It seems in the last couple weeks that our house has been revolting against us. Whether big or small, we've had a slew of things go wrong and the mounting list of repairs has me feeling overwhelmed, depressed, and convinced we'll never finish our endless master bathroom renovation, or any other project for that matter.

We've spent a lot of time talking about the hot water heater's attempt to turn our basement into an indoor swimming pool, but this has impact far beyond our need to shower with buckets. In fact, the basement that was once a disgusting space has gotten worse. While I'm happy to say that after a week without hot water, we can once again shower, do laundry, and run the dishwasher (we'll fill you all in on the details later this week), but our normally hoarder-esque subterranean space is now even more disorganized. Having to rip out the hastily installed (by misguided owners in the 1980s) and essentially propped in place "finished" temporary wall in the basement has left much of our junk displaced, to the point it's difficult to get down the basement stairs.

Before we can claim any sort of victory, we need to tackle a massive organization effort. But at this stage of the game we're paralyzed by the mountains of clutter and distracted by our unexpected repairs.

In addition to the basement, the decorative air intake return vent cover outside of our bedroom transom no longer stays shut. It now looks like a sad flap of ornate metal that mocks me from its perch every night as I retire to our room. 

After a bit of investigation, it seems one of the support pieces of wood on the magnetic catch has broken, making it so the magnetized closure no longer supports the heavy metal grate. Trust us, we've tried to get it to stay shut about 4,000 times since it opened. We'll have to tackle that small project soon, as it looks ridiculous, like our hallway's mouth is just hanging open.

Jumping on the bandwagon, the large clock in our upstairs hallway has also timed out. We thought it was just a dead battery a few weeks ago when it stopped running, but now I think the motor in the clock has seen better days. We'll put this one on the list too, but admittedly it's lower priority. After all, our antique grandfather clock stopped running years ago and we haven't yet made the time to fix that. Ugh.

Because they didn't want to feel left out, Lulu and Mel have also been doing their fair share of...redecorating. While normally very well behaved but a little neurotic, Lulu has let her anxiety get the best of her as of late. I kept noticing fuzz on the sun porch rug under one of the chairs, and chalked it up to the rug doing some natural shedding that was just collecting under a chair. What we came to realize last night is that Lulu has been scratching at the rug under each of the chairs, to the point where she has created holes in the rug. Seriously? 

And don't even get me started on how her nails have scratched and dented up the floors to the point they all need to be refinished. It makes me crazy every time I look at these divots in our heart pine stair treads.

Mel isn't an innocent bystander in all of this. You may want to avert your eyes if you're faint of heart and prefer not to look at cat vomit, but this was the scene I came home to one day last week after work.

Apparently Mel had been sitting on the white cabinet in the sun porch when he felt the need to do what so many cats do. Yes, he barfed up a hair ball, and well, the rest was history. While we're no stranger to the lovely look of cat vomit, he usually does is the courtesy of finding an inconspicuous location on the floor in the middle of our walking path, perfect for us to step in with our stocking feet. But not this time, no sir! It looked like we had started decorating early for Halloween. 

Moving on, our much maligned sink faucet has spring a leak again, only this time it's from the hot water handle. The water slowly trickles out of the handle and forms a puddle on the butcher block behind the sink. With butcher block counters, we're having to constantly wipe it up for fear it will dry and crack the block. Go ahead and put that on our list of "things to fix" while you're at it.

And while we're talking about things to fix, let's not forget about what I mentioned earlier, the grandfather clock that's had a broken weight rope since 2010 and has read 4:43 since that day. No, this obviously isn't a new house ailment, but it's one we'd still like to address. We just need to take it apart, take photos, and then ask our blogger friend and clock expert, JC of My 1923 Foursquare, for a little guidance (he offered long ago), but we've needed to do this for over 3 years now. Let's just say, I don't think it's going to happen next week.

So, I'm overwhelmed with house stuff. We're overwhelmed with house stuff. And there's so much stuff going on outside of house stuff (like day job stuff, life stuff, and other fun stuff we can help but partake in) that we feel like we're never going to get a handle on house stuff. This is not the worst problem to have by any means, and I know we'll eventually get on top of it all again, but I've never been accused of being a patient person, and what little patience I have is wearing thin. I like good results and I like them now. Is that so wrong?

The last time stuff went wrong in a string like this, we blamed Mrs. Bryan, our home's first owner, and her spooky ways. Perhaps she's upset about something else and is just trying to prove a point. Or perhaps stuff just happens. I can't say for certain.

In an attempt to wrangle our tasks into submission, it may be time for a good old fashioned DIY punch list. One that will simultaneously raise our mounting blood pressure and give us a clear goal to work towards. After all, the best way to win the battles of the present is to mount an attack with an eye on the future.

At the same time I'm going to politely ignore the other lengthy "repairs" list I made for us months ago. It has at least 20 things on it, and I'm pretty sure we've checked off two. 

Well, at the very least we can ignore all of our problems, go to baseball games, eat cotton candy, and enjoy life. It's procrastination at its finest. 

Does that sounds like a good plan? I think it does.