Post-Buildum Depression

(NOTE: The bulldog in this post is Molly. She's one of the many animals who let my friends Sheila, Kenda, Bubba, Reyna and Pilar live on their farm. Sheila and Kenda feed me scrumptious homemade meals. They are all VERY good to me!)

We’re in the home stretch—gads! I used a pun. I HATE puns! (They’re the lowest form of humor, in my opinion.)

Let me start again, since it was supposed to be more of a softball analogy and not ‘low’ humor….

The train coming through the tunnel with its headlight blazing has stopped on the tracks. No. That ain’t it neither.

How’s about: The House is coming along nicely, and while there are still some loose ends, the endurance test that is being a Homeowner/Builder for your pal in New Mexico is nearly over. Aside from the house being ‘done’, so will my heartache, roller coaster anxiety levels, retirement funds, inheritance, pride and self-esteem. Y’all, I’ve made so many mistakes on this adventure of mine I can hardly stand to live with myself. So much for analogies.

But, being a true, hard-headed woman born under the sign of Aries, I’ll figure out some way to salvage at least the last two lost items. Arian egos are just too big to allow one to wallow very long in that mire. Unless it’s chemically influenced.

So, the update on The House: The crew was expecting to leave this weekend and are doing a bunch of touchups and little detail jobs. They thought they were going to be able to be done this past Weds., but, no. Now they won’t leave until Tuesday morning. Unless Skyler decides to pop out of Felicia. That’s all I need is a medical emergency and a birth of a child on the land.

The list is shorter: Finish the Powder Monkey Room (garage bathroom) (UPDATE 10/25: DONE.) “Float” the floors (one last going over to smooth out some of the irregularities) and…that’s about it, I think. For the crew, anyway. The propane line still has to be laid, and the boiler and some plumbing connections done, as well as the electrical finished up; but for the on-site crew—they are finito banditio.

The wood stove (I have to quit calling it a fireplace) was installed yesterday (Friday), and I just HAD to ‘cure’ it with its first fire. While they were still finishing up the install of the wood stove, the kitchen cabinets arrived; they will be installed manana. (UPDATE 10/25: DONE!) The vanity doors, save one (missing) false panel, were installed when the cabinets were being unloaded, so that’s (almost) done. Door trims were done, including the closet in the master bedroom, which doesn’t have a door (I’ve explained that reason before.) And a bunch of other stuff that I don’t even have the desire to list.

I did sleep in the master suite Thurs and Fri night, and will tonight and forevermore. The replacement ‘air chambers’ for the Sleep Number bed arrived Thursday evening. Even though the overnight temp on Thursday was somewhere around freezing, there was only a slight chill in the house. An electric blanket kept me from complaining about it. Tonight should be toasty warm, with the smell of wood smoke licking the air.

I know I should sound more excited, but I just can’t. The anticlimacticness of this whole event is overwhelming. There’s still plenty that can, and will, go wrong, and I don’t think a single one of you would dare suggest such platitudes as: “Just be patient” or “Think positively” or even, “But you have such a wonderful house to show for all of your time, money, heartache, trailer-trash living experience.” There’s just so much one can take, and I’ve taken more than I ever thought I could, so there just ain’t no room for no mo’.

But, I have to, don’t I? Take more. I have to take more of it. Therefore, I feel no joy. I barely smiled when the wood stove went in. I didn’t even come out of The Tin Can when the cabinets arrived; I waited until the guys were ready to leave before I ventured into The House to see what they looked like and to be polite and say thank you to them.

I hate feeling dead. And, truly—I’m feeling dead.

Sad, huh?

I still have to mix, haul and spread road base around the outer doors, get some rocks removed and landscape, to a very small degree, all around the structure. I can’t really do that until the propane line is in, inspected, and backfilled. The propane guy shanghai-ed me today saying he’ll come lay the line IF I buy the propane to fill the tank from his company. WTF?! What can I do but say yes? He’s giving me a decent price, but it ain’t the best price out there. He’ll be out this Thursday.

I’m actually hoping a couple of other propane guys will be out here either before him, or at the same time, then I’ll let them duke it out amongst themselves, or just say what they’ve all said to me: “Oh. Sorry.”

