For the birds
There are many times when life back in the States seems like a distant dream. (Or is life here the dream? Funny, I don't feel like a butterfly.) Then there's the moments when my distant home makes itself felt. This happened the other day and, in fact, it was my home that was causing the problem.A number of years ago we realized the American dream and purchased our own mortgage. It came with a little blue house that was originally built in 1925. The house is what I would term a fixer-upper. I had a nice list of things that should be fixed or improved as the years wore on. Well, the years wore on and some of the things on the list did get fixed and/or improved. But there were also things on the list that weren't so bad. We learned to live without the improvements. So then 2005 rolls around and we want to go to China and rent our house. Suddenly my to do list became much more important. The repainting that I had been thinking about became my ongoing chore. The shower that we had learned to live without suddenly became a needed improvement. It was kind of ironic that our house became much nicer just as we were about to leave it.
But while I made great strides on my to do list last summer, I didn't finish all of it. Some things which one day might be improved were left as is, and I'm sure that I forgot to make a couple of repairs. My conviction stems from an e-mail we received the other day. Our rental agent sent a mail stating that birds had nested in the vent pipe over our stove. Oops. That was one of those items on my original to-do list. Our house has seen a number of remodeling jobs over the years--some done quite well, others not so. One of the latter was the addition of a fan above the stove. The person who put it in ran the vent pipe over to the south end of the house, punched an irregular hole into the wall and simply stuck the twisted pipe out of the hole. The guy who inspected the place before we bought it had recommended that we put a vent covering over it, to keep the wind out. After buying the house I eventually scrambled up onto the roof and investigated the project. Because of the bent pipe, I couldn't just slap a vent cover on it. I'd have to mend the hole and bang the pipe back into shape. Anyway, since it was a more challenging fix, I put it off and off again. Then, a few years back, a group of pigeons decided they liked our bird feeder, and took up residence on our roof. They would often sit on the roof of our back porch and their coos would resonate down into our kitchen. 'Twas annoying, but it was one of those things that was relatively easy to adapt to.
Anyway, when the great home improvement rush of 2005 came, fixing the vent pipe was one of those things that just slipped my mind. (I hope it was the only thing that slipped my mind....) So the pipe stayed uncovered as we packed up and headed out and our tenants finally signed the lease and moved in. Receiving the mail from our rental agent was both amusing and embarrassing. We hadn't intended to stick the tenants with piped in birdsong, but there you go. Our agent said that he assumed we wanted them to go ahead and fix the problem. (which he estimated would cost around $85) We told him to go ahead, but that it needed to be fixed was not the obvious assumption for us anymore. But try explaining that one... Anyhoo, if nothing else, at least this China venture has forced us to spruce up the ol' homestead.
posted by John @ 10:38 PM
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