I have now been a homeowner for over seven years. I've noticed an uptick in unsolicited mailers from realtors which is likely the result of some research suggesting it is at seven years folks start thinking about relocating. I'm not. One of the great blessings of owning this big, comfortable house has been being able to help out my friends who, either short-term of long-term, need a place to stay, without having them crash on a couch or in a sleeping bag, or park half a mile away, or fight over the shower. I live on a quiet cul-de-sac in a quiet exurban private subdivision. I have huge tracts of protected lands to the rear including walking trails. Really it's one of the best places in the world I can think of to live. So much so that I often muse how different my life would be had I grown up in such a place, rather than low-end, nondescript suburb on the northern border of Detroit.
That said, it has been enormously expensive. I have four services just to deal with the grounds: lawn cutting, lawn spraying and feeding, tree spraying and feeding, landscaping. The septic system needs to pumped. The driveway needs repaving. It's close to twenty years old so things are starting to fail, like most any exterior part made of wood; windows are surprisingly costly. I don't have city water, I have country water -- that is to say, a well. While it is appealing to have all the water you need without worrying about paying the city, it does require you maintain what is essentially a personal water treatment plant in your basement: brine conditioner, iron and rust removal, reverse osmosis filtering for drinking water. It's quite an operation and it works nicely until it doesn't, then you have no water and have to get the well pump replaced for $1200. You get the picture.
Then there are the problems for which there is no monetary solution, of late that includes insects. Dexter, and apparently a lot of spots in Michigan, have been overrun with a couple of scourges: Boxelder Bugs and Stink Bugs.
Boxelder bugs are black an red, fingernail-sized, beetle-like entities. Near as I can they have no purpose in life other than to swarm. During the summer they are fairly innocuous, but when the weather starts to turn they seek warmth any way they can. As the sun hits my house and heats up the exterior they swarm, literally covering the entire south wall to gather maximum heat, and a good bit of any other parts of the house that catch some solar warmth. It's like some sort of insect apocalypse. They do not bite or eat plants or carry disease, they are just a hideous nuisance to any efforts to enjoy the outside. Of course, being bugs, they also frequently find their way inside. During the worst times, I probably kill five or six a day just aimlessly wandering about the house.
The prescribed action to take is to just kill the ones you find inside, and leave the outside ones be until the first frost finally rids you of them. If you want to try to kill a swarm, it's recommended that you spray them with soapy water. I have tried that with virtually no success. This year I have no intention of letting them swarm unimpeded, though. It's chemical warfare for me in spring and fall this year. Probably the smartest course of action would be to locate their favorite boxelder tree where they feed and breed and cut it down, but I'm pretty sure it's on public land which might get me thrown in jail.
Stink bugs are another story. They look like some sort of alien monstrosity, albeit penny-sized. An invasive species from the Far East, they are not as numerous outside as boxelders, but they do take up residence indoors over winter. They don't bite and don't appear to be a source of disease, but they are disgusting. You just quietly sitting on the couch watching TV and you glance over an one is six inches from your face just looking at you like you owe him money. Like the boxelders, they are stupid and just wander around the house without even trying to hide. Also, like the boxelders I can kill four or five on a heavy day. Hopefully, since these are invasive and eat crops, somebody somewhere is trying to figure out how to get rid of them.
Tangential: I have a halogen lamp in my basement, it gives off a lot of heat and almost daily one of these critters flies into it and incinerates itself. I spent weeks trying to figure out where the roasted smell was coming from until I saw it happen in real time.
The point of all this to say that even though I might have wonderful images in my head of endless days of repose in my big, comfortable house -- it can never work out that way. Even if I had endless money for maintenance and could renovate to perfection, there is a always something to disrupt nirvana. Even if I master the civilized world, nature is still there supply an insect plague to keep things in balance. Like the great P.G. Wodehouse wrote, "it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping."