Heh, heh, heh. THAT visual brought a smile to my face!!

Oh, and the Christmas vacation is a no-go. I’ll be short when it comes to paying the rest of the bills owed on The House, never mind the closing costs, etc. See why I’m not so excited? I’ve poured so much into building this place, only to fall short. It’s not fun being me right now. And there’s no untapped financial source left for me to go to.

As much as I don’t want to end on a bummer note, one of the main reasons I decided to chronicle this house building experience on a blog was so that all the elements could be fairly well recorded in an honest manner. Well, here ya have it; post-buildum depression.

I think I’ll go buy my major appliances now (UPDATE 10/25: DONE)…I have to have a working stove and kitchen sink in before I get the Certificate of Occupancy issued. The sink won’t be able to be installed until the countertops are done and in—about a week to 10 days from now.

Since Sundays are a day filled with no place to go, I’ll go buy some lottery tickets and a few scratchers….

Maybe I’ll be happier, and richer…manana.

Oddities of Nature

I’m sure some of you are thinking that I’m going to talk about myself, given the title for this posting. Nice. Not 100% true. It’s still (almost) all about The House. Yes, still.

I’ve reviewed, reflected, been pressured by The-Man-In-Underoos-From-the-Bank and double-checked with Norbert, and my mental meanderings still hold up: There ain’t a whole lot left to do with the house.
The checklist:
--Pay the balance for countertops and cabinets in kitchen, get them installed.
--Buy major kitchen appliances
--Tile backsplash & window ledges in kitchen
--Master bath vanity doors to be installed
--Tile the access panel on the tub
--Paint the formally purple wall in master bedroom
--Finish building the banco seats around fireplace
--Tile fireplace footing
--Install the fireplace
--Wait for hallway floor to dry
--Keep picking straw seedlings out of wet floors
--Wait for lighting fixtures to be fabricated, pay for them, pick them up, & have them installed.
--Electrician to do final wrap up, install rest of lights, fix a bad wire, and pay him AFTER I’m 100% satisfied, and the house hasn’t burned down.
--Plaster Monkey Powder Room (garage bathroom)
--Install & trim out door to MPR
--Apply final coat of sealant to small portals
--Get propane line run & tank filled
--Final hookup of boiler for Radiant Floor Heat
--Test RFH system
--Find cause of reduced water pressure
--Buy garage door opener and have installed
--Get closet shelving
--Get clothes out of dryer!
--Wait for 2 new air chambers to be delivered and set up bed.
--Move into The House.
--SELL THE TIN CAN!!
--Move stuff out of storage.

Ninety percent of that list will be completed by next Friday, Y’all! Looks like I’ll be ready to hand out candy on Halloween; if the critters around here actually EAT candy;) That must mean it’ll be time to have a ‘cold opening’ of The House for the locals.

Let me go get the clothes out of the dryer. One sec…. ☺

That checklist is only 26 items long! That’s incredibly short, considering. I’d give you the list of what got done this past week, but I don’t want yours snapping off your necks and flying to parts unknown. So hold on to ‘em, ‘cause it’s coming up!

Aside from the BIG items listed (electrical, lighting, appliances, cabinets and countertops) this here tunnel has a light that is not a train at the end of it. I can’t tell you how anticlimactic it’s feeling. How sad, huh?

I’m sure that will change after I sign my life away to the mortgage bankers. My life for a house—think of what I have to look forward to!

OK, enough trademark cynicism. Here’s the ‘haps’ from this past week:

--The plumbing is done except what is listed above (the boiler and propane stuff)
--The last floor pour happened yesterday (I can now ask for the rest of the construction loan monies from the bank.)
--I found, and bought, a wood burning stove to serve as the fireplace. (I’m never going to live the motif on the sides of it down, but it makes me laugh, and was the right price and size, so phuck it!)
--The guest bathroom is done. (The pic shows a shocking shade of green. No fear, it will calm down to a nice sage color when dry.)
--All the trim work is done. (Save, of course, for the kitchen cabinets.)

