Month: July 2026

The Little Things

/ rachelgoes262 / 2 Comments

Now that we are safe in our new home, it is much easier for me to focus on things both big and small. In the old house, I was simply surviving. I was in a constant state of having to respond to whatever crisis the neighbors inflicted on us for the day. Their attacks with the boom cars and other methods of harassment were daily.

There were times when I would be cooking food on the stove, and I would have to turn off the food, and we had to go to the basement for safety. The food often spoiled. There were times when I could not eat because it was not safe enough for me to be in the kitchen long enough to cook something due to active gunfire or other threats.

Aside from upgrading all the plumbing in that house from galvanized steel, everything else that was done to that house was repairs from deliberate damage that was done by the neighbors. That house has new front steps and a new porch from when they drove their truck through the front. It had repair work to the chimney from fireworks damage due to attempted arson. That’s just some of the damage I repaired.

In the new house, no one is deliberately damaging this house. No one is physically attacking and injuring us. We are safe. This gives me freedom to live life. I’m no longer just trying to survive and avoid daily threats to our physical safety.

This means I can make actual upgrades to the new house. I can respond to needs both big and small. This house had plumbing issues that were supposed to be addressed by the sellers before we moved in. They were not addressed. I ended up replacing the toilet and fixing the shower drain that was leaking into the basement. 

This spring, I had the septic tank pumped. It was long overdue and on the verge of being an emergency. This is my first time living someplace that has a septic and is not on municipal sewer. I was very proud that I was able to correctly ascertain it needed to be done before it became an emergency and that I was able to locate where they needed to dig before I called for service.

As mentioned in a previous post, the furnace died. I had the furnace replaced and converted from oil to propane. That was a very big project. It is not completely done yet. I still must get the oil and oil tank out of the basement. But we do now have a working furnace again so when it cools down, we will have heat.

For such a big project, I was able to take it in stride. If that had happened at the old house, it would have been a major crisis that I probably would not have been able to deal with. Every single day in that old house, I had to alter my behavior and all my plans based on when the neighbors decided to start attacking us. A broken furnace would not have been something I would have been able to deal with when we were fighting for physical safety every single day.

I now have the ability to address the little things too. 

The ring pulls on the top drawer of my dresser broke a few years ago when we were in the old house. The ring on the left was partially broken and hanging precariously. The ring on the right was completely gone. Without the ring pulls, I was left trying to open that drawer by pulling it open from the bottom. It was a pain. It made it hard to get to my clothes. 

Broken ring pulls was not something I could handle when our lives were literally being threatened daily at the old house. I was constantly either trying to recover from injuries they inflicted or hiding in the basement with the cats to avoid being injured again or worse. 

Now that we are safe in the new house, I have time and energy to fix small things like my top dresser drawer. Instead of the ring pulls, I decided to install knobs. Now that the drawer has two well attached knobs, it is very easy for me to open the drawer to access my clothes. 

I even had the time and energy to be thoughtful about the knobs I installed. I chose knobs that I enjoy that go with my décor. They are not only functional, but they delight me as well. It is making me happy to see them. 

If I wanted to go the extra mile and find vintage ring pulls to install instead, I have the time and energy to do that. I could even try to track down a set of ring pulls to replace the exact ones that were on the dresser originally. I have the freedom to do that if I want.

 I decided to upgrade to drawer knobs instead of trying to find vintage replacement ring pulls. It may sound small, but this is living. It is not just surviving. Sometimes living can look like an inch and a half piece of mint colored wood. I am no longer just surviving with a broken dresser because I am too exhausted from daily neighbor attacks. 

I vividly remember this time last year. Every single night, the neighbors would pound on the door, scream “FIRE!”, and run away. It was all on my security cameras. They did it every single night from July 7, 2025 until the day in August when we left for safe housing. I never knew what time they were going to pound on the door and ring the doorbell screaming “FIRE!” until they did it. It could be 10 pm, 2 am, 3 am. That was the whole point.

