Are they tennis balls? Or Walnuts?

I have a huge walnut tree in my backyard. It makes for a decent shade tree but it also is a huge pain when it comes time to clean the yard of leaves and walnuts. It

drips sticky stuff all summer and so anything in the yard tends to be sticky. It drops literally thousands of walnuts in the fall. Luckily it only produces nuts every other year.

I tried to clean some of the walnuts up this evening. They were falling even as I as picking them up! It seems impossible to pick up all the crappy walnuts. I was worried that they were going to hit me in the head and knock me out!

Marley, however, keeps me quite entertained. She seems to believe that whenever a walnut falls - it may be a tennis ball. As soon as she hears one fall - she runs over and pounces on it. She seems disappointed to find out that it's simply another walnut. There's already a thousand on the grass (well maybe 500 now that I did some work out there). It must really be disappointing to her that it's not actually raining tennis balls. Dylan is of course, just scared of the walnuts when they fall. He really is afraid of anything that moves!

When I first bought this house, there were 5000 walnuts. It looked like they hadn't been cleaned up in years. Now that I am through my first 2 years of owning this place, I realize that the walnut tree is just so big that it drops 5000 walnuts in the fall. I have the joy of getting down on my hands and knees to try to clean them up. They get buried in the lawn so I have to literally pat it down to make sure they are all picked up. Of course, there are already more falling so I am not sure what good all this work does. I'll have to do it again next week and the week after that. Oh and I only got about a 1/4 of the yard done anyway. I hope that 1/4 stays somewhat clean so we can do some box work out there tomorrow. We are expecting some of our friends from Tip Tail to come and do some training tomorrow evening!

Sometimes I miss being a renter. I never realized how much work it was to own a house. Now I own two and man do I hate doing yardwork. Maybe next year I will be able to afford to hire someone to do it. That's probably wishful thinking though!

Messy House

I swear there is enough dog hair in this house to make up a third and a fourth dog. I am not sure where it call comes from but I think it has to do with a cute little dog named Dylan and a little girl named Marley. Together their hair seems to turn everything gray.

My house is messy. I blame it on the fact that it's only 400 sq ft. Really I think it's about 450 but I don't count the closet or the bathroom or the laundry room because they feel so small. There's no room to put anything and so things get cluttered really fast. Well, I'm a cluttery person anyway and I hate to clean and I'm lazy. I'd rather be out doing something for someone else than home cleaning my own house. I'm not sure why. I'd rather come clean your house than clean my own.

This is 100% intensified by such a small space with so much stuff. I'm not sure how I ever fit three big dogs in here and 3 cats. At some point I actually had that many fosters.

I'm sick of it though. My allergies to dogs are not helped by the fact that I have dog hair everywhere. I want to throw everything away but my trash can is full of rose bushes and tree trimming since I have been working in the yard all day. I don't even have space to throw things away.

I always envy people who have nice big houses with fancy counter tops and cute and simple decorations. I want to live there instead of here. I need to figure out a way to make this tiny space a place I want to be. It's my house and I don't have a choice but to live here. It would be REALLY nice to move into the big rental house on this lot but I can't afford it. I need the rental income to help me survive.

I just moved my bed out because I could see the collection of dog hair behind it. Maybe I should have thought twice about getting dogs that shed and adopted poodles or something that sheds a lot less. Or maybe I just need to take my dogs out and brush them a little more often?

Regardless, I sometimes wish I wasn't a homeowner. Doing yard work is not my area of expertise and it's nice when you have a landlord that does it for you. Plus, I could rent a bigger space. I really miss my 650 sq ft duplex in sugarhouse. It was cheap and nice with hardwood floors so I wasn't living with animal dander in the carpet. My landlord took care of the yard and I had a dishwasher and a decent bathroom and indoor laundry. Plus there was no responsibility of finding and keeping tenants and although I shared a yard, I wasn't responsible for anything relating to my neighbors. It was painted cute colors and I had room for my stuff. My T.V. was more than 2 ft away from the couch and I had a hammock in the yard that I could lay in while my dogs lounged in the sun. I didn't feel like I lived in the ghetto of a neighborhood and my neighbors spoke English and were friendly. I wasn't responsible for calling roto rooter or repainting someone else's house. I was messy there too but it was spread out more so it didn't feel so aweful. There were no concerns of putting a new roof or siding on the laundry room. No need to worry about how to make the yard look presentable and keeping grass alive without using chemicals and spending a fortune on water and sprinkling systems.

I'm not sure why home ownership feels like such a downgrade. All I know is that it's more expensive, smaller, less convenient, not cute, and a lot more stress. It's definitely not all it's cracked up to be. I guess maybe it will be worth it when I can finally sell this hell hole and get some money from the equity. I'm not sure the market will allow for me to sell for quite a while to come though.