about owning a home

Ten days ago, we moved into our new house. As much as we love our home, the ownership part is exhausting. I confess that I would have been fine renting forever. Garbage disposal won't work? Call the landlord. Air conditioner goes out? Call the landlord. Lawn needs to be mowed? The mowing company the landlord hired will be by once a week. But now? It's just us. Working hard to figure out how to fix the disposal, refrain from jumping all over the air conditioner repairman (sent by our home warranty company) after he insults us, and weed flower beds.

Here are a few things I've learned over the past ten days:

1. I am overly ambitious when it comes to projects. Rewind to a month before we moved. (We owned the home for 30 days before moving.) In those thirty days, we painted 9 of 12 rooms. Although it's much easier to paint without furniture in the room, I think just painting the common areas would have been enough.

2. I tend to underestimate how long a project will take. Surely weeding all of the flower beds (that surround our entire house) and a bit of the yard will only take a couple of hours with both of us working! Fail. It took five hours. All we did was weed.

3. The greatest joy has been sprinkling fire ant killer. I'd sprinkle, and then watch those suckers take the bits of poison off for a meal. Little do they know! I HATE fire ants. It might sound a tad harsh, but I do hope it's  a painful death.

4. I'm not sure which is worse: packing or unpacking. At least we have an extra bedroom that houses dozens of boxes.

5. Cereal makes for a great dinner after hours in the yard. It's pretty much all we have the energy to eat!

6. We have the best neighbors! One set (who is moving soon) brought us homemade brownies the day after we moved in. Which was slightly dangerous for me since I tend to consume large and unhealthy amounts of chocolate when I'm stressed. The others are just precious. They offer advice for the yard. (You should see theirs!) Yesterday, they dropped off a housewarming gift of landscaping lights with an offer to help us install them. So, so sweet!

7. The house we moved from (where I lived for four years) didn't have a bathtub. Now that I have one, I can't get enough! And it's so big that I can almost stretch out completely in it. Ha!

Husby and I are both off tomorrow. I plan to organize our bathroom and my closet. (Yes, we have seperate sinks and closets. And I couldn't be more excited.) We're also going to a movie. Hopefully we'll get some rest beforehand. We're both so exhausted, it's possible that we could dose off!