The point was to prevent me from sleeping. 

In some countries, preventing someone from sleeping is a form of torture. In the USA, it’s just another day. When I was growing up, if someone yelled “FIRE!” in a movie theatre when there was no fire, it was illegal. Yet, it is perfectly legal to pound on a house door every single night screaming “FIRE!” when there was no fire. The local sheriff department there said there is nothing preventing people from knocking on your door. They have that right. 

Besides, I always had to ascertain if there was a fire or not. They tried repeatedly to burn the house down and even lit parts of the tree in front on fire in their attempts. I could not just go back to sleep after they pounded on the door. I literally had to check the house everywhere to see if they had lit it on fire or not. There was fire damage to the exterior of that house that was flagged in the final inspection when I sold it. 

It just got to the point where I could not keep up with the property damage they were causing and try to get us all out of there safely before we were murdered. I only broke even when I sold that house due to all the damage I had to repair. 

Being safe in our new home, I can respond to the little things. The big things are still challenging, but they are not a crisis. No one is damaging this house. Things I am fixing are maintenance items that need to be fixed due to normal wear and tear of living in a home. 

I can repair things in a way that I enjoy and delight me like the dresser drawer knobs. When the furnace died, I was able to research and decide to convert from oil to propane. I can make better choices because I am not trying to keep us safe from physical injuries every day. 

Even walking down the street here is safe. I no longer have children chasing me on bicycles and throwing rocks at me like they did at the old house (they were children of the house that attempted arson). Children here wave at me. I even helped one with air in their bicycle tire last week. I was outside at the same time they were, and they were trying to walk the bike with a flat tire. I have the air machine for my car, and it works for bicycles too. The child is riding the bike again instead of pushing it home. 

Helping with a child’s bicycle tire is another one of the little things I can do now that we live someplace safe and are not being attacked daily by the people across the street. 

The little things like bicycle tires and drawer pulls are precious. I did not have this freedom before. It reminds me of what life was like before those problem neighbors started. All because I reported their dog fighting ring. 

I have no regrets. 

Another positive of little things is connected to minimalism. I have one dresser for clothes. When the ring pulls broke, I was able to repair the drawer. When you are a minimalist, you have fewer items. You can have higher quality items because you have less of them. You can also take better care of things when you have less. 

I can imagine that if someone had three or four dressers and a drawer broke, they would probably just get rid of the entire dresser or replace the entire dresser. I repaired the drawer and kept the same unit. 

The dresser has been with me for over 20 years. They don’t make them like that anymore. It’s been good to me. So, I repaired the drawer. I kept the unit and now it delights me. 

The little things are a luxury when you have the freedom to enjoy life and not just survive. May you know this freedom. 

Yellow House in the North Country: Heat

/ rachelgoes262 / 2 Comments

It’s the middle of July. We are currently in a heat dome and are drenched in wildfire smoke from Canada. Naturally, you would think this post would be about summer heat. It’s not. 

This post is about winter heat.

Before the furniture even moved into the new house back in September, I had someone out to service the furnace for winter. It was already getting down to freezing at night, and I turned the heat on low so that the pipes would not freeze. Our previous house had natural gas. The new house has oil.

To my surprise, the annual maintenance for an oil furnace not only took much longer than the annual maintenance for my natural gas furnace, but it was also a lot more expensive. I chalked it all up to a learning experience. When I purchased this house, I was told that the furnace was new within the past 5 years.

When touring the house, the furnace looked older than 5 years to me. However, I am unfamiliar with oil heat. From what I heard, oil runs “dirty.” I attributed the fact that the furnace looked older than 5 years to be due to the fact that it was an oil furnace running dirty that had not been serviced in a while.

