The Saga Continues

I don't want to blog about this anymore. Truely, I don't. But this amazing tragedy continues to unfold and the story needs telling.

That someone who was coming today never showed up. Never called. Never even returned a message from me asking what was up. At 12:00, Jen called and asked for a progress update. She suggested going on craigslist.com and looking for skilled trade ads. By 12:30, I had called "Merlin" (his real name), and informed him of my need. He said he could be at my house at 12:45. I mentioned the electrical work that needed to be done and he said, "no problem."

At 12:45, three men got out of a rusted, skyblue truck. One quickly finished his cigarette and the other two walked toward my door. Honestly, I considered not opening it. Sketchy looking and young, I wondered if it was even safe for a woman with two small children at home to invite them in. I said a quick prayer and opened the door with a confident, friendly "hello" and showed them the problem.

They didn't really know what to do. My neighbor, Courtni, came over last night and told me to ask whoever was coming if they could just move the entire cupboard over closer to the refrigerator. I asked them if it was possible and it's like a lightbulb went on over their heads. All three of them start wiggling it and it's obvious that it will move. So that became the plan of attack. They had no tools, however, and started asking me for such and such. Nails, screwdrivers, razor blades, hammer, caulking gun, flashlight, socketwrench. I'm running up and down the stairs to the garage looking for things. I'm not exactly a licenced contractor yet, contrary to my last few posts, and I don't even know what a socket wrench is. I have an idea. I've heard of it before. But locating it was a bit of a challenge.



They rehardwired the stove because that's what they knew what to do. I think they might have known how to do it from stealing cars (mean...but probably true). The stove works, fits (very roughly) and then came the price haggling. No joke, Merlin told me $160. I think I did the neck-jut-forward-eye-opening-eyebrow-raising thing. Seriously? It took them an hour and he told me with $30/hour/guy plus gas that it seemed fair. I told him that I supplied the tools, they didn't clean up and I didn't ask for three guys....I asked for one. He told me that when I asked him about electrical that he assumed that meant he needed to bring someone for electrical. I told him I felt like $50 was fair and he laughed. I got a very nervous feeling and felt like I needed them to leave my house. So I said, "$90 - for each guy for one hour" and he said $100 and I said $90. I started to write a check and he said, "I need cash. I don't have two forms of I.D." I told him I have $5 in cash and I'm not going to a bank. He hollered at his friends to see if either of them have two forms of I.D and the smoker with 3 front teeth missing said he did. What a sophisticate.

My hope of finding someone who could finish other odd jobs vanishes again. I was hoping I'd be impressed with the Russians and perhaps get them to finish other jobs that would ease Jay's "honey-do" list. This guys's advertisement of "do anything handyman" seemed very promising. As soon as I saw them, though, I knew that I didn't want them around for long.

I don't know if I did the right thing by having them do this to the kitchen. It doesn't look very good.



I feel like crying. I'm so stressed and tired of it all. This is all very humiliating to me. I consider myself smart, able and independent. But I just want this to go away or have someone else make all of the decisions.

I promise my next blog will be happy. Maybe even funny. As my title suggests, I'm having a bit of a spasm right now. Eventually, I'll get to the flow part again. Seems like my french penpal knew what he was talking about after all.