The Unbearable Lightness of Home Ownership 

I bought my first house about a year ago and for the most part it’s been great.  We looked for houses less than 2 hours outside of Toronto but struggled to find one with a large enough backyard, on a quiet street, that didn’t have a hideous kitchen, living room or bathrooms.

We finally found one that fit our taste level (and everyone thinks that they have great taste).  It felt like us.  My beloved pups finally had their very own play area.  Unfortunately it was full of bunnies which my River immediately chased and she eventually caught one.  It was horrifying.  Welcome to country life!

The True Expense of Home Ownership

We found out that home ownership isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  And despite my dear sweet aunt telling how grown up it is to own my own house despite living in a dystopian nightmare of housing crisis after housing crisis globally, I really don’t know that I’ll ever want to own again.

Hence the pretentious title of this blog which is based on one of my favourite films of all time: The Unbearable Lightness of Being which explores the philosophical themes of lightness and weight.  When I think about the setting of the film, The Prague Spring, it’s not unlike the global upheaval happening now.  But back to me and my problems, the idea of home ownership is amazing, no irritating, cheap landlords to deal with.  But now that broken dishwasher is your problem. 

Incompetent Plumbers

The other thing that’s also your problem: crap plumbing jobs.  It’s one thing to have a backed up sink for no particular reason, it’s another to have the plumbers find out that the pipe not only has a huge plug and they'll need to come back with heavier equipment in two weeks (don’t get me started on massive burden of  having to wash the dishes for two - I said TWO people! Don’t judge me).  They then discover that the pipe was installed such that it went upwards, yes apparently the water and bits of food that sometimes goes down the drain despite your best efforts, had to defy gravity in order to get to the septic tank.  And don’t ask me how a septic tank works. I barely know what one is.

The Nightmare Continues

So there we are facing a north facing pipe, and the plumbers looked at us with pity and asked us to cough up five grand to fix the damn thing.  Long story short, we have a working sink and dishwasher.  Then we found out that maybe, just maybe, other areas of the house where plumbing exists, there might also be problems.  Now we got problems.  And I don’t just mean plumbing problems.  I have a beef and I am going to figure out who needs to pay for their incompetence and because it's not going to be me.  Let’s just say that my house doesn’t have the pest barrier that every house is supposed to have and the $500 I spent to get rid of the bats in my attic I plan to be reimbursed for.