 The furnace has issues. After that initial service call for annual maintenance in September, I then had a total of three emergency calls this winter for various issues. By chance, one of the techs who came out for pne of the emergency calls told me he had worked on this furnace for years. “Years?” I asked. “They told me this furnace was new within 5 years. The tech laughed. “It’s at least 25 years old.” He said.

Given that the furnace was having so many issues this past winter, I was thinking I need a new one. The last thing I needed was for that furnace to quit when we were buried under 6 feet of snow. No one would be able to get to it to take it out and replace it. Not to mention, we would be without heat.

If I was going to put in a new furnace, I decided I needed to convert from oil to propane. It is very, very hard to get house insurance with oil heat. It’s easier to get house insurance with propane heat. Natural gas is not available in the Adirondacks. We are “off grid.” 

I got an estimate for the conversion. I decided to move ahead with it. The HVAC company doing the conversion told me to run my oil tank out of oil prior to the conversion to make the oil tank easier to remove. It made sense to me. 

The oil furnace was really struggling even more so starting in March. Every day I wondered if it was going to die. It persisted.

Sometime in May, the furnace stopped working. Either I ran the tank out of oil, or the furnace died. I scheduled my conversion for July. The float on the oik tank said I still have ¼ tank of oil left. I’m pretty sure that float is not accurate. It had been on ¼ of a tank for several weeks. 

Once the furnace stopped, we did have some chilly nights. It was still getting down in the 40s at night. There was nothing that could be done. We just piled on extra blankets and waited for summer to come. 

The handyman who helps me said that he thought I should wait until the oil furnace “shit the bed” to convert to get as much use out of it as possible. While it made sense to me, I also did not want to be stuck without heat in winter when no one can get to it to repair or replace. 

I found out from the neighbor next door that the people who sold the house KNEW the furnace had issues. They had rigged a lamp to it. When the furnace quit, the lamp would glow red and the neighbor knew to call the kids for repair. The woman who owned this house died and her kids inherited it, so it sat empty for a year. They had it priced way too high. 

When they sold this house, they said that furnace was 5 years old. It was 25 years old and had issues. They knew it had issues because they had that lamp rigged to it so that the neighbor could call for service when it quit.

The conversion from oil to propane is currently on day two of a three-day process.

They took my oil furnace out on day one. I did not, in fact, run the oil tank out of oil. The oil furnace died. It legitimately “Shit the bed,” as the handyman suggested I wait for. Thankfully, it shit the bed in May instead of in January when we got 6 feet of snow over 5 days. 

What was wrong with the furnace? Well, it had a cracked converter. If you know anything about furnaces, you know that a cracked converter is a HUGE issue. First, a cracked converter is not something that can be fixed. It is the death punch to a furnace. Second, a cracked converter is not only a huge fire exposure but also a huge carbon monoxide hazard. We are SO, SO lucky we did not have either the smoke alarms, the carbon monoxide alarms, or both going off at any point this winter up until that thing died.

I truly think Angel Jude has been watching over us. The neighbors at the old house attempted to burn down our house in July 2025 and then pounded on the door every single night screaming “Fire!” I have major PTSD over anything fire related. If either the smoke alarms or the carbon monoxide alarms go off in this new house, I would have major meltdown. First, I would need to get all the cats out of the house. But I would have major meltdown.

I would not feel safe in our new house if one of those alarms had gone off because the furnace was dying. I am still trying to overcome the trauma of attempted arson from our old house last year. 

I am really glad I decided to move forward and schedule the conversion when I did.

The conversion Is challenging due to the layout of the house. The technicians are excellent. 

As I said, we are on day two of conversion right now. They are currently working.

On day three of conversion, our propane tanks will be delivered. The gas company will hook everything up, check all the lines for leaks, fire up the new furnace, and be sure we have heat. They will do al their safety inspections. Then the HVAC company will come back and do all their safety inspections once it has the propane to run. 

I have all brand-new carbon monoxide and smoke alarms installed in this new house too. 

Say a little prayer that all goes well. This is the largest home project I have ever done.

