An open letter to our house

Dear Mr. (or Mrs.) House,

I can't help but notice that you seem to be mad at us. What exactly did we do to deserve such rude treatment from you? For starters, you decided that we don't need air conditioning during this most unpleasantly hot and humid Missouri summer. In my humble opinion, the Naughtons have done nothing to you that would justify cooking us alive within your walls. Rude. Second, you sabotaged the clothes dryer, forcing us to hang-up our damp unmentionables out of doors in the stifling heat. That's plain mean. Next, you cracked the shower head in our bathroom, making it almost impossible to take a cooling shower in a vain effort to stave off heat stroke after hanging laundry all day. All of these things are inconvenient, uncalled for, and ill-timed. But they fail to get under my skin to the extent that your latest effort has. You broke the Internet.

Every day during the past week, you have severed my ties to the outside world from the hours of 10:00am through 6:00pm. I don't know how you managed to accomplish this, but somehow you've made it to where I have no Internet connection for those same eight hours every single day. It is bad enough that I have to sweat, do laundry outside, and take baths instead of showers, but now you've decided to monkey with my best distraction from all of your needless destruction. House, you and I have had a pretty good run up until this year. Oh sure, I remember when you maimed the furnace on a sub-freezing night a few years ago and when you thought it would be funny to make the exhaust fan in the bathroom stop working just when the lingering stench of a partially digested Big Mac extra value meal desperately needed to be removed from the stagnant confines of your smallest room, but lately--you've really been trying my patience.

If I promise to paint the three rooms Bethany has been wanting to get "made-over" for the past five years, will you promise to stop making my life difficult? If we clean out your gutters, will you quit messing with the Internet? I think we've been pretty decent occupants over the years, don't you? We've replaced your worn carpet with hardwood floors. We've repainted three rooms. We landscaped around you and mow your yard regularly. We vacuum, scrub your siding, and even wash your windows once a decade or so. What more do you want from us? We'll be bringing another child from China home to live with us in the next year or so, filling another of your cozy rooms. Do you think you could help us save the money for the adoption by not destroying every appliance we own? Speaking of appliances, we replaced your aging fridge and stove a couple years back as well as the old washer and dryer, or did you already forget that? Please, big fella, give us a break okay? If you choose to keep doing things the hard way, we can play that game. I could unleash the full destructive power of two young Naughton boys on you. Trust me, ask the houses from my youth: you don't want that.

Think it over. And do the right thing.

Sincerely,
Travis "The Man of the House" Naughton