SHITSHOW
12 November 2026, 15:56
Yes.
The house. It’s all mine. It’s what I call home. Turd Manor™.
And … well. It’s been a giant 5-alarm shitshow. It has about drained 30k in cash just alone in repairs. Ate it up. Not even to add value, to it but to just cure the neglect from the last owner. As I sit here and think about it, that’s mighty appropriate. That I took in the broken and mistreated and gave almost my all to heal its body, hoping its soul can live. That’s romantic, isn’t it? That has come from three weeks of waking up every morning to some BUULLLLLL SHHHIIITTT.
Through all of this, I do really love the house. It’s a home for all that I love, and its has more solid strings that tie it to me than anything that I have in the last 16 years. Let’s just run down the many acts of this shitshow:
I bought the house, but the seller would do no repairs.
The inspection report wasn’t looking that serious. I was thinking maybe 20,000 in repairs and upgrades. Though the universe gave me a lot to carry since June of this year in a very intimate and personal way, it gave me… challenges. This house, that I actually really love, almost broke me and devoured me.
• Upgraded electrical from the burn-the-house-down kind to the modern panel and box. $12,000
• Added a septic line. $1,300
• Fixed SOME plumbing (replaced washer assemblies, fixed rusted out baskets, fixed leaks, flushed out lines, fixed pressure valves, etc. etc. etc.) $1,600
• Bought a washer and dryer set, where the washer committed suicide and flooded the house $400)
• Bought a second washer new from Lowes because, well fuck, I wanted to suffer so much more than I have been. $700
• Fencing (the only thing I think that will add value to the house) with land clearing and some parking pads. $17,000
• Progressive Homesite, the rat bastard homeowner insurance people canceled my insurance because of pictures of my roof.
• Water damage and restoration of kitchen, living room and pantry floors and subfloors – MAYBE insurance will cover this. Might get some new floors, you never know. Probably not, because I have the luck of a donut in a police station break room.
• A multi-generational lineage of racoons (sprinkle in some rats and mice) had made a wildlife home and toilet of the crawlspace underneath the house, causing one plumber to refuse to go into the crawlspace, my exterminator company to cancel my contract and refund my money, and the third finally agreeing to take care of the “biohazard” that was currently inches away from me, beneath my subfloor. $8,500
• An estimate for the roof, just for repairs, $3,500.
• About $8000 in little things for the sundries the house that it needed.
And if that weren’t enough, a week after I closed, the people to the right of my house had torn down the thick forest in that lot and started to build a McMansion just feet from my secluded, peaceful little cottage on the deserted cul-de-sac. And now I think the people on the left are starting some sort of construction project now, after 25 years of peacefully being idle and bucolic.
So, for a while there I was in desperate need of a winning lottery ticket, emergency therapy, or some sort of booze. There for a bit, I was just crying every other day about whatever fresh new hell was about to come down upon the house.
But there are moments when I am driving home into the sunset, engulf in the big sky; when I was sitting on the back porch in the warm wet overcast evening in Hee Haw watching the remaining forest next to the house and having it remind me of the Vancouver backdrop of the X-files. I have a destroyed house whose soul is slowly being rebuilt. I thought about a gofundme for the house, or my sanity or something. And all my life is in boxes strewn about the place, waiting for me to get some cheap champagne and Allen wrenches to start assembling it.
And through all this, I am trying to deal with personal turmoil, work upheaval, and all manner of psychic injury and amazement. There are many nights, I just want to play my little phone game and listen to season after season of Bob’s Burgers.
I face a more uncertain future than I had in August before I closed, and I still question what I have done, and whether I’m just fucking out of my mind. I get a different answer each time I ask the question, so I’m starting not to ask that question anymore. I’m just starting to notice my brain just goes to the zoo more often now.
And. Now. The dogs farts have really turned into something spectacular gruesome because I changed their food temporarily.
There are times I thing I see happy. There are times where I’m so low I can see the belly button of a roach, and the rest of ithe time, to borrow from one of the best movies ever, “I’m riding the psychotic horse through a burning stable.”
This is where my mortality then kicks me in the stomach and shows me a picture of Bradley Whitford in all his white haired glory, and gives me the middle finger.
I don’t know. I know I’m going forward, because. Not for some romantic bullshit about perseverance or a confidence that things will be all right. I just gotta go forward, because, that’s the only path open right now.
And I finally got it cleaned up a bit from all the raccoon poo. FUCK DEM RACOONS.
THE MONEY PIT 2: THE RACCOON RECKONING
