The Bathroom Blues

Bitch Week continues. Okay, concludes.

I've been in my house over four years now, so it's been great. I was fortunate to buy a house with no major defects, and which has required very little maintenance - I think the biggest expense has been a new hot water heater two years ago.

I see some home maintenance work in my near future, though.

I'm pretty sure my bathrooms are largely the original fixtures - the only changes to them since the house was built 27 years ago are that the previous owner painted them, and replaced the old flooring with tile. But this last month or so a few things have happened.

First, the indicator on the sink in Debbi's bathroom which you use to determine whether you want hot or cold water has fallen off inside the handle. It may just be easiest to replace the whole faucet - and probably do the one in my bathroom at the same time.

More seriously, the tile in my bathroom is getting some cracks in the grout. A friend of mine thinks that the grout wasn't properly sealed and that this is just the natural result of that. Beats me! But certainly I will need to fix it, and probably soon. And for good measure it is probably time to re-caulk the shower stall in that bathroom. So all of this is probably in my near future. I would like to also take a peek under the tile to see if there is any damage under there - for instance, if the shower stall is leaking at all, as the boards under the bathroom are a little creaky (although I've seen no sign at all of water coming through the ceiling below). I hope not, as obviously if that's the case then it's going to turn into a much larger job - probably for a contractor to replace some boards - and will be a big expense, and maybe I would just have them re-do the upstairs bathrooms in that case (which one of my neighbors did a couple of years ago).

It's not really the expense so much as the hassle that bugs me. I'm well and truly exhausted this year, from all of the things I've had to do. I would like to just have a string of weekends when I can just do some fun things and make some progress on some of my projects.

And, of course, I'm a worrier and it's easy for me to imagine the worst-case scenario from all of these little annoyances (like I did with my teeth yesterday). Debbi always tells me I should think optimistically, and hope for the best. But I always seem to stress myself out and fear the worst instead. Outwardly, I'm a cynic. Inwardly, I'm a pessimist.

Things like this sometimes make me wish I wasn't an adult. Sometimes I feel like the benefits aren't worth all the responsibilities.