I thought that when I turned 80, I might just fall apart. But I am happy to report that, almost 10 days into my 9th decade, I am still here in one piece. So far, my worries were unnecessary.

But what I didn’t expect to happen is that, once I turned 80, our 40 year old house would start to fall apart. But that appears to be what is happening.

Now we are not a family that panics at every sign of deterioration. We do tend to let things go and build up. And probably, we have waited a little too long on some things.

But here we are. We now have a contract with an exterminator, which hopefully will tell our neighborhood ant population to visit someone else’s kitchen, and to scare away what we fear is a mouse or two who seem to make an appearance now and then.

We lost our heat Tuesday night, and I am sitting here mulling over what an HVAC tech is looking at our furnace. We had another firm here yesterday, who told us that we needed an expensive part that wouldn’t get here for up to 5 days. I thought we should get a second opinion. Our second opinion is that we would be wasting money getting an expensive part for an 18 year old furnace, and that we should get a new furnace, as ours was really nearing the end of its useful life and not operating efficiently. Unfortunately, this is probably the thing to do.

We had our gutters cleaned out last week, and were told that we really should replace our gutters because they don’t drain well. They’d be happy to do it for only $4,000. I think we will pass on that one.

We have become the favorite hangout of a number of red-bellied woodpeckers, which like pecking almost perfectly round holes in the fascia of our house. I bought woodpecker repellent reflectors – but we haven’t put them up yet. I guess that is important if we expect them to work.

We have signed a contract with a company to repaint a bathroom shower wall, where we have chronic drips and probably need a different solution altogether. We are going to get our front picket fence painted, as well as the fascia on the outside (which also needs repair in a place or two), get our outside doors painted, as well as a number of other things.

We had our landscaper prepare our lawn for the winter, with trimming, mulching, etc.

You know the old song: That’s where my money goes, to buy my baby clothes? Not this year.