--The hatch to the roof is done.
--All the interior doors and their hardware are done. (Save the MPR, as noted above.)
--Custom banco seating is built.
--Closet doors in guest bedrooms are installed.
--Trim work between beams and ceilings is done.
--Tile work in bathrooms and on step wall btwn guest rooms and the Ventana Room (living room) is done.
--Toilets and sinks are all installed. Only one sink needs to be hooked up, and one toilet needs to have water line switched so it doesn’t flush hot water. (Don’t ask!)
--Window ledges are all installed.
--Two out of three utilities are operational. (Propane is the exception.)

Not bad for a week’s worth of work, eh?

As it should be!!


Critters are loving living outside of the house. Little ones, like the little spiders (baby tarantulas?) pictured here. One bouncy critter sort was pounding underneath TTC this past week, unsettling me enough that I ventured out in the middle of the night with a flashlight and big-ass walking stick to scare it away from TTC and towards one of the other trailers in the trailer park.

I didn’t see what it was, but I told my snake phobic friend, Jane, that it was a snake that made an Anaconda look like a blade of grass. She’s still having trouble sleeping, and she’s in Minnesota! She still doesn’t believe me that snakes are dormant now, and that they don’t bounce off the bottoms of trailers, given how they stay pretty close to the ground and all.


Speaking of blades of grass, I wasn’t joking when I said in my list of things-left-to-do that we have to keep plucking straw seedlings out of the wet floors. We REALLY do! (My pictures don’t lie!)

Landscaping around The House is going to be necessary, but I’ll do that once the crew heads back home. I’ve got enough road base and clay to do around the doorways, which need it the worst, but flagstone will be needed sometime when the funds aren’t already dedicated to other details that the building inspectors deem more important. I may even indulge in some fencing (necessary to keep the cows from scratching on the house edges, and keeping coyotes from eating Lego and Monster when they come to visit.) After the lengthy power outage of two weeks ago, I think it’s time to buy that gas generator, too.

I’ve been having some scrumptious restaurant meals lately, too. The pic is of me with a white pizza @ The California Pizza Kitchen—kinda brand new to Albuquerque, and across from BORDER’S Bookstore—and a demo shot of their gyoza, a personal favorite. I have some good chefs in my life. I’m kept well-fed, when the chef’s around.

I’m heading to the post office this week to apply for a passport. For some reason, perfectly good and decent pirates like me need to have one to travel back to their olde haunts; archaic, Byzantine laws!

So it seems that y’all can start planning your trips to New Mexico. The Day of the Big Bird in November is ok, I’ll be here with Lego and Monster. Christmas is out—I’ll be drinking rum and running sails up the masts somewhere where it’s warm, sandy and has unlimited views of ocean waters. But, after that, you’re free to visit.

I’d say pinch me so I can realize it’s all true, but I do have that pesky last name o’mine, so I’m not gonna let out a holla’ until I get the Certificate of Occupancy. Then y’all can pinch me ‘til I’m black and blue, Awwight? Awwight!!

Siete mananas from now…

Fits & Starts

If I had the verve I’d be having fits right now. The starts keep trying to come, but the fits take over, and they aren’t mine. The fits seem to have enough inertia to come of their own accord--none on my part are necessary.

What has this past week wrought? Let’s see, all the house doors are now on site. They forgot to give Steve the doorknobs for the interior doors when he picked ‘em up last week. Another trip for me, and bill to pay. To quote a friend, “it’s not like there’s anything to go home to, you may as well go do something.” Too true.

Fireplace shopping went nowhere. That’s at least on other trip to Abq for me this week. The exterior color coat was applied. Cement grey, or as I called it: Still Alive& Kicking Grey, is gone.

It’s now two-toned--Ash (a hint of blue/purple) and Navajo White. Under certain lighting conditions you can hardly tell the difference, but when you can, it’s nice. I like it well enough, anyway. I should, I picked the colors. I think once aging and flying dirt has seasoned the colors they will stand out against each other better. If not—I really don’t care. (See? NO raging fit!)

