#house hell

SO GLAD

I live alone now

Like yes, being the only person responsible for a 115-year old house in need of a lot of work (like. a LOT of work.) is daunting and terrifying and I do not have remotely enough money saved up in case of an unexpected catastrophe never mind all the Big Projects that need to be taken care of sooner than later and oh my god I keep NEEDING crap from Home Depot

But this week I filled 12 30-gallon yard waste bags, got 3 different yard/pest guys to come out and deal with the yard shit I'm not about, managed a temp fix on my shitty patio screen, hauled a bunch of big junk down into the garage that I have scheduled to get picked up next trash day, swept and mopped the downstairs, broke down ten thousand boxes, and tonight I cooked TWO new recipes AND roasted a shit ton of delicious peppers

all of that ON TOP OF the basic adulting tasks of like, laundry and dishes and litter boxes and whatever

I am. so sore. and COVERED in mosquito bites. and have barely scratched the surface of miserably exhausting tasks that need to be done to get this old bitch of a house up to decent standards.

I know I complained several times earlier in the Spring/Summer about my neighbors. Specifically, I was complaining about their big, neglected dog that they kept on like a 30-foot leash in their front yard because they don't have any fencing. This poor boy was So Bored and So Anxious and So Dehydrated he'd constantly tangle his leash up in some old tree roots, their satellite dish, a length of timber that's technically part of the delineation between our yards, a tree on my property, etc., to the point he'd be trapped in like, two feet of wiggle room barking his head off right outside my bedroom and office for hours. And hours. And hours. Because they'd just leave him out there. In the HEAT OF EARLY SUMMER. Even when they were home!!! And then he'd inevitably wriggle free of his leash and go roam around the neighborhood, inevitably driving other dogs in their yards fucking nuts. I'd coaxed him home and back onto his leash a couple of times, made sure he had some fucking water in July like 6 times, and left several polite but pointed notes that I'd fucking done so in their mailbox, with my name and number and an offer to help care for their fucking dog since clearly they weren't interested. Like, there was a a genuine minute there I thought I was gonna end up taking this damn dog off their hands just so he could get regular water and A/C access and even walkies, since while I'm hardly the most attentive neighbor I'd gotten a firm impression they'd not walked the poor guy once the whole time they had him. I'm a depressed miserable bitch barely taking care of myself and my senior cats, but if you have a dog you walk the fucking dog once a day minimum, the fuck.

Anyway that poor boy uh. Vanished. Sometime in July-August. I have no idea if he died or if someone else took him off their hands or what. I know I couldn't have been the only one that was desperate for animal control to step in just to have a break from the 3-10 hours of CEASELESS DAILY BARKING from that poor boy, but the online guidelines for my part of Illinois' animal control were specific enough re: neglect that even what I'd seen and could prove wasn't "enough" for them to step in. Either Something Happened where they did, or someone else kept the dog the next time he slipped the leash. It's been months of quiet. At least three of my other direct neighbors all have dogs, and have had them since I moved here, but their barking was and is such nothingburger noise compared to what that poor boy got up to the few months he was here.

I really, really hope he didn't die of heatstroke or something. He was intimidating, sure, some kind of big hound with a broad chest and big snout, and he always growled at me a bit when I did get close, but he also always wagged his tail and definitely relaxed when I called him a Big Sweet Boy and got him some fucking water. The insanely long lead they had him on not only gave him AMPLE access to the sidewalk (and anyone walking there), he could easily reach across my front yard almost right up to the walkway on the side of my wonky house where nearly every delivery goes. I never heard about anything happening, not like I'm chummy with my neighbors, but I would not be surprised if some poor delivery driver or door dasher or whatever that had to pass through that weird side street neighbor and I share freaked when they saw an 80+ lb dog either on an unsafely long lead or roaming fucking free again.

This post has had like 3 drafts that originally started with me baffled by one of my neighbors having some kind of functional attic that they use a few times a month, and I know that because their attic has functional lights that they use whereas mine does not

But it got me thinking, and wondering, and I think maybe I need to swallow my anxiety enough to go bug my local museum to see if they have more information than what I've managed to dig up on my own because like.

