If it's not broken....

I know what you're thinking...."Don't fix it."  Well around here the quote would more appropriately be, "If it's not broken, it probably doesn't belong to us."

But before I get into that we have to back up...as usual.

For a couple of years a handful of the homeowners in our building, including us, had been pushing to get our 40+ year-old building re-sided.  With one homeowner/HOA board member continually insisting that all we needed was a new coat of paint and several other homeowners never giving any input either way it was a big deal to FINALLY get a siding project going last fall.  Honestly it took the handful of us in favor to just keep pushing and for the difficult homeowner to see how much better the adjacent building looked after they got new siding to change his mind.  (He actually had his unit up for sale and finally agreed that he would never be able to sell if his place looked so much worse compared to the neighboring building.)  So, by the end of the fall we were all fixed up with Brian and I even having the siding crew redo the surface of our deck and our front stairs. 

In addition to the siding project we opted to have a storage room/pantry built into the empty space underneath our front stairs.  A local contractor took that job for us and after weeks of issues with permits and a general lack of follow-through with the contractor we FINALLY have a pantry space to store our dry goods and some other food items. 

So....each winter we usually have someone who is not very skilled in winter driving end up sliding into the large concrete bollard at the corner of our building.  We have signs posted that say, "No Left Turn When Icy" to encourage people from getting themselves into sticky situations on our icy and steep driveway.  Everyone who has lived in our complex knows the risks of our driveways in the winter but when our newest neighbors moved into their rented unit back in January we were in the middle of a dry spell so all the driveways were clear and safe.  So when we finally started getting some more snow a couple of weeks ago they were already accustomed to making a left turn right in front of our unit. 

At 3:43 A.M. on Wednesday, February 16th, Brian and I were both awakened by a loud sound and a shake.  By the time we put the pieces together that someone had hit the building and looked out the window all we saw were tire tracks in the snow leading down the steep driveway right to our garage door!  Brian saw the taillights of a vehicle pulling past the new neighbors' unit and out the complex.  Brian immediately went downstairs and put on his coat and boots to discover that our garage door (only three years old) was crushed inward.  He called the sheriff who arrived not much later and we went through the process of filing a report.  To make a very long story short(er) we were never able to get the license plate number of the vehicle that hit our door and no one in our neighbors' unit will admit to anything though we are certain that it was someone coming to pick up one of the residents to go to work.  We are now looking at paying our homeowners' insurance deductible of $500 on our own despite the guilt of someone else with the costs of the garage repairs being twice as much.

To add insult to injury it also seems that our toaster oven is now dying.  The toaster part is still working but whenever I turn on the oven portion it trips the reset button on the outlet where it is plugged in.  This really isn't that big of a deal but it is an inconvenience considering I am always warming things up for the boys in the toaster oven.

Within a couple of days of the toaster acting up I was washing dishes and flipped the switch on our garbage disposal to clean out the small food bits that were in the sink.  After a few seconds of running fine the motor started to sound funny and the smell that often accompanies overworked electrical motors began to emanate through the kitchen.  I unplugged the disposal immediately and added it to the list of things for our friend/handyman Paul to look at the next time he comes by.

Within the next 24 hours I was washing some laundry including some very icky underwear of Sam's (he is 98% potty-trained but is still reluctant to do his #2's in the potty) so I set the washer to a presoak cycle.  When I realized that the cycle didn't include spinning the dirty water out I changed cycles again to get a spin cycle then changed again to a regular wash cycle to get things finished up.  Somewhere in the process I must have caused a hose to backflow or something because there was then a small puddle on the laundry room floor.  I opted to keep the washer going and luckily it seems that it was a small incident with no flooding or other issues...thank goodness!

Back in early January our sitter accidentally dropped the glass coffee pot in the sink and broke it so Brian bought me a small French press so I could make my one cup of coffee fresh each morning.  Just this last weekend I was again washing dishes and the glass insert of my coffee press slipped from my hand and broke in the sink.  Really?!?!  Something else broken?  Brian was home to witness this and immediately picked up a pen and added "coffee press" to his list of things to take care of...he had a new one ordered on Amazon the very next day.

I admit these are all small things to worry about when so many other people have real issues to deal with but in our little home it seems like the little things can have major impacts.  So for now, wish us luck in fixing what's broken and avoiding anything more serious from happening.