CATCHMENT CHRONICLES, Part Deux

Sunday: Well, seems I got all in a bundle for nothing on Friday morning, seeing as how Pad Guy never even showed up the whole freaking day. Nope, he waited until Saturday to show up, just as I was supposed to be leaving to go somewhere. He spent one whole hour doing some leveling with his bobcat, then started packing up to go! I went down to see what was what, and he starts telling me "I'm done except for bringing back that load of base that goes over this. Of course, you're going to need to build a retaining wall there, and put a curb around this, and blah, blah, blah..." "Woah, wait a minute! My husband said you would be doing all that. Wasn't that part of the deal?" "Oh no," he replied. "We might have talked about how he needed a retaining wall, but I never promised to install it. I just don't have the time or manpower for that right now. We're swamped!"

So, we're just a couple days out from having this big ol' tank delivered, and I've got half a pad that's going to wash right out from under it without a retaining wall. What am I supposed to do now? Well, he was kind enough to point out to me that I've got plenty of stone lying around on my property, and I could just gather up a ton of those 50 lb. rocks scattered over these four acres, and build a dry stack wall, back fill it with dirt, no problem. Me, by myself, in rattle snake/scorpion utopia, by Wednesday. Riiight...

When I called, semi-hysterical, to report the latest development, John calmly replies "Welcome to the world of project management!" Well, I've got two words for him - I quit! I'm afraid I just don't have what it takes to deal with lying weasels on a regular basis. And yes, I know we should have had all this in writing up front, but let me remind you, we're not in the big city anymore. First of all, you'd be hard put to come up with three different contractors of any one service here, if you wanted to put something out for bid. Second, if you were to wait until they all gave you formal bids in writing? Well, you could be waiting 'til the cows come home!

Later I remembered that John was having another nuclear stress test on Monday, which of course, always comes with the possibility of learning that he might need more heart surgery. That kind of put all this other crap back into perspective, and I decided to just let it go. One way or another, it would all work out. Still, it will be interesting to see what develops on Monday - who will show up for work, if anyone. Who's going to try and help me out, and who's going to piss me off. Stay tuned to find out!