Saturday, May 24, 2008

Why being a grown-up can often suck...

Property taxes: $1445.03 (and that's just the first half for the year!)
New tires: $349.77
New lawn mower: $202.62
Car repairs: $343.50
various utility bills: $289.43
Well fiasco: Priceless!

I did not have an enjoyable time spending any of that money. Owen did. He loved sitting on the riding lawn mowers while we were looking at the push ones. Paying property taxes just makes me mad because our city and school district are floundering but we pay just as much in property taxes as people in cities and school districts that are booming. The new tires were very necessary but would be better if they came on a little convertible!

As for the well fiasco, I guess we'll find out how much that is going to cost when we come back from vacation. We have a well for our outside water. I guess when city water was installed a previous owner decided it would be a good idea to keep the well for just outside water. Now that the well and pump are 54 years old, I think this was a bad idea. Anyway, last week I turned the pump on and it made a squealing noise so I turned it off immediately. I told Morgan about the noise. Today he turned it on so he could spray the weeds and it made the same noise but he let it keep running. Eventually the noise went away. Probably when the water started shooting out the underside of the pump! Morgan has this way of starting a sentence and then taking what feels like a ridiculous amount of time to finish it, while you are hanging there waiting. And he does it at times where you don't want to wait. So he starts to say something like "Uh, oh... it's..." and I say "What?? Is it leaking??" (Ridiculously long pause) "It's leaking". Did I mention we are leaving tomorrow for 10 days!! So Morgan gets a bucket and then starts calling repair people (on Memorial Weekend!) and I start sucking up the water with our tiny shop vac that only holds a gallon at a time. Luckily I only sucked up 3 gallons and the bucket (5 gallon) was only 1/2 full.

The repair guy I talked to said it sounded like a broken shaft seal but he wouldn't be able to come out until Tuesday. He also said that since it hasn't leaked in the past and it has stopped it should be fine as long as it's not turned on again.

So now I'm going to go take my shower and run some errands and I will leave you with a weed photo. Kind of a metaphor for life. Irritating and beautiful all at the same time!

4 comments:

Staci said...

Being a grownup does suck at times doesn't it?! Hope things turn around for the better.

jillconyers said...

I'm so sorry about the well but I have to admit. I had to laugh at your discription of dh's sentences. That would drive me crazy and/or make me want to laugh every time he did it :)

Enjoy your vacation!

Noelia said...

delicious methapor!
Have a great trip Heather!

emily said...

Yeah...why did I want to grow up?! That dandelion photo is awesome...it looks so light and airy...very nice. Your photos are definately inspiring me to really seriously try and save some of that money (that always goes to all the stupid adult stuff) for a nice camera!