No the house is still not done. They did take the 30 foot dumpster out of the front yard yesterday, though, so that definitely adds to curb appeal.  The house has been under construction for nine weeks as of today.  When we went by the house they were putting the finishing plaster downstairs and had primed some of the rooms upstairs for paint.  Unfortunately, the contractor came through and marked all the parts of the walls that needed finishing work and shortly thereafter the painters came in and covered all those marks with primer paint.  The left hand official has no idea what the right hand is doing. We met with a real estate agent from Rose & Womble today to talk about managing the house we're in now as a rental once we move. That went fairly well and I'm optimistic about that whole process. Here's hoping we can get it rented before too far into fall, but I'd just be happy to get the damn workers out of our new house so we can start enjoying it instead of just making large mortgage payments on it.

I had overdraft protection kick in on our bank account earlier this week. We're officially living paycheck to paycheck at the moment until we can get the old house rented and the new house settled. I haven't lived paycheck to paycheck since I was sharing a bank account with Jeremy (coincidence?). This is wearing me down because I'd like to afford carpet and refinished floors and maybe a few moving boxes and food for the next few months and I feel like we're not spinning wheels or wasting time. I'm just tired. I'm out of charity, patience, time and cash for the contractors and I'm ready to just move and get someone else in our old house so we can move on with our lives. We can't even call the flooring people to fix the den yet because they haven't finished painting and plastering in that room. I really do need a bumper sticker or t-shirt that says "I can't. I have contractors."

The contractors supposedly owe us $100 for every day since last Friday that the house is not done. I told them that I didn't want them to suddenly send 50 Mexicans to my house because they were only going to do 10 times the damage that the five Mexicans have been doing to my home. But I don't feel like they are making our house a priority. Perhaps they will end up owing us money by the time they're done with everything.

They came last week to install sheetrock in the utility room last Wednesday. My father called me around 6pm and sounded very sheepish on the phone. Apparently he had been still fixing the ceiling joists in that room (they weren't level) and was prepping to install the pull-down attic stairs. The only English speaking person on the job told him they would come back the next day to do the ceiling. When the heavens opened up and my father had to go patch the roof jack hole the plumber still hadn't done, he ended up soaked to the bone. He decided to go home and get some food and dry clothes. When he came back an hour later the Mexicans had torn down his stabilizing boards and put up three sheets of drywall in the ceiling - the exact thing they said they weren't going to do until the next day. So my father lost his temper and tore out all the drywall from the ceiling with his bare hands while yelling at the sheetrock dudes. They don't speak English, but I think they got the drift that they shouldn't have installed that. I think my father worried I would be mad at him, but I'm just sorry I missed the whole show. Rich and I imagine Godzilla noises as we think about my 6'3" father throwing drywall around amongst the 5'7" workers. I ended up staying until 11pm that night to help my father install the attic stairs.

So at this point I'm just tired of these jokers in our house. I'm canceling change orders left and right and we're doing as much of the work ourselves just to keep them from doing it three times and making us furious in the process.

And even though money is tight right now, I'm going to get a massage tomorrow evening to have my favorite masseuse stand on my shoulder blades until she gets this huge knot out of them. I've been using heating pads and creams and stretching every way I can imagine, but I think I'm just out of luck until tomorrow. Maybe without this rock under my skin, I'll have a better attitude about everything. Tomorrow is payday after all. But right now everything seems so close and yet so far.