1/7/09 The Wringer.

I'm exhausted.

I was planning an almost-full day of work, with a "treat" to myself of a short workout at the Y after dropping off The Three. Bzzt. I'd barely pulled out of the driveway before I was divert to the jobsite (after dropoffs) for what should have been a brief consultation, and turned into another grueling 3-hour session. And I left saying, "I *can't* decide on this now, I've GOT to go to work."

The hall niches don't fit.

A dryer vent has to be moved.

The 1x1 tiles in our beautiful living room fireplace design won't fit, will have to be cut and hand-tumbled, and there's not enough of them.

The electrical light box above a vanity isn't centered and the medicine cabinet that's supposed to go there is too tall.

The sliding patio door can't be swapped, a whole new unit has to be ordered and installed. The labor to replace it will likely be more than the door itself.

That's just the "little" stuff.

Meantime, the fence between us and our incredibly patient next-door neighbor has a 12-foot section removed, and another kitty-korner neighbor had no idea that guys would be digging under his fence today too.

Here's the view of our house from our neighbor's yard through the huge hole in the fence. This view should never exist -- there should be a fence!.


Our incredibly patient neighbor is a meticulous landscaper. I can't imagine how he felt about this.


This is what showed up to dig up our yard.


Meantime, our jobsite foreman did some fast-talking with another neighbor, one we've never met but who lives kitty-korner to us. A five-foot-square in the far corner of his property is the unlucky grantor of an easement to PG&E to locate an upgrade an electrical meter.

This poor blindsided neighbor unfortunately bought his house with the easement in place. Our two next-door neighbors, on the other hand, out of unprecedented goodness of hearts and benevolence voluntarily signed one, through an unimaginably complex circus of hoops we (mostly Dave) had to go through with PG&E, the County, the City, the assessors, the surveyors, the title reports, the notaries....just so that our neighbors could sign away the rights to 10' of their property for PG&E to dig up at the behest of their noisy neighbors, who've forced them to live with construction dust, traffic and noise for months now.

I'm listening for ideas of how to thank our beleaugered neighbors -- Harry & David's biggest gift basket isn't nearly enough.

Oh, and tonight, we all had to go pick up Dave's car, AND work on Gabriel's scrapbook, AND have an "intervention" talk with Gabriel about some trouble he got into at school today. By all rights he should have been writing two letters of apology, but when it gets to be 9:30 and we're all about ready to scream, it's just too much. The "heritage doll" is going to have be a biker babe, and that's fitting, since they ("we," once) are known to get dressed simply and very very quickly. She crams for the test and does the whole multi-week-long project in the one night before it's due. My kinda gal.

Now I will slither my sorry rear end to the couch and stew about all else that's gone wrong today. Can I think of *anything* positive?? Oh yeah, Katrina happily sat on the potty at Julian's school for another teacher, just for a few minutes while he was getting ready to go. I figure potty-training will save us about $60 a month, between the diapers, wipes, and lower daycare costs. The aggravation leading up to it...not so sure.

1/7/09