I thought I heard a mouse

The other day I was in our kitchen and I thought I heard a mouse. I thought it came over the baby monitor and so I hastily ran up to the baby's room. No mouse to be found. I was a little creeped out and I assumed that I was just hearing things. Four days later we had the Heat pump company out here to replace part and Dave affirmed he found mouse evidence in our heat/cooling equiptment. Apparently the mouse was in our ducts and what I heard was the mouse in the duct in the kitchen which I thought was over the baby monitor. It might have come in when we turned off the A/C for 9 days when we were in Washington.

We want to move.

It's not just the mice. It's the EVERYTHING that COSTS MONEY in this house. I read yesterday on Zillow.com that our house has had four owners in 6 years. Each sale of the house netted about 30K (if I did the math correctly). Not bad since each owner did basically NOTHING to improve the house. Ok, except the last owners who had it painted this lovely green/mint color and who also installed a faulty sprinkler system. I think some other owner (in the last 4 years) replaced one section of fence and also tore off wall paper from the bathrooms and tried to fix the gouged walls by spackling them themselves. They look like ca-ca. Basically our house is 30 years old and we're the ones who have to do all the repairs. Repairs that were ignored 10 years ago. Repairs that are basic. Did I tell you that when we got the bids from Heat pump companies to re-do the heating cooling system that one of the guys said he'd been to our house a few times before to bid it out? That's right, previous owners knew the house needed a new system and they just ignored it.

And we get to pay for all of that. All the hidden problems. All the subpar shortcuts. All the fences and water damage and wretched spackle work. Now, some things don't need to be done. Like it isn't necessary to replace all the floor trim. But it is when it looks circa 1974 and the rest of the house looks updated. That I have no problem replacing. None. It's the stuff that people should have done before. Cracked toilets, unsealed grout in the bathtub, painted over mildew in the shower. Extensive water damage in the kitchen and malfunctioning microwave, stove and oven. Those things are just un-excusable. It's that they actually covered up some of the problems. That's lying and it's wrong.

So now I want to move. I am willing to gave up some square feet and some yard space to get a new home that doesn't need another 45K worth of work. Now if we could just find a house that we can afford. Oh, wait, that's right! It doesn't exist withing 50 square miles of here.

Lovely.

The Heat pump company is coming today to run a camera down the duct work and then disinfect the ducts. We might never find out how the mouse got in.