First hurdle....hurdled.

I have to say, I am pretty happy with the whole homeowner thing, overall. I love that I am not at all concerned with my landlord, and that in considering what sorts of things I want to do with the house, I can do whatever I want, even if it means painting the living room day-glo pink and intalling black lights.

The biggest fear I had when I was considering buying was the thought of dealing with major repairs -- the nice thing about renting is that if something breaks, you just call the landlord and then, magically, it gets fixed at no additional cost to you (or, in the case of my landlord, you call and convice him that it isn't actually your fault that the well ran dry or the 70 year old furnace broke again, and THEN he fixes it.) When you own your house, if something breaks YOU have to fix it, even if it costs a thousand dollars. To be quite honest, that scared the crap out of me.

So yesterday when I realized the gas I was smelling was not, in fact, all in my head, and I called the gas company and the nice gas company man met me at my door, I was pretty much shaking in my Birkenstocks. Fortunately, the problem was minor, and less than a hundred dollars later I had overcome my first homeowner catastrophe. Let's hope they are all as minor.

Speaking of doing whatever I want to the house, I still have no earthly idea what to do with the house. Any decorating geniuses out there have any ideas?