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Joanna
Class is in session. Hey, Everybody. Welcome to Unlearn 16. Class is in session. Today I'm going to rant. Today I am simply going to rant. I'm in a different location, as you can see. I'm simply going to rant all by my lonesome about what it is to own a home. And listen, before I get deep into it, I understand that I am very lucky and privileged and thankful that I own a home. But there's a lot of things you're supposed to know about owning a home that nobody ever really tells you. You're just supposed to, like, fumble your way through. And then there's just things that become, you know, incredibly frustrating. Let me start. So, for example, it is October, what, 15th, 14th. It'll be the 15th when this airs. So one of the things that I have to do is I have to shut my water off, going from inside the house to the garage and to out back. Now, here's the funny thing. My mom always owned a home. We never shut off the water ever. And it never froze. It never split a pipe. It never blew up the house ever. I forgot to shut it off one year. One time I forgot to shut it off, and it exploded and leaked into my grandma's room. Is so much water was coming into that room, and it was in the middle of the night, and I could faintly hear something. I'm like, what is that? That's a weird noise. And I woke me up, and I came downstairs. My mom, my grandma live in the basement apartment. I come downstairs to the main floor of the house from upstairs. I'm like, that's weird. And I can kind of hear it from the garage. So I go out to the garage, and all of a sudden, I see water. Like just an insane sum of water and instinct. Instinctively, I have no idea what to do. I have no instincts, zero instincts when it comes to what I was supposed to do to stop that water. And then I'm like, oh, it's blown so much water. It's shooting it at the drywall. At the drywall. It's eaten away at the drywall. And it's obviously running down into the basement. So I go into the basement. My grandma's fast asleep. It's in her room where it's running down, and it's now flooding into her room. I don't know, about a quarter of an inch, maybe half an inch deep. Like, it's wet. It. It's wet when I'm walking in there. I go in there. I get up on the thing. I At least am half intelligent enough to shut off the water to the outside. So I shut off the water, I get a guy to come in, they fix it, insurance, replace the floor, yada yada. My insurance pretty much doubles. I understand. Like, was that my fault? Would that be considered negligence? If it was considered negligence, then I get it. If it's not considered negligence. And this is just the reason why you have homeowning insurance. Why on earth does my homeowning insurance go up double after that is my question. Because in retrospect, I rather would have just paid however much it cost to be fixed anyways. So that happened. So, guys, guess what? I never want that to happen again. It's now firmly ingrained in my head. You either gotta be smart, you gotta be tough. And that day I had to be tough. And then I got smart. So the following year, I think, or maybe, maybe a few years thereafter, I shut off the water like I do every year, and I turn it back on a couple summers ago, a few summers ago, and it happens again. And I'm like. I shut it off. I'm like, what the heck is this? So I get another guy, plumber comes out, his name's Nestor, he's lovely. Comes out and he goes, here's the deal. The pipe going from the bedroom, like in the basement, out to the concrete of your garage. Not even the one going out to the outside to the garage. When you shut off the water and you drain the water, right? So there's nothing in that. The pipe. And I know you guys can't see this, you're listening to it, but the pipe going out to the garage is at a little bit of angle sloped up. Why would they do that? Is my first question. Is that on purpose? Because that doesn't make any sort of purposeful sense. So if it's angled up, what happens is some water still got kept in the pipe. Does that. You know, I turn on the water. Some. Some water still got kept in there. So Nestor goes, well, here's what you have to do. There's this little valve, it's like a drain valve inside the house that you have to open to drain the tiny little bit of water that gets into there, that gets in there, and then drain that all out so it doesn't expand and. And split the pipe, which is what it did. So at the end of the day, guys, I don't even want to turn the water back on outside, you know, do I need to water my grass? Maybe it's just one of those things that I Don't want to do anymore because watering, it causes so many problems. And are we just using resources for stupid things like really, really green grass? I don't know. Nonetheless, you know how many times I watered my grass this summer? Zero. So when I shut off my water just now, wasn't much to shut off because there was no water in those pipes. Everything was like bone dry. Fine. Why? That's not the point of this podcast. Then at the end of this summer, I go out back. Now, do I spend a lot of time in my backyard? No. No, I don't. Do I spend a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of energy on the way my backyard looks again? No. Do I like the great outdoors? Not especially. But I do have to go back there every once in a while and it was getting overgrown and it looked ridiculous. And, you know, I have bushes that have been put in that look nice if they're kept trim. But I don't have a chainsaw. I don't have the. The ability to go up and, you know, all of those kinds of tools and. And to be honest, I don't have time nor the inclination. So I don't go back there very often. So by the time I go back there, it looks like a scene out of Jumanji. Jumanji. Jumanji. Dangerous. You don't know if something could take a. A snap at you. I could have families of people living back there and never even have weeds that technically at this point are trees. So I don't even know if, bylaw wise, I can remove them