Checking in here for the first time in months. Grrr. Writing, one of my passions, has gone by the wayside.

It’s been one of those weeks, months, years? This week I had an absolutely wicked dental appointment with two cracked teeth, temporary crowns, and a wisdom tooth extraction. I sit here looking like a lopsided chipmunk wishing the pain away thinking about the past few months. What a year.

Thankfully, there is no compelling sex addiction news. Blue Eyes has been sporadically attending 12 step and fellowship. No therapy to speak of since the covid debacle with the local therapist. We crossed the 10 year mark of discovery and sobriety. What I’m really dealing with now is being the wife of a middle aged man with attention deficit disorder. It’s the ailment gift that keeps on giving. I’m learning, if very slowly, to just let a lot of things go. I know he doesn’t do the things he does on purpose to irritate me.

A really cool thing that has transpired is The Peacemaker works for our company now and makes a damn good proxy for me. He’s so freakin’ smart, and intuitive. That kid that I wrote about here, with anxiety, depression and an addiction to marijuana, has matured into a really high functioning, non medicated, adult. I’m so proud of him and thankful for him.

He also keeps ME on my toes. As we were driving back from the beach house with a $2000, 150-lb. microwave in the back of the car (who even knew there was such a thing), he sort of let me have it. His poor, already quite beat up, mom, got a verbal beat down. 😭 The microwave had been trashed by one of the beach house guests (don’t even know which one for sure) and I needed The Peacemaker to help me get it out of the cupboard that was specifically built for it. In its place, now, is an inexpensive model that can be replaced 20x over for the price of the one broken model. The cleaner was like, you really shouldn’t have such fancy things in a rental. FANCY THINGS??? It’s a microwave! We’ve had microwaves for decades without a problem. Obviously (which she knows) the house wasn’t built as a rental and ALL the things in that house are fancy things. The problem is, literally half the inquiries on the house are for “small” weddings. No kidding. We’ve had seven weddings/elopements there this year. The house has taken a beating and no matter what I have people sign, or how much I communicate with them, they all leave excess trash behind. The house is in a rural area with questionable garbage service as it is.

So on that drive home, The Peacemaker convinced me to no longer allow events at the house. He also had me look up comps for rental prices in the area, something I hadn’t done since I listed the house on the vacation rental sites. We do charge more for out of season (but honestly there isn’t another house like ours and I refuse to lowball it), but what shocked me was that houses on that beach can go for $800-$1000 more per night than what I am charging. The Peacemaker gave me that “I knew it” look. I also don’t charge more for events, which has infuriated him all along. I felt like charging an event fee was acknowledging that they could trash the house because they paid more. Turns out they feel that way anyway. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Case in point. I was in contact with one of the brides earlier this summer, Megan. The events before hers were simple affairs. An elopement with just 10 for dinner after having the ceremony at a nearby beach, or appetizers and drinks for 18 on the deck after a ceremony on a different beach. That kind of thing. Trash had been an issue, so I was aware of it at the point of Megan’s wedding. I made it perfectly clear that all event trash had to be hauled away by the caterers. She assured me that it would be. She was, and is, a very sweet girl. Even with my confidence that she understood the rules, I decided to go over the morning of check out to help the cleaner and refill supplies. I was also concerned as they had tented the entire back of the house for the event and per the security camera on the back of the house, the tent was still there at 9am, with an 11am check out.

I arrived to the house at 11:15am. I had actually passed an event rental truck on the highway (a very rare sight for this part of the Oregon coast) so was pretty confident the tent was gone, and it was. However, the first thing I noticed on arrival was three brand new plastic garbage cans with lids from the local hardware store, sitting next to our refuse company issued trash can, full of trash. Now, on the best of weeks, the local company will empty our can (if it’s literally on the street). Worst case, they don’t pick up at all, sometimes for weeks. Don’t ask me why. It’s a very rural area. But I knew for sure they weren’t going to empty non-issued cans.

As I’m thinking about what to do not only with the trash, but also the cans, I open the front door and much to my horror, I see the Kamado Joe Ceramic barbecue with smoke pouring out of it on the wood deck, right next to an all cedar house. I freaked out, ran to the door, hit the switch to put up the electronic blinds, and frantically ran out the door without thinking, before the blind was all the way up. I had left the front door open and now the deck door was open creating a massive wind tunnel, which caught the blind and the result, the blind caught all mangled up on the roller. This is a problem! But… the house was going to burn down. Yeah, I might have slightly overreacted. But seriously folks, who puts a bunch of stuff inside a ceramic barbecue that’s still hot, shuts the lid, and puts the fabric cover on top?

The house smelled like burning plastic for hours. I immediately texted Megan basically saying WTF???!!!

Then I went about looking at the rest of the house. It wasn’t so bad except they hadn’t done any of the check out list. The sink was full of dishes and they had used the little cloth high chair that attaches to the table and it was filthy. It took me an hour just to clean that! After a couple hours, I got a text from Megan. She and her new husband had left the day before for their honeymoon. She had just got off a plane in Costa Rica. They had left her sister, brother in law (and their toddler) at the house. The sister had promised to take care of everything. Megan gave me the number of her father and said he would pay for any damage. The parents were equally as sweet as their daughter. They hadn’t stayed at the house, but Dad had been assigned trash duty after the caterers had left it all behind. He figured the garbage company would just empty the cans like theirs would. They live in a big city, obviously. They still would have had to pay for that service, obviously. Dad paid for the trash haul away and the barbecue replacement parts. But it all left a very bitter taste in my mouth.

Then there was the guy who completely manipulated the airbnb system and didn’t even tell me they were having a wedding at the house, for 35 people, and also left a boat load of trash. He refused to pay any extra.

So even though I promptly changed the websites to no events, we already have six weddings booked for next year and even though The Peacemaker wants me to, I’m not going to cancel them. I’ve had them all sign additional agreements and I will be on top of it.

So some might be asking why we’re still renting it at all? The goal is still to pay down mortgages before retirement, but that beach house also paid for a new deck, a new roof & gutters on the Portland house, new door and windows on the Ojai house+++

The Peacemaker would say I just need to stop complaining and manage things better. On a positive note, I was able to get the electronic blind un-mangled and working again, however, the programming was off and reprogramming Lutron blinds takes a special skill. I started calling around and to have someone come out was going to be $950 and they were 4 weeks out. Frustrating. So the next guest arrived to a note from me explaining the situation. Lo and behold, the guy was a high end lighting designer and reprogrammed it in 2 minutes!

Life ain’t all bad. 😉