Yesterday, I had to drive to Detroit for my cousin’s wedding.  I have a stupid Iphone GPS which sucks so badly it caused me to get lost 3 times (it is really a relatively straight shot) and added an additional 1.5 hours to my drive home.  I ended up getting home at 3:00 a.m.

I am tired.

In other news, on Friday, it FINALLY HAPPENED!  I finally confronted the Dead Guy’s Girlfriend.  A quick recap, this is the girlfriend of the former owner of our house who died.  She has been stalking our house for over a year, but in the last few weeks, it has been out of control.   I have seen her standing in my yard with another person (presumably) discussing my house and yard, sitting in her car right in front of my house, looking over my hedge from the church parking lot and driving by no less than THREE additional times.  In ONE WEEK!

Thursday, she drove by and waved and I did not smile or wave back. I just frowned.   Then on Friday, I was outside with a contractor getting an estimate on my front steps when she pulled into the driveway.

“Hi!  It is JOAN!  I just wanted to see what work you are having done! I have seen that you have had workers here!” she said.

Of course she saw the workers because she is stalking our house all the freaking time!  And of course she wanted to see it.  She probably wanted me to invite her in so she can look in our drawers and closets again. (Apparently, I didn’t blog about that, but when she came to pick up her dumb scrapbook last winter, she pushed past Mr.A, went upstairs (!) and opened cupboards and doors before he could extract her from the house.)

When she got out of her car, clearly ready to push past me into the house, I didn’t smile.  I just said “Joan, I have to tell you, the way you are stalking our house is really creeping us out.”

She was shocked and said “What do you mean?”

“I have seen you sitting in your car looking at our house each Wednesday.  I have seen you drive slowly, slowly past it every Sunday at 12:15.  I saw you in our yard last week with someone else discussing our house. You are around our house all the time.”

(And let me assure you, these regularly scheduled stalkings are not the majority. I see her white car driving by with her gawking ALL THE TIME…just ask my twitter feed.)

“What? I don’t do that!” she said, “I was just walking by and talking to someone on the sidewalk.”

“No.” I said, “I saw you from the window.  You were in our yard for at least ten minutes.  You don’t seem to have any boundaries when it comes to our house.   It is creepy.  It is making us very uncomfortable.”

At that point, she started backing into her car.  She looked like she was going to cry.  ”I am sorry if I hurt your feelings,” she said.

I stopped myself from correcting her. My feelings aren’t hurt.  I feel like she is possibly crazy definitely creepy.  That doesn’t hurt my feelings.  It annoys me.

Then she just closed her door and drove away.  We will see if she still parks right next to our side gate this week or if she really did get the message.  Either way, she isn’t getting inside again.  She has burned that bridge with the creepy.

Edited to add:  Click the next post.  She dead guy’s girlfriend just can’t let it go.

Dear House,

I know you are 84 years old.  I appreciate that you are quite sturdy for an old house.  Your foundation, roof and even the walls are in great shape (knock on wood).  I will give you a pass for the squirrel living in the garage and even for the leaky basement because we fixed both of those problems with minimal cost and time investment.

We do have a problem we need to discuss though.  Why is it you insist on making every easy cosmetic project just a teeny tiny bit more of a pain in the ass and more expensive than is really necessary?

First there was the perfectly functional but ugly toilet replacement.  That required not only a new commode, but also a new flange.  Then there was the ugly half bath sink replacement that took four visits from the plumber and three different wall mounted sinks because your plumbing is weird.   And don’t get me started on all the problems with paint colors on your weird walls that seem to make every paint color completely different as soon as they go on the wall.  That has cost me a billion dollars and many, many hours trying different paints.

I could forgive all those, but if you are gearing up to make this kitchen remodel a total hassle, we are going to brawl.  Today, the plumber came to replace one standard size kitchen sink with another standard size kitchen sink.  Should be easy, no?  NO.  Once they pulled out the old sink, we discovered the hole for the old sink was too big.  This wasn’t a huge deal with the old sink because it weighed 10 lbs.   The new sink? It weighs 127 pounds.  It actually needs a half inch of support on each side so it doesn’t slip into the hole and , I don’t know, kill someone or make their foot crushed and requiring amputation.

That leaves me with several options: A) New countertops. NO.  B) New sink? No, because how can I ship the other one back? It was free shipping on the way here, but unlikely it would be free the other way.  Or C) Jerry-rig the stupid sink hole by adding a small strip of wood to each side (which will be hidden under the rim).

Likely we are going with C, but you have pushed me to my limit.  I will give in on this stupidity, but if you think I am going to put up with this kind of crap when we tear up the kitchen floor, you have another thing coming.

If you don’t get in line, I am going to sell you to someone with an incontinent cat that will ruin your lovely old hardwood floors.

Sincerely, AmFam

I will admit that I enjoy organizing and home improvement projects, but I am not a tidy, organized person.  It only takes a small project to distract me and the whole house goes to hell.

I always look forward to spring cleaning.  I got the bug last week, but as soon as I got started cleaning, I was overwhelmed by kitchen hatred.  When we moved in, the walls of the kitchen were painted an irritating shade of yellow.  I think the realtor chose it to try to distract from the green painted cabinets.  I hate the green cabinets, but I know their days are numbered.  When we redo the kitchen, I will have them painted white and they will be fine. (They are very nice, newish and barely used, but green.)

I finally found a nice color of the palest blueish gray, but the three days of that project left the house wrecked.  Then L got sick.  And then we had a weekend of awesome weather that left me with no choice but spending both days replacing the landscaping I have been ripping out for weeks.  When the kids weren’t outside in the climbing tree, they were inside…destroying the house.

So the house is good and wrecked.  In a stroke of luck, my parents managed to sell their extra lake house last weekend.  That means yesterday and today I finally got back all the furniture and  accessories that I loaned them a mere 10 months ago.  I forgot I had all this stuff.  I don’t know where to put it in the new house.  Plus there is a bunch of random stuff we used for staging the lake house too.

This is very convenient timing, because a friend of a friend is going to take a look at our house next weekend see if she might want to buy it (unlikely, but it can’t hurt to show her).  I would really rather put off spring cleaning and stage the house instead. (There is something much less threatening about staging versus decorating. Decorating is just so permanent, I have a hard time committing.)

I am also annoyed that as I am putting my things away, my whole house is so very, very vanilla.  What it really needs is a bright rug in the dining room.  Shopping for a rug would no doubt derail my spring cleaning indefinitely.

So all of this is a long way of saying, I am up to my eyeballs in house stuff.  I will be back as soon as my living room is not filled with a jumble of furniture and boxes and the dust bunnies have been put in their rightful place.