Thursday, May 01, 2008

Exhale.

Brokers tour is today. If I weren't so tired I'm be nervous. The past two days have been excruciating. The little details will kill you.

I had tweeker girl at the house. Yes.... I wound up using tweeker girl after all. I figured I was going to be there doing touch up. But, it turned out the whole crew was there. So she didn't have a chance to rob me blind. She was punctual. And, a really hard worker.

I had to have a talk with all my people because they all looked at me with that wide eyed "what the fuck look". They all thought she was right out of rehab. If only.

My worst fear was she would talk my ear off. But she was really good. She mainly washed windows all day. Which I would guess hadn't been cleaned in 20 years. And.... she did a really good job. Even though she was there for about 6 hours - she didn't complain once.

I guess sometimes you take a chance on people and it turns out okay.

I had my tile guy in doing this:





This is how it used to look. The dark living room is exactly how the room looked when we bought it. The whole house was really that dark.







Aside from all the physical labor - the static level was really high. I had Christian radio at one end of the house, and NPR at the other. Who on earth could say that wouldn't send you into a tailspin? Being an atheist.. both sides of my brain were in a tug of war.

I think the NPR was actually the most destructive force. In an election year... it caused many debates. Then, my conservative agent friend came in and decided she wanted to poke my crew about their views. Which wasn't helpful. My tile guy is a Hungarian immigrant, and I'm not so sure he doesn't pine for the days of communism.

It seemed everyone was acting up in some way. Alpha contractor was in a surly mood. Even for him.

I found myself managing relationships almost as much as trying to get the work I needed to do done. My brain still hurts today.

1 comment:

  1. I'm glad that you hired the woman, especially after you told her you would.

    Your misgivings were reasonable (it's your house), so being there, along with others, helped lower your risk of being robbed. And in addition to income, she logged a day of supporting herself.

    Re the Hungarian: I've had Russians, Ukranians, and Poles do work in my home. None of them pined for communism. In general, they come from more authoritarian societies than ours, so they lean toward wanting a few more rules. But when you've been at the lower levels of a control-freak kleptocracy, you don't have much warmth in your heart for Marxism-Leninism.

    That said, such immigrants might not be all that thrilled about the throw-'em-to-the-wolves safety net in this country. As opposed, you know, to police states like Canada, where your cleaning woman would perhaps have more health care than she does.

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