Live from Austin!

At the weekend I cleaned the windows. A downside to a 2-storey house that I hadn’t considered is the difficulty of cleaning the windows on the upper floor. Rather than clamber on the roof or try to handle an 8m ladder, I bought a dispenser of window cleaner that attaches to the hose and sprays suds quite a distance. You then leave them for 15-20 seconds, and hose off. It did an adequate job. The ground floor windows I cleaned the old fashioned way, so we now have a much clearer view of passing arboreal rodents.

One day I may be rich enough that I’ll be able to buy furniture that doesn’t come in flat cardboard boxes and doesn’t need assembly. Not yet, though. So I also assembled our last remaining major piece of furniture, the sideboard for the dining room. The individual pieces were heavy enough that I had to be careful lifting them, so I carefully built the thing already in its final resting place. I also modified the assembly instructions to build it from the ground up, rather than build the entire thing and then have to flip it over to put the feet on the bottom.

As a result, pain. My back’s OK, but my legs are sore, which suggests that I’ve at least learned to lift things properly now.

Then on Monday, a woman in an SUV reversed into the Prius. Apparently her truck has a proximity sensor to stop you reversing into things, and it didn’t beep, so she assumed the coast was clear and carried on reversing. A great example of how a supposedly safety-enhancing feature can reduce safety.

So, tomorrow we need to go have the car looked at, and find out how much it’s going to cost us. I’m guessing it’s safe to assume a minimum of $500, as that’s our deductible. Also on Monday, rothko found out she needs some cracked teeth seen to.

So it’s basically been ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch so far this week.

I’ve been laughing at some online galleries of photos by home inspectors. (Volume 1, Volume 2.)

The wrench foundation is basically what was under our house, but with wooden shims instead of a wrench, and concrete instead of metal for the pillar.

The one that made me laugh hardest was the air circulation masterpiece.

Anyhow…there’s a saying that hard work pays off tomorrow, but laziness pays off immediately. Well, sometimes laziness pays off tomorrow as well, especially when it comes to gardening.

Last summer I noticed that the grass out back wasn’t doing too well. I have to assume it was planted by whoever built the house, and that they just picked the cheapest grass seed. In winter and spring it would grow like crazy, and then in summer it mostly turned brown and died. It clearly wasn’t suited to a Texas climate.

Then this summer, I noticed that some kind of plant was gradually taking over. It was a bit like clover, but bigger. It started as a couple of patches, but by mid summer it had pretty much replaced all the grass on the right side of the path, and had somehow made the leap to a patch on the left side. I pondered whether this was the kind of thing that ought to be treated with weedkiller.

In the end, though, I wasn’t too concerned about doing anything, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was too damn hot to do anything; and secondly, we wanted to get rid of the unsuitable grass anyway and replace it with something more suited to local conditions. The plan was to get some buffalo grass sod put down, or perhaps a hybrid like Turffalo planted via plugs.

Then last week we paid an arborist to inspect our trees and offer advice on how to best take care of them. I asked him about the stuff that had eaten the lawn, and he told me it was Horse Herb. It’s a native ground covering of the Texas hill country. It thrives in the shady areas under live oak trees, forming a thick, lush, lawn-like surface that you can mow just like a regular lawn.

So by being lazy, we got a free native plant lawn replacement. It doesn’t need watering in summer, and you only have to mow it every 2-4 months. It produces tiny yellow flowers at the end of summer, and is apparently robust enough to crowd out weeds. Sure, you can’t play golf on it, but you can walk on it, sit on it, and watch squirrels dig in it.

So instead of expensive lawncare, our best bet is to roto-till the bald patches in the back yard with some organic fertilizer, get some Horse Herb seed from the Lady Bird Johnson wildflower center, and sow. Then simply leave it alone. Awesome.

The other secret to Texas lawn care I have discovered is mulching. Get a mower which mulches. Sure, it’s good for the lawn, but what’s even better is you don’t have to rake, bag up clippings, or drag sacks of yard waste around.

Well, it turned out that the insides of the faucet mechanism were shot. There’s a notch that’s supposed to keep the ball in place, and it had worn away.

Still, nothing that $100 of new faucet can’t fix.

Oh, and as with the toilet, the pipes needed to be hacksawed off, along with the bolts, as the entire thing had rusted up years ago. Another job I could never have succeeded at. The plumber said it was the worst rusted-in faucet he’d ever seen.

Our kitchen faucet has been leaking annoyingly for months now. Today I tried replacing every single moving part, and the damn thing is still leaking. So I gave up and called a plumber, and they’ll be here this afternoon.

Like the whole toilet fiasco, I find this experience deeply depressing, out of all proportion to the level of drama and shame it warrants. I don’t understand why it even bothers me at all; perhaps it’s just that as an engineer, I feel like I ought to be able to fix mechanical objects myself.

I did fit a new shower head without incident.