nothing came on.  So back down to the basement we went.  Dave took the furnace cover off and we concluded it must be the igniter and called someone to come out and diagnose it.  According to the furnace guy it was the blower, fan and he could order a part and everything would be peachy again.  As he was finishing up on his way out, he stopped by the back door.  All I hear from the other room is, "hey I found what killed the blower, or should I say what the blower killed!"  Hi you have my attention, thinking stupid mouse.  Nope it was a bird.  Now no one can explain how a damn bird made its way down the roof flue and how it got sucked into the blower fan and jammed it up.  We have a lot of birds out here and find them in the most unusual places, like the one stuck halfway in a hole between the top and bottom floors of the barn, but this is most definately a first. 

This post today was originally supposed to be about gardening.  But my head is just not there.  I'll get more in the mood this weekend after we start our seeds I'm sure.  Grandma Susie is headed out today to play with Calla and they usually do a project while I get work done.  Perhaps I will have them make a scarecrow to keep the birds away.  Not for our garden, but the roof.



Google images

In the mean time, I'll be here clicking my heels together. 3 times of course!  Muttering to myself.......

There's no place like home, There's no place like home, There's no place like home!

Y'all come back now, ya hear.

Cara