My house is Old As Shit. Like. Not to Doxx myself here but. I live adjacent to a Church Street (Roman Catholic, close enough to hear the hourly bells when I have my windows open, and it's the Significantly Less Impressive Roman Catholic Church in my city). But my actual address is the squiggly side-street named for the guy who built my house. And officially my house was built in 1910, which is Old As Shit!

However.

If you look up my city on Wikipedia, you can find a hand-drawn map from 1867, and on that map is a house on Church St (in the before-times when that street wasn't bisected into North & South subsets) on a squiggly side-street exactly where my house is. And that squiggly side-street is named after the guy who built my house. And just down the squiggly street is another house that I know for a fact was built by the younger brother of the guy who built my house, and I know THAT guy fought in the Civil War and literally got the Edward Elric treatment during All That Bullshit (despite the fact I live in Southern Illinois and South enough that I've seen Confederate flags here, both dudes fought for the North, thank goodness)

And all that begs the question of WHEN, exactly, these two houses were built??? If they existed on an 1867 map--the hand drawn versions do NOT match what either house looks like today, but they DO exist--then I do wonder how old, REALLY, my house is??

Because I have a closed-up coal shute in my basement. And the house is big enough to have FOUR fucking fireplaces (2 chimneys, with one shute in the master bedroom and living room, the other in the... reading room? and basement)

And the house on the 1867 map had a HUGE property that in today-times has at least 3 houses sharing the area, and there's a street that no longer exists for that matter too, and all that includes the house this post originally boggled at because an Attic? That Has Electricity In It?? Is Fucking Wild???

And I'm saying that as somebody living in a house that I know for a fact had Servants enough at one point that not only were there a Servants Stair (yes I have 2 fucking stairs to the second story) but one of the bedrooms was Definitely a Servants' Room with connection to the Attic which was Some Flavor of Servants' Room x2??

Literally my Laundry area is a heavily (poorly) modified 2nd story room with like, multiple weird modifications?? The house came with a... standalone cabinet? and a mirror with non-functioning lights? and some kinda... expanding.... maybe it was a broad hangar back in the day?

But the closet on the other side of the Laundry Area is so poorly connected one of my cats literally figured out how to squeeze through the rooms with minimal issue. And THAT room I know for a fact was Some Kinda Servant Room back in the day. And there's a very poorly modified/hidden stairway in that room's closet that was very obviously cut up/removed that leads up to the attic

And In My Currently INCREDIBLY CREEPY HORRIFYING attic there is also a standalone room that was clearly intended as some kind of servants' room as like? a bedroom? living room? i have no idea?

either fucking way if the hand-drawn map on my city is to be believed my house originally had an ENORMOUS yard that is now currently 3-4 houses which honestly I'm very thankful for, because that's WAY too much yard to deal with, I can't handle the yard I have so far

ALL of this to say: my lefty-neighbor has a functionally electrical'd attic that they use often enough for me, the most unobservant person ever, to notice, and I'm InCREDIBL Y curious what they get up to up there??? because my attic is nothing but a horrible dark spot literally overwhelmed with brown recluse spiders???

The good news: It's 6:28pm and the counter install people are still going. They've been here since 9am. I think they are trying to just finish everything in one day! We have counters and they are beautiful! I'm just trying to stay out of the way. The kids are on spring break and I am giving them unlimited screen time so they stay in their rooms. We have counters! It's been over 3 months! I love surfaces!

The rest of the bad news: We were supposed to be done today. We were supposed to be able to cook and wash dishes in our brand new dishwasher. We were supposed to not have to have anymore workers in our house anymore as of right now. But we still don't know when the plumber got rescheduled to (see above Re: terrible project manager) so it's anybody's guess as to when the nice new sink, nice new dishwasher, and everything will be hooked up to plumbing. So...

I really wanted to bake. I was going to spend spring break baking everyday and eating way too many baked goods. It was a good plan. I got a 5 lb. bag of carob chips (because I can't eat chocolate anymore and I actually like carob) and I wanted to make cookies and scones and other things that I like to put chocolate chips in but have just had to stop eating them because my body hates everything that is good in this world. I was going to do spring cleaning and start out next week with a nice clean house with beautiful floors, a beautiful kitchen, and actual counters, A KITCHEN SINK... It was a great plan. Instead, we are hiding upstairs in our bedrooms all day to stay out of the way of the workers and scrounging for microwavable food in the back of the freezer while we wait and wait and wait for this stupid project to be over.