The backhoe operator who has done most all of my backhoe work was here yesterday and buried the septic tank and leach line. It’s nice not having what appears to be giant ant piles or gopher mounds marring the view to the southwest. He also dug the trench for the propane line. That line should get run this week, inspected afore and aft and then $1,000 worth of propane into the tank and I should be good through the winter. (Here’s hoping, anyway.)

With the propane line in I can go gangbusters with showers and baths everyday if I want. I can also get the gas stove installed, well when the cabinets are in. They’re being manufactured and should be starting to be installed in the next two weeks. I can finally start doing laundry at the house, too.

I just heard a bunch of you roll your eyes, like you’re thinking that I don’t do things like cook and clean. And you are right. I’m not fond of those activities, mostly because I hate repetitive tasks that are nothing but trying to keep up with where you were last week or the week before. But I have come to a new level of understanding after 400+ days living in The Tin Can. Granted, this new consciousness may be short lived, but it will be lived. Actually, I like to cook. It’s the cleaning up part that bugs. Cleaning just bugs by definition.

All the packed adobe floors are poured and drying except for the hallway in the guest wing. The guest bathroom needs to get finished with tiling and plastering and once it is, then the hall will be done and the rest of the floors should be dry enough to start walking around inside the house. As it stands now, the garage and master suite are the only areas we can walk in. I spend a lot of time walking around outside the house to get INto the house. Something ain’t right about that, somehow.

The rest of the floors are all in varying states of drying as they were all done this past week or so. There’s a hell of a lot of dirt in my house! Heh heh heh. I LOVE the idea of having dirt floors. When Armageddon comes I won’t be one of the ones blasted back to the 1st Century—I’ll be there with my dirt walled and floored house. Kind of. Maybe I’ll take up broom making and make myself straw brooms and practice ‘ancient’ arts of stove heating/cooking, ‘shooting up’ my dinner, skinning and drying skins of critters that were dinner, going off the grid. The way this country is going it may be more of a necessity than the addlement of my brain living out here in the middle of nowhere.

And that’s all I’m saying about THAT!

I managed to wrestle the washer and dryer, bed and a few other immediate necessities, from storage and got them up to the house where Ed helped me unload them last Thursday. I seemingly have no friends, as no one who offered to help was able to. Whatever. That much I could handle on my own. I’ll go buy some friends if I have to to get the bulk of the rest of my possessions up here when the time comes. Or, make many, many trips with Booger’s trailer.

As I was setting the bed up and drawing a bath yesterday—work always interferes, don’t it?—I heard the water stop running. SHIT! The lights wouldn’t go on. Double shit! I was going to have a fit and call the electrician about his shoddy work when I decided to check the power availability first. Good thing I did. The power had gone out for over 30 square miles. This was at 4:43 pm Saturday. OK, no water (electrical pump, damnit anyway), no light soon (the sun was still up), can’t putter ‘cause I have power tools, no DVD entertainment, no computer use (except via IPhone). What the hell, I took a nap. Then went to bed after some reading by headlamp lighting.

A very boring story about a very long night made short: 17 hrs and 2 mins after the power went out it was restored. Hurricane Norbert—yes, named-the-same as my contractor--and its residual effects brought stormy weather to central NM. I told Norbert-the-Contractor that I’d be blaming any bad occurrences on HIM. He thought I was joking. I confronted Norbert-the-Contractor with the facts today. He was still laughing. As was I.

So we wait for the floors to dry. The cabinets and countertops to be fabricated and installed; the lighting fixtures, too, the boiler for the radiant heat to come in (correct power source, unlike the one that the plumber brought up this week), the propane line run, inspected, the tank filled and connected; the doors and knobs to be installed, the garage door opener bought and installed, the bathrooms to be plastered, toilets and sinks installed, and about another only 40 or 50 other details and we can ask for the Certificate of Occupancy to be issued.

So, in about A MONTH (that infernal, eternal, perpetual length of time that defines my life) I should be fully moved into The House. Which will bring it’s own fits and starts. Ain’t life grand?

Hang in there, everybody. The end is nigh. And I’m not just referring to The House. But let’s pretend I am.

With rain clouds looming, and the winds sure to kick up--manana, Y’all!

