My house is a complicated thing. It's large, unwieldy even. It is always a little messy and a little disorganized. It is hard to arrange furniture in it so that the children will not murder themselves. It is full of unfinished projects.
My house is a constant domino effect of broken appliances.
First and biggest was the furnace. The first time we went to turn it on for the season, we realized it wasn't turning on. I had someone come down and look at the old guy. He opened it up and said, "Well that's not good." I texted my husband, "Prepare to buy a new furnace today." Turns out my 1964 furnace had finally, quietly died in the springtime, alone and unnoticed in a (very fortunately not deadly to the whole household) blaze of internal fire. Basically it fried itself and all its wires and was unfix-able. Bring in the estimates. We ended up getting a new furnace and putting in AC and giving them allllllll our money.
Then went the fridge. It stopped working during a heat wave this summer and right before we were having ten people over for dinner. The guys fixed it and we went on our way. Two more calls and we got a new one.
Next the stove. This one turned out to be a quick ($80) reset because it was not actually broken, just flooded.
And the washer and drier decided to take turns three or four times this year, too. A baby sock was stuck in the washer and caused the water to fill but not drain, which is catastrophic when you're trying to wash out your son's blankie that he puked on. The dryer had a potpourri of fixable ($80 each) problems but has been mercifully soldiering on without need of replacement.
The appliance guy must think I have a crush on him with how often I call.
Oh and let's not forget the window. My husband tripped on a kid toy and put his head/shoulder through the kitchen window. He's fine. It looked like he mostly pushed the glass out of the frame with his body and then it shattered on the way down.
For some unknown reason though this, my husband decided we should update our lighting fixtures and have an electrician see to the lights that randomly don't work. So we hired a guy and bought fixtures from several stores including Pottery Barn. Now I'm in lighting limbo because we started the project but the damn Pottery Barn fixture refuses to ship. Every time I track it it has a NEW date two-weeks into the future for shipping and customer service is straight-up lying to me about it. I'm being ghosted by a lamp!
FUCK YOU POTTERY BARN NEVER AGAIN!
I bought another lamp and now have to wait for the electrician to come back to finish/take my money.
Cost of all of this: infinity.
Is it symbolic? Is there something cosmically wrong here? Or is it just the price of home ownership (reminder: the price is infinity)? Does everything break around me as a test? What are they testing? My sanity? Aren't we testing that enough with the whole two toddlers thing?
Someday I dream (and pinterest) of a home with all functional appliances and lamps, where there is never a random pile of cheerio dust and where you don't find one million toy cars littering the hallways, just asking to be ridden upon like runaway roller skates. I dream of a house where the cats and children will allow an undisturbed house plant to thrive, where photos are on the walls, straight, well-spaced.
No...I don't. Doesn't that sound so boring? Like a fucking Pottery Barn catalog from hell? The chaos is lovable, in its way. I will look back on this phase of insanity with fondness.
I see you out there, trying to be perfect. You might be better dressed. You might have that infinity money to have a perfectly functional house straight from FUCKING POTTERY BARN. You have professional photos of your family done every year and they actually look good and your children actually smile in them (the one time we did professional photos the girl glowered in every. single. one). Your body does all the normal things without incident. You and your children eat spinach on the reg. Do you exist? Or are you a facebook facade? I don't care. I'm not perfect and I don't care so much if you are.
This is it. My messy house. My messy rooms. My messy me. Also fuck you Pottery Barn.
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