because they've gotten that big. So I went out and I looked at it. I'm like, oh, my God. And then I stepped on the deck and my foot. It's a wood deck, guys. It's a wood deck. And at this point, there's about three or four big spots that are just rotted. Done. I could. I like the incredible. I could rip it off with my bare hands. So now I know I need a new deck. Do I want to do a new deck? No. No, I don't. But at this point, it's just dangerous. Also at this point, you realize that in Ontario there's this boxwood disease. I don't know, pestilence, a plague has infected boxwoods and it's killed. I have them all lined up sort of in front of the house. They were beautiful. All dead. It looks, you know, it looks like when you. When you slay a vampire on Buffy and it just goes to dust. They're dust. They're boxwood dust, so those are done. So those all need to be ripped out. I have evergreens to the one side and there may be six of them. One of them's completely dead. Obviously that has to be ripped out. The trees at the back are fine, but they're overgrown and overwhelmed. And really the backyard's more weed than anything else. So now I have to take care of this. Now I have to figure out who's going to do the deck, how much I'm going to spend on the deck. Am I going to get astroturf for the backyard fake grass? Because my good friend Melissa got fake grass and she said it's the most. The best thing she's ever invested in. It's fantastic. I feel like it's right up my alley, but that's going to be a cost as well. So now at this point, I cut the grass. It looks tidy, but the whole thing's gotta go. So now in my head I'm like, do I do it now? That's a genuine question. If you could make the comments below. If anybody knows anybody, amazing landscapers deck people that think it's a good time to deal with this situation now throw them. Email me the number 3 p o m m e-s gmail.com. i would love to talk about it and try to figure something out because it's hurting my brain. Or do I wa till next spring and just deal with it then? Because at the end of the day, nobody's going out there in the winter again. Nobody went out there in the summer, but. So there's another cost, Right? And is it to my own neglect. Yes, yes, it is. I don't care. It's not. I want it to look nice. I don't want to have to upkeep it. I. I hate even like. Like the hose situation's a problem. It's like solidified. I can't even unscrew the hose in my. It's a whole situation. I can't even undo it for most. Most of the time. So that needs fixing. And now I need to decide, what do I do? Do I do a new deck? Do I do patio stones? Do I just put grass? Do I do the astroturf on the whole thing? What do I do about those trees? Do the trees attract bugs? Are the bugs a reason why I don't want to go out there? Will I ever go out there? These are a lot of big questions, guys of home ownership. So all of that's happening. So I have that happening. My front looks good. But the, you know, I'm, I'm taking care of that. And now it's October 15th and I'm no longer using air conditioning, although we were using like it was warm in Ontario for quite the beginning of October. So I hadn't tried out my heater until today. Until today. So I woke up this morning and the house was 18 degrees. That's right, 18. Is that chilly? Yes. Yes it is. That's our starting point now. So I have no idea how cold it's going to get tonight, but that's our starting point. And so I thought, oh well, I'll put on the heat. I'll warm it up a little bit. Put on the heat. I go about my day. By five, six hours later, it's 18.5 and I feel the heat. And to be honest, it's mostly just blowing out cool air. So I have a question. So does that mean my furnace is broken altogether? I go down to look at it, it seems to be blinking red and a green at the same time. Do I know what that means? Absolutely not. Am I thinking a pilot light scenario? Yes. Do I know what to do about the pilot light? No. No, I don't. Now I know my weaknesses and I know my strengths. Want to know what my strength is? Buy a protection plan. So when this happens, you pick up the phone and you call somebody and they come take care of it and you've already paid for it. You don't have to worry about it. It's covered. It's all covered. Here's the issue. They're not coming out right away. Right now I'd like to be here. Anna doesn't like dealing with it. She doesn't want any part of it. My mom can't deal with it so much anymore. She gets overwhelmed and has trou getting around and Presley loses his mind. So really it's kind of has to be me. But I got to go to work tomorrow. I got to go to work tomorrow. They're not coming on. Of course it's on the Monday of a long weekend that I figure this out, right? They're not coming today. They're not. They're not coming today. They're coming tomorrow. Between 10 and 2 Reliance. Shout out to Reliance because saying between 10 and 2. Thank you, I appreciate it. Very classy, very demure, very cutesy. Because normally it's a much bigger window and I was worried it was going to be a window where Anna wasn't here and I wasn't home yet and then it was going to be on My mom. So I appreciate you Do I have I have I given it all to these people? Yeah, of course I have. Of course I have. Now some of you are like, well, Joanna, what are you complaining about? Like, it's not a big deal. Well, it still is a big deal because it's still my responsibility and owning a house and knowing. And by the way, that's just a fraction of things that I should have to know about. Right? Trying to know all of these things and get them all done and taken care of and be. And have a job and then take care of your family and then take care. It's a lot, guys. Like, I have a question. Ducks. Not the quacking kind. The kind of venting system in your house. How often do you get them cleaned? And if I don't get them cleaned, what are the ramifications? And why have the duct people stopped calling me altogether? Did they just give up on me? Did they call me a few times and then say, nah? She always tells us, no, because