Reminds me of home

I moved into my new house last Friday. Since then, it has kind of seemed like my new house is out to get me.

The air conditioning hadn’t been working, so a repair guy came out last Friday to take a look. He told me that my air conditioner was not working because it appeared that someone had attempted to steal my A/C unit, and the unit had gotten damaged in the process. Someone must have been watching the house, knew it was vacant, and decided to go for it.

It was unsettling that my first day in my new house, I learned that some threatening stranger had violated it (and me) by attempting to steal the air conditioner. It made me feel uneasy and a little unsafe and kind of uncomfortable. After all, you know what they say about those air conditioner-stealers…first stop, air conditioner theft, next stop, rape and pillage.

Since then, in the six days I have lived there, my sister fell down the steps at the new house, and broke her ankle when it slammed into the house’s ceramic tile floor. A mysterious water spot appeared on the ceiling beneath my upstairs bathroom, leading me to panic about whether or not I am going to have to spend an ungodly amount of money on a plumbing crisis. The air conditioner still is only temporarily fixed, because there is supposedly a recall on a coil in my furnace, and the repair guy wants to fix it all at once.

The house is filling up with weird smells as my dog pees on the carpet, and I follow behind him with carpet cleaner. His pee and the carpet cleaner all combine with the smells from the person before to create something really funky. I’ve tried using Febreze, but that only adds another unpleasant layer of scent to the smell cocktail. My dog has been throwing up, too, likely because he keeps eating dog poop in the yard from the last dog that lived in the house.

And to add insult to injury, when I was out walking my dog the other night, some punk teenager threw a used menstrual pad into my yard. Which is not only rude, but puzzling. Because why in the world did someone decide to take care of that issue while outside?

“Welcome to home ownership!” people are telling me.

Thanks, people Thank you for perpetrating the myth that home ownership is this great goal to strive toward, when really you’re just going to end up using a plastic bag like a glove to pick up nasty sanitary products out of your yard.

I moved from a house that has been “home” for the last eleven years, even though a few of those years were spent in dorm rooms and apartments. I miss the sameness of my old house. I miss my old grocery store to the extent that I am tempted to drive 20 minutes to go to the old grocery store, rather than go to the one that is 2 minutes from my house. (I take grocery shopping very seriously.)

I like my house, essentially. And it’s got all my stuff there, my sister, and my dog. I can watch So You Think You Can Dance there, just like I could at my old house. My room at the new house is practically the same color as my room at my old house. The new house reminds me of home. But it’s not quite.