If Those Walls Could Talk

Three years ago this month, my husband and I purchased our first house.

We were all kinds of exited.

Sure, it was just a small, three-bedroom, one-and-a-half bathroom ranch, with no garage, and begging for some major updating. But it was ours. We owned that mother.

We had high hopes for our little ranch. It had potential. It had spunk and personality.

So we started making plans. We would renovate the kitchen top-to-bottom (which hadn't been done since the 70s). We would add a garage - or at least a carport. We would put in replacement windows. We would make the half bathroom into a full. The thought of adding yet another full bathroom on to our bedroom even crossed our minds (the words "master suite" sounded so nice).

But first, we would paint the interior. It would be something fun for us to do together. As a couple. A couple who would be getting married in three months.

We would go full steam ahead!

Well, our honeymoon rolled around three months later, and guess what? We hadn't made much progress.

"Not much" meaning "not one iota."

So we used some of our wedding money to hire painters, and when we came back from our honeymoon, ladies and gentlemen, we had progress.

Now that we had gotten past square one (we were at square two?), surely tackling the rest of the house plans would come easily, right?

Well, in a word... no.

And little by little we started to get less and less excited about our piece of "potential." Its personality started to wear thin on us, too.

So much for spunk.

Instead of thinking about the progress we could make on our house, we were already planning for our next house.

Throughout our first winter there, every time I had to go outside and shovel snow off the car before work, I would declare that my next house would have a garage.

When summer rolled around, my husband would prepare himself every morning for his sprinkler dance - making sure that every part of the lawn was getting water, while trying to dodge the rotating spray.

And, of course, there were the ceiling fans in the summer, which simply pushed around the damp, muggy air.

That's it, we vowed. Our next house would absolutely, positively, without a doubt have to have three things - a two-car attached garage with an automatic door opener. an in-ground sprinkler system and central air.

And so last year at this time, when we purchased our second house together (the Dream House), you better believe that we checked those three things off our list.

And said good-bye to our devoid-of-all-personality ranch.

Well, you know the saying, "Revenge is a dish best served cold?"

Someone must have given that ranch the memo.

Because it's now been exactly a year since we've moved into the Dream House. And guess which three things in the Dream House have decided to fail on us - all within the same week?

That's right.

The automatic garage door opener? Busted.

The central air? Leaking.

The in-ground sprinklers? Broken.

Well played, little ranch, well played. I guess you do have some spunk in you yet.