I have got my ducts cleaned a couple of times. Once when I first moved into the house because it was brand new house. And you have to get. Because of all this, the whatever. And then we got the basement redone. I got them cleaned again not once but twice because of all the dust and all the crap that's in your. Right. But they weren't. Apparently they weren't very dirty. But now I'm thinking, is this what's in the way of my heating vent? Because there's also like, could the power cord have been tripped? If the power cord is tripped to your furnace, then those. I'm assuming those lights don't blink, though. I think that's a solid assumption, because I don't. The light switch seems to be on and those lights are blinking. If the lights are blinking, the power has to be on. Am I right? None of this is to speak to any plumbing issues. So very recently, Reliance, again, cutesy, demure, classy, called me up and said, would you like extra coverage for plumbing? And this is the funniest conversation I've ever had, because I already know that Reliance is offering this coverage because my friend Ryan told me he just got it. I'm like, that's brilliant. I'm going to call and get it. He's like, it's a really good deal. It's like $20 a month. You have a problem with plumbing, boom. Plumbers come. Not your cost. Easy peasy. I'm like, I'm in. I love it. So I booked that she Called me last week just out of the blue, like a random, a random call and said, you know, she goes, hi, this is Reliance. I just wanted to let you know that we're offering a plumbing service or whatever, so if you pay X amount, you get plumbing coverage. And I said, yes, guys. She got a sentence out and she said, plumbing extra coverage. She, I said yes. And she didn't even understand what I said. She then went into the sales pitch, I stopped her, I said, hun, I'm in, I'm all in. I say yes. And she goes, well, can I please explain it? I'm like, why are we explaining it more? Now what I realize is she's so used to people saying no that, that without me hanging up, she didn't know that I said yes because that never ever happened. So she just continued on the sales pitch of trying to get me this to buy this thing for $20 a month. And I'm not lying. About 20 minutes in I said, I'm gonna stop you right here. And she goes, oh. I go, can you just listen to me for one second? I'm going to take it. Stop selling it to me and just write, how much are we talking? And she said, $20. I said, I'm taking it. She goes, and this is her response, really? And at this point I just realized like, how hard her job is and how many nos she hears in the day that her brain couldn't conceptualize of somebody actually saying yes. So guys, I had to talk her into it at that point. Now here's the funnier part. So I got all that said and done. I was on the phone way too long, especially since I said yes three minutes in. And at the very end she goes, well, since I have you on the phone, would you also like electrical coverage? I said, listen, can we not push it? You got to know when to hold them, when to fold them, because I said yes, I was all in. Bob's your uncle, he's got to walk away. You got to, you can't ask me for another $20 a month. Like, you just gotta, you gotta know, you gotta know at that point. So nonetheless, I have that coverage too. So I got it all. I just, I, I don't want to be responsible for it. This is the time where you're like, you know, when you're a kid, I guess, and just like all those things were sort of taken care of in the ether. You don't even know how. It's like everything just worked. Well, everything just worked because, you know, your parents, your Grandparents, whoever took care of it for you, which I find fascinating. I like to go back to that time. So now I'm sitting in a house a little chilly. Not gonna lie, I'll be sleeping in a sweatsuit tonight. If we're already at 18.5, I don't know what that takes us down to. And I'm actually thinking I did a disservice today by turning on the heat and going about my day, because since it was pumping out cold air, it probably could have got warmer in than what it actually did. So that's on me. Oops. And outside of that, what else do I have to do while I'm ranting to you guys? Next weekend, I have to take my entire school to Halloween haunt. So if you think I'm being a whiny, pathetic mess about owning home and being responsible, you don't have to take a bunch of teenagers to Halloween haunt. Freeze your butt off on a Friday night while people try to scare the bejesus out of you, and you realize at 49 years old that you can't go on the rides anymore because they make you sick. Now, because my inner ear is that old, and it tells me that I'm not allowed to have fun anymore. So I'm just going to have to layer up and drink a lot of coffee and wait to handle any kid that falls in the park or any argument that happens between, you know, significant others that have formed at the park and then break up at the park, and then there's somebody crying at the park. It's going to be a whole night. It's going to be a whole night. And then the following weekend, I'll have a Halloween party. Hopefully by the Halloween party, the heat works in the house. If anybody has any other, you know, ideas about what to do about the heat, please drop them in the comments. I'd really, really appreciate it. Or any. Any tricks of the trade. You guys have any tricks of the trade when it comes to home. Home ownership things that I'm not aware of? And you're like, but, Joanna, if you just did that preemptively, you don't have to be in this crappy position. I want to hear from you. I want to read it. I want to hear from you. And I will take you on, you know, I will take you on the journey with me as I become more of an intelligent, responsible homeowner with an actual skill set. But until then, I'm going to go have a hot chocolate, put on my sweatsuit, get underneath the covers, and hope that as of tomorrow, we have heat. But until then, I'll see you guys next Tuesday. Same bat time, same bat. Channel dismissed.