If A Woman Screams In Her Head Can the World Hear It?

OK, I’m HOT right now, and not in a ‘hottie’ sort of way. I’m writing this on Thursday, November 13. After assurances from the electrician that I would pass inspection, you could say that I’m fairly well torqued right now; the electrician failed the inspection. And, hell no I ain’t saying “we/I” failed the inspection--I didn’t mis-wire this place, or put faulty plugs in.

There were five violations, one we knew of, but it will be resolved on Saturday when yet another trench will be dug to bury the power line to the well. If I wasn’t paying an arm and a leg for this, I’d be not so hot about it, but, ya know….

Now the electrician has to pay for this inspection and for a reinspection before it will be inspected again. I have until the end of the week next week to get my CoO (Certificate of Occupancy) or the bank, mortgage and my finances get PHUCKED.

On the bright side (gads! I’m realizing how many terms for light I’m using as I talk about the electrician. My apologies. That’s just lame writing.)

[this is where I stopped writing, with the ever-lingering hope for a future of living in my house]

Saturday, November 15, 2008:
What I WAS going to say is that the plumbing inspector was going to be here on Friday, but he didn’t show. I’m at wits’ end with all this lack of professionalism and non-service service.

Did I REALLY choose to live here? Sad to say, yes I did. No wonder folks are so thankful when I follow through on a task. I’m a rare bird in these parts. A do-do bird, possibly?

Here I sit, in a cozy chair in an empty Ventana Room, with an unassembled futon at my feet, ‘cause I don’t want to—can’t, legally—look like I’m living in the house yet. I can do what I want in the master bed & bath rooms (and you know I do;) but walking around a mostly empty house isn’t as much fun as it may sound. It adds to the loneliness. Though, the views across the desert floor to the mountains beyond are still stunning.

Aside from going into total bitch mode and haranguing the sub-contractors on the phone in an endless loop, I’m not sure what I can do. Being p-a-t-i-e-n-t sure hasn’t helped me none. Being quietly polite has been fruitless. Efficiency and preparation on my part has only caused money to be spent early, leaving me strapped later. There is no singular manner in which to behave that will get New Mexicans to respond with the desired resulting behavior.

And ya know damn well, that if I refuse to pay the subs, that they’ll slap a lien on me so fast that the bank will own the house in a second and I’m stuck with 15 acres and The Tin Can, seeing as how the parcel I own can’t be broken down to smaller than 5 acre parcels, and the house sits on the biggest chunk, and would have to be sold with the house.

So, while I’ve been doing a lot of screaming in my head, has anyone really heard it?

Let’s have a change of mood, shall we? Let’s talk about the adversarial commenter.

I found the phone number and an unspecified house address on a highway for the commenter to my blog who was inquiring if I had done some horrific acts against the rancher out here. I even used the hybrid Google Maps to scan the length of highway that said commenter lives on to see how many homes I’d have to go to, knocking upon how many doors to find this person. That maps search was just for my amusement while all the banging and pounding was going on earlier this week. The commenter lives about 90 mins-2 hrs away from me, as the highways run.

I called the number Thursday evening, giving the residents time enough to have dinner and be relaxing in front of the tv, or computer screen. When the ringing on the other end finally stopped, I got nothing but the whine of a fax line. Dang it! I was SO ready to tell the commenter who I was, why I was calling and offer my concerns regarding the rancher’s recent spate of hospital stays and then find out why I was being queried about the abhorrent behaviors based on my blog posting.

I had also gone back into the blog archives to find the posting in which I had actually met the rancher, to cite that particular posting to the commenter to see if that specific post had been read.

Of course I got lost in re-reading the past postings and found myself wondering who the hell this person was that was writing this blog about such a thing as building her own house in the high desert of New Mexico? I wanted to cry, laugh, and scream along with her. The poor dear must be completely gray by now. (Had it been me, I would call the shock of gray SILVER, but that’s just my personal affectation and vanity showing.)

I sure hope this woman gets moved into her house soon.

Going back to the house and the present, I realize there is some good news to put forth (I’m still trying to end these posts on a high note) the radiant heat system is working wonderfully. I have three of the six zones heating the master bathroom (the coldest room in the house), master bedroom (for obvious reasons) and the kitchen/hallway/ guest wing zones. The latter is ‘cause that’s the one the plumber turned on first and I had to wait for it to get up to temp first before kicking up the thermostats for any others. I have the thermostats set to 66 and the house is quite comfortable there. Passive solar heating helps that to be.

Please realize that while I’m using a very shee-shee ‘green’ term like passive solar heating, I’m only saying what no one else will tell you in more precise terms: sunlight…the stuff that comes down from the sky, for free, and warms anyone or anything that gets in its way. Yup, Between the warmth of the sun on the walls, and a very low temp setting on the radiant heat, the house is at a comfortable temp, despite what the thermostat reads.

The major appliances should be going in today. For sure not manana—nada happens on a Sunday in this region of the US. I will be haranguing the plumber and electrician starting at 9 am today. Listen for the screaming to start about 9:01 am, MST. It should reverberate long past manana.