Looking Up

I originally intended the post with this title to be about our new ceilings. But I must digress a moment.

Just yesterday I said things might be looking up. Well, I’m beginning to wonder. With the trusty cordless phone ever-present in my pocket as I trudged around outside today, digging through garbage bags, tossing around junk and generally traumatizing the resident mice, snakes, spiders, bats and phoebes of the corn crib, I began to feel the silent creepings of the typical New Jersey run-around.

This trim carpenter and I have been playing phone tag for four days now. How ridiculous is that? And tonight, I’m getting the ominous vibe of “he knows it’s me calling and he’s just not picking up.” Hopefully, I’m just paranoid. But past experience tells me I’m not. Maybe I offended him somehow. (I’ve never called more than once in a day – and always as a return call.) Likely, he took a surreptitious drive by my address and saw the forlorn, abandoned character of the place. That, or he just thinks I’m nuts. Maybe it’s my answering phone message mentioning birds and bunnies. Maybe it’s my Southern accent…he thinks I’m nuts, poor and dumb. Or maybe he can somehow hear a quiet desperation in the messages I leave. I try not to sound desperate, really I do. But perhaps I’m too transparent, and it comes through anyway. Desperately Seeking Spackler.

This brought to mind something about last summer that I had forgotten. We hired two contractors last year to excavate and build the concrete block foundation for the future garage. We signed the written contracts, mailed them back… waited and waited and called and called and…….. guess what? We still haven’t heard a peep from those jerks. Not a word. And these were people we knew personally. People who had done work for us before. It’s not like we don’t pay. We always pay. On time. We tip even. With a 10 year-long ongoing renovation, we’re good repeat customers. So what the hell is it? God, I wish I knew. Somewhere, sometime, somehow, we pissed off the NJ Construction Gods. Our name is mud. Time to move. (Well, that’s good for a laugh.) Or hey, who knows, maybe I am just nuts.

I promise I’ll post pictures of our new ceilings tomorrow. For now, where’s the chocolate?