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.