Old house, why do you forsake me so? Like a bad Shakespearean tragedy. Stabbing me in the back. Haunting me with ghosts. Tormenting me.

“Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer …” Oh, who am I fooling? I’m an English major, studied Shakespeare at Cambridge University one summer in college and can’t even remember enough for a half-baked literary … um … well, whatever this is.

I’ll just leave it at, “Et tu, Brute?” which, if memory serves, is Latin for, “So, you’re also gonna’ kick me in the pants, ya’ weasel?!?”

That is my relationship with my old house. Oh, love and hate. It loves to torture me, and I hate how I’m always spending money, time and sanity putting it back together every couple of years. Because when it comes to old houses, there is no such thing as “done.”

There is only “underway” or “what’s next?”

And “what’s next?” is usually the kind of project that makes you wonder why you didn’t buy a nice concrete block home where the only thing you have to worry about each weekend is whether you watch college football or auto racing. Ah, imagine it!

You get these ideas in your head. I don’t know where they come from. Maybe you saw a picture in a magazine of some celebrity showing off their digs. Maybe you just got tired of looking at the same four walls, or the color you picked years ago. Maybe you just figured it was time for a change, or to try to be more sophisticated, or to add something new to your domicile.

Or, maybe you thought: “Hey, my life is pretty easy right now. No major issues. No nagging headaches. Not a lot to do on the weekend except relax on the sofa with a beer and watch Formula 1 racing. How can I muck that up real bad with a house project?”

I got it: Why don’t I paint the front room?

Yeah! That sounds like a GREAT idea! (Cue music from “Psycho” when Janet Leigh gets knifed in the shower.)

Ah, painting. The DIY-er’s greatest nightmare. Worse than active sewer line repair or asbestos removal. Worse than relocating a pack of foaming-at-the-mouth raccoons from your attic and into your neighbor’s backyard. Worse than roof repair in August. Or sod-laying in August. Or that time when you were doing some flashing repair around the chimney and it almost toppled over on you … in August.

There is no home improvement project you can dream up that will be more infuriating, exhausting, time-consuming or out-and-out excruciating than slapping a new coat of paint on your walls. It is written in the Bible. It is a truth handed down through the ages. It was what Tom Sawyer desperately tried to get out of doing. (And that was just a fence!)

I battled you, hot water heater. I battled you because you took up arms against me. You chose to follow a path of darkness and evil. To dabble in the occult, and maybe even larceny (not sure what that is.) For many, many years you were loyal, hard-working, dependable and there for me. But something happened, and you turned vengeful and became flooded with spite.

You had been a king. I built you a castle. A house outside my home for your very own. No living in a pantry or an attic. I even put real cedar siding on for you and added insulation for the winter.

How did you repay me? By turning into a bubbling spring. A spouting fountain. A ruptured receptacle. Just like you ruptured my heart.

Imagine my shock when I bent down near your outdoor castle. (OK, it is more of a cabinet) and noticed the water streaming down the side of the walls.

“That’s odd,” I remember thinking. “This shed appears to be crying! Hot water heater sheds aren’t supposed to be crying … are they?”

Waterfalls: Yes. Portraits of the Virgin Mary: Yes. My face when another blasted appliance fails: Yes.

But hot water heater sheds: Unequivocally NO!