Quit dyin' on me, will ya?

I think my house is pretty nice. It's not too old and it's in pretty good shape. Sort of, but there's a developing trend and I'm not liking it one bitty bit.

First I noticed that when it rained, the gutter on my back patio dripped. It wasn't too offensive until, instead of mildly dripping, a torrent of water poured forth from the corner. I tried putting some putty stuff in it which was about as effective as putting a band-aid on a 10 inch gash.

Next I tripped over a ripple in the carpet in my den. I guess that it had stretched over time and my vigorous vacuuming pulled it up into the carpet version of the grand tetons. Even though I know the ripple is there, I always trip over it. Being wobbly on my feet to begin with doesn't help matters any. I'm sure that one of these days I'm going to catapult through my patio window.

The next thing to go wrong was the thermostat. One day it worked, the next day it didn't. I figured that it would be an easy fix. Match red wires with red wires, black ones with black ones, blues ones and so on. Only, the new thermostat had some different wires than the old one and I sort of accidentally hooked the thing up incorrectly and shorted out the A/C system. Lesson learned...don't do electrical stuff on my own.

I know that faucets become leaky over time. Those post thingys in the on and off handles have areas that wear out and need replacing. Since I know I stink at electrical repairs, I figured I had better stay away from plumbing issues, too. Water can do some serious damage. They got replaced but they're already leaking again.

My garage door does this crazy shake rattle and roll act so now sometimes it opens and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, someone has to help lift it some to get past the "shimmy zone" and then it will work properly. Mr. Man has worked on it countless times and it always reverts to it's crummy state.

I think that nearly every rubberized sealing product in this house is starting to degrade all at once. The shower seals are all peeling away from the bottom of the doors, the storm door seals are coming off, the weather stripping on the doors are coming off - I mean, come on!!!

I have a wonderful, huge refrigerator and for some reason the ice maker started freezing up. I'm sure there's an easy fix but I sure as heck-fire don't know what it is.

My microwave started freaking out a while back and the other day it finally sputtered and died. That shouldn't be too hard to replace it, but even though I have a brand spankin' new bionic back, I know lifting a heavy ass appliance is a bad idea.

My house knows that my money tree shed all of it's leaves a good while back and they have NOT grown back, so I can't afford to have a handy man spend a week here fixing everything. Mr. Wonderful works 10 hours a day so by the time he gets home, the last thing he wants to do is work on stuff. Most weekends, he's doing work on the little house in the woods so the house in the wicked city is up to me. I'll admit that I've asked him to help me but it hasn't gotten me very far. I'm not sure why. I've tried being nice, bitchy, crying, yelling and so far, the broken stuff is still broken. I'm too embarrased to ask my Dad for help because I don't want him to think badly of Mr. Man. So instead, I'm telling all of yall. Bitching out loud as I like to call it.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do. These things have got to get fixed. I'm not going to hurt myself any more by trying to do it all myself. Do any of you have any ideas?