Get a J.O.B.

Spring is right around the corner and my thoughts are again turning to home improvement. We have some big jobs to bring our house up to a standard where someone may want to buy it. Unfortunately, nothing we do to our house can improve our neighbors. I swear, our house is nestled between some of the worst homeowners in our town. Our neighbors to the west have had a box springs and mattress in their yard for some 5 weeks now. They recently put up a half-assed fence and keep their two dogs tied to a tree in the back with NO SHELTER. One of them was out there during the recent cold weather. They put a cardboard box out there, but what kind of defense against the elements is that? I'm tempted to call the police on them for animal cruelty. They are young, healthy people. There's no reason they shouldn't be able to keep their yard half decent and care properly for their dogs. Hopefully the bank will foreclose on their property soon and they'll be out of there. Our neighbors to the east are slightly better. Sure they keep their trash can sitting in their front yard and they don't rake leaves or mow regularly and oh, they have a rusty, non-functioning car sitting in their paved driveway which I'm CERTAIN crosses the property line onto my land, but they beat the hell out of the neighbor to the west.

Anyway, back to my home improvements, our bathroom has been in a state of disrepair since I bought the place over 2 years ago. It's starting to really get irritating, but it will take a pretty penny to remodel it and Ragged and I don't have skills to do much with it. We want to get rid of the carpeting in the living room and office too. We really don't know what kind of cost we're facing until we pull up the carpet. The third project that looms is tiling the back landing. This will be an inexpensive improvement. I wish it was something I could do myself, but again I have no skills and more importantly no patience for such endeavors. I get that from my mother because my dad has the patience Job.

There are other jobs we can do, but until recently I've had no motivation. Hopefully in the coming weeks I'll get back to doing the jobs I'm capable of doing and we can start looking at paying for the bigger jobs.