Bathroom Fixtures + Me = Fixation

Yesterday it was devirginizing the bathtub. And what a thrill THAT was! The calming effects lasted through today.

Tonight was a three-way: Me, the toilet and the shower. Even the roll of toilet paper had never been sullied. And I got to flush it, too! Maybe that was more of a four- or five-way. A veritable ORGY, and there wasn't even a bed involved! I work in mysterious ways;)

I know all of this seems irrational to y'all, but the way the last year has been, I've got to find joy in what little ways I can. Given the scale of the house vs. the size and scale of The Tin Can, though, the joys were humongous!

The head cracking begins anew, manana.

Soothing My Savage Beast

Added frustrations (taking the most circuitous route around town to get two errands run, two trips through the credit union's drive up window, no milk at the store) but a funny-ass observation while eating lunch, a nap, a nasty swipe at me via a text from someone I told I was badly in need of a friend today and would she be a friend to me (guess not, given the claws she ripped at me with), too many cigarettes and a long rain shower all somehow brought me back to center after my earlier post.

What a way to try to achieve a dream.

After seeking solace in as many forms of it as I could muster the energy, or interest in, I finally allowed a steaming cup of hot chocolate and an act of defiance to salvage the day for me. Granted, it took until the final hours of the day for it to all coalesce, but I did it. Without any help from any 'friend'.

My act of defiance was (besides being overstated): I took a bath in my brand new, never-been-used champagne bubble bathtub. I may not have moved into the house today, but I will tomorrow. That decision seems more defiant than taking a bath somehow.

I hate having a meltdown, but sometimes I just have to admit defeat and give in to one. Today was the day for it. And, while I'm OK with having let go of moving in today, I'm thinking I should've just gone ahead and done it since the rain started about 6 hours ago. And the winds, though they dropped off after only a couple of hours. Me and TTC in a long, soaking rain. How can I even THINK of experiencing 'weather' anywhere except in my dearly loved Tin Can? Phhhhuuucccckkk!

OK, so this is the price I pay for having a meltdown. It could be worse; the winds could still be kicking up.

The meltdown came from stewing over the installation of my two bathroom vanities. The guest bath's vanity (ain't that a hell of a concept?) was constructed and unable to be used in the guest bathroom due to oversights by the cabinet guys (like they forgot to allow room for a toilet.) Their idea was to use it as towel storage. Not for $360 am I going to do that! I had to pick up a pedestal sink last night after work to replace the custom vanity (which I have since cancelled and demanded a full refund.) I HATE pedestal sinks, by the way, too.

While that was festering, when I came home after hours of ordering lighting fixtures, getting the correct faucet handles (finally!) for the tub, and shopping at Lowe's, I see that the other custom vanity for the Master Bathroom had not been installed properly.

By not properly I mean that they hadn't completed the install (it needed some scribing and shimming done to allow it to fit in the Rex-i-fied {crooked} corner.) Their idea of anchoring the vanity to the wall included a 2 inch gap between the vanity back and the crooked wall with 2.5 inch screws broken off, drilled and redrilled and/or barely reaching the stucco wall, where big 1 inch-plus chunks of stucco had been popped out since that's not how you connect anything to a stucco wall and they kept repeating their mistake about a half dozen times, and using a level seems alien to the cabinet boys. This is not what I'm paying for.

So, my wall's messed up, the vanity isn't level, it's not scribed to fit (as promised), it's also not anchored and I'm supposed to be ok with this!?

Ah HELL no!

I called and ripped Randy a whole new orifice in a bodily location that he doesn't even know exists. I told him to fix it, credit me on the second vanity, do it by Monday and don't call me back with any fuckin' updates or I'd cancel the whole kitchen cabinet order, AND be fully refunded, their policy be damned.

What really torqued me is the eternal question I faced at CopyMax: If you have time to re-do a messed up order, why don't you have time to run the job right the first time? I remedied my work at CMAX so I didn't have to hear that logic anymore, but I'm trying to move into my house and not a frikkin' soul can do enough work, despite all the promises on their part and prompt payment of monies on my part, to meet one gawd-damned deadline! Never mind doing the job right the first time! Sure, they're going to make it right, it'll just take a week or