When we were in the old house, I had plans to do upgrades and projects there too. I did do some of the upgrades. I upgraded all the plumbing in that house. It had galvanized steel piping that was over 100 years old that I replaced. Other than that, I ended up spending almost $17,000 to repair intentional damage that the neighbors caused to that house. 

I didn’t get to do any more upgrades to the house I sold because I was constantly repairing damage that they had caused. No, I did not put in claims on my home insurance. I know better. If I had, I never would have been able to sell that house because there would have been an open lawsuit for intentional damage. Not to mention, anytime I made a report, their behavior escalated. If I had put claims on my house insurance for the damage they caused, we would not have been able to sell. We would not have been able to leave.

Paying $17,000 to repair the intentional damages they caused is part of the reason why I was only able to break even on that house. 

In our new home here in the North County, we are safe. No one is causing intentional damage to this house. That means that when I fix something, I am either taking care of maintenance or doing an upgrade. I can actually plan and dream in this house.

One thing I wanted to do in the old house and never got to do was to paint rooms. I have never painted a room in my life. I never got the chance in that house. I was constantly scrambling with harassment, damages, and injuries inflicted upon me by those neighbors.

In this new house, I want to paint a room. I have never done it before. 

The first room I paint will be one of the upstairs rooms. I don’t go upstairs much. That way if I don’t do a good job of it, I won’t have to see it every day. I want to have the experience of being able to do some things myself without having to try to hire and pay people.

If painting an upstairs room goes well, then I really want to paint one wall (an “accent” wall) in my bathroom. I am thinking either mint green or sage green.

Both rooms upstairs are dark colors. One is a dark brown! I want to paint it something light and brighten it up. That way it looks bigger too. 

I won’t do any painting projects until next year. I already have my hands full this year with the oil to propane conversion and plumbing and electric work I had to have done when we first moved in. 

Once our new furnace is up and going, I am done with house projects for 2026. I need to rest and save money. I will save the painting for 2027. 

That’s not entirely true. I think I may need to try to stain my deck this fall. We will see. 

For now, we are on day two of three for our oil to propane conversion. Please hold us in your thoughts that it all goes well and that we have heat with no problems this winter. 

I will say that this house is the warmest house I have ever lived in during the winter. I’m hoping we have good luck when we are on propane this year instead of on oil. I don’t want to have any service calls. I definitely don’t want any alarms going off. 

In the middle of a heat dome, we are making sure we will have heat for our second Noth Country winter. 

Furniture and Settling

/ rachelgoes262 / Leave a comment

Everyone rearranges their home differently. Furniture placement often depends on how the room is laid out. The placement of windows, doors and electrical outlets can dictate how you set up a room. For me specifically, I set mine up in a way that maximizes cat comfort. That means access to all windows and plenty of play space.

When we were in the apartment and later in the old house, I have always had my window AC unit in my bedroom. I need it to be able to sleep at night in the summer. The bedroom is also typically a smaller room that is easier to cool than the living room or other large rooms in the house. 

In the new house, room layout has made it so that my window AC unit cannot be in the bedroom (for multiple reasons). It must be in some other room. I narrowed down the options to one of two windows. One window in the sunroom and one window in the living room. The AC unit is in the living room.

A few weeks ago, when we were under the first heat dome of the summer, I was struggling to sleep because the AC unit is not in the bedroom. I have a fan in the bedroom, but it is not enough. I decided that I wanted to pull the bed out of the couch and sleep in the living room near the AC unit for a few nights.

The way my living room is currently set up for everyday use does not leave enough space to pull the bed out of the couch. I had to rearrange the furniture to be able to do that.

It sounds simple enough. Somehow, when I went to do it, rearranging furniture was not simple. It was simple to physically do, but not emotionally. 

You see, in the old house. My furniture placement was dictated by the neighbors. Yes, I know. It sounds crazy. But when the people across the street drive their truck into the front of your house, you seriously reconsider furniture placement.

When they drove the truck into the front of the old house, they drove up over the curb, over the sidewalk, into the bushes in front of the house, and into the front porch before stopping. I was woken up in the night by the crash. Luckily, I was sleeping in my bed in my bedroom. It was not a night when I had fallen asleep on the couch watching a movie. If that truck had come into the house any farther, it would have been in my living room. 

The sheriff officer who responded even mentioned that I might want to be careful using my living room because it would probably happen again. I emptied the entire living room. I rearranged all the furniture in my house in way that if they drove into the house again and came in further, we would be safe. I started actively discouraging the cats from being in that room. 

Anyone who came into my house thought the furniture was set up weird. That’s because the neighbors drove into the front of my house. The Sheriff told me to expect it to happen again. 

There was half a house I could not use at the old house due to neighbor issues. It wasn’t safe. In addition to the vehicles driving into the house, there was the gunfire and the deliberate aiming of fireworks at the house that all happened on the side of the house facing those bad neighbors. 

When I went back to the old house at the end of August 2025 with the moving truck to take everything out before the sale, the one neighbor across the street threatened the two men I had hired to load the truck for me. It was a nerve-wracking move. It was so nerve wracking that I completely forgot all the items in the garage and one item in the basement that I had wanted to take with me. Things were left behind (like all my snow shovels).

I was fortunate in that kind people helped with our Amazon wish list once we were in the new house and replaced some of the items that got left behind like the snow shovels. I did not intend to leave items behind. It’s just that we were trying to get everything out of that house as fast as possible before that neighbor escalated and there was gunfire or police involvement (not that they would have responded).

The men who loaded the truck held their ground with the threatening neighbor. They made sure I left first and they followed me. They did tell me after that they were close to calling the troopers due to his behavior but wanted to just get the truck loaded and out of there as quickly as possible.

In the new house, it has been hard to overcome that programming from the old house that I have to keep everything as contained as possible and cannot spread out in my own house for safety reasons. 

When I rearranged the furniture so I could pull the bed out of the couch, that was hard emotionally. In fact, I only slept on the couch one night. I did not sleep well. I was scared. I know we are safe here and that no one here will drive into the front of the house, but I was still scared.

The other challenge in all this is that I have not really used the garage or the basement in the new house due to the experience we had with moving. 

I do have some items in the garage. Part of the issue with the garage is that when I bought this house, there was a lot of stuff left in it from the previous owner. I have all that stuff piled in the garage. I am working with someone (a “junk” truck) to come and take all that stuff from the prior owner out of my garage. So, I do have things, like the lawnmower and the roof rake, that I want to put in the garage and are currently in my sunroom due to the fact there is no room in the garage to put them. 

Once all the stuff from the prior owner is gone, I have things I want to put in the garage. I will put them there.

The basement is a harder location for me to handle. So many times, when the neighbors at the old house were being abusive, the basement is where we had to hide. It was the safest place from the booming and from the bullets. 

Now that we are safe in the new house, I don’t want to go to the basement. I go down every morning to check the live mouse traps and that is it. 

Right before the heat dome started this summer, I did put a few things in the basement that needed to be kept cooler. I put the WD-40 and a few other items down there. So, I am finally using the basement in this house. There is one tote bin of items in the basement.

Obviously, it’s going to take time to settle into this house. I have a lot of traumas with the daily neighbor harassment, boom cars, and attempted arson that we lived through. We are grateful to finally live someplace safe where we are not being harassed daily. I can finally sleep through the night without someone pounding on my door at all hours of the night. 

Rearranging furniture is an issue I need to work though. I can arrange my furniture in any way I want. We can safely use this entire house. We no longer must live in fear of people driving their truck into the front of the house or of fireworks being deliberately shot at the house from directly in front of it. 

We are so grateful to now live in a house we can safely use. I just need to get used to the idea that I am safe to sleep in my living room if I want.