My Christmas trees never follow a theme.  They are always a reflection of my family; where we’ve been, what we’re like.

The ornaments don’t match, but if you look closely they do tell a story.

Even if they are just quirky.

Or pretty.

Or remind me of a friend.

My house is dying.

That’s the only explanation I can come up with for recent events.  My house is sick, and she’s trying to die.

Or maybe she’s tired of people and wants to shake us off and live alone.  I don’t blame her, she’s over 30 years old and has never lived alone.  Maybe it’s a mid-life house crisis or something.

It’s not like we haven’t been good to her.  We’ve remodeled about two-thirds of the house and have plans for the rest.  We’ve updated the floors and the walls and the doors.  We gave her pretty new paint, inside and out. We built a pond in her yard so the pretty birds would come to see her, and we put rain gutters under her roof so the water would run off nicely instead of puddling around her foundation.

But on the inside, deep in her bones, she’s an old girl and she’s getting brittle.  Osteohomeosis.  Her pipes and wires are tired.  She needs some major tender loving care.  Just in the last two weeks, she has”

• frozen the one hidden pipe in the pump house that didn’t have insulation;
• clogged the washing machine water line with sand thrown from the well pump, giving us an indication that the life-span of our well is coming to an end;
• broken the water heater, which is only 4 years old and not nearly even close to the end if it’s life but is having a toddler-like temper tantrum; (update – that was also clogged with sand, as if I needed a reminder that the well is dying)
• and the most recent and potentially most expensive this side of abandoning the well?  Electrical issues.  Outlets are just mysteriously refusing to work anymore.  One of them was hooked to a refrigerator in the garage.  Luckily hubs caught that one in time and moved the plug, but I’m not looking forward to calling an electrician.

Today the plumber comes to look at the water heater.  Yesterday I called about the well and, it’s going to be very expensive but I can get the old girl on city water if she can wait until spring when they offer financing.  I’m afraid to call the electrician, but I will do that too because you have to treat an old girl right.  You can’t just throw her away for a younger model if she’s not as fit as she once was because that makes you Woody Allen.

So while I would like to continue with the stuff that makes her feel pretty, like updating the kitchen and bathrooms, it looks like we’re going to have to pay more attention to her guts first.

Because life really isn’t just about being pretty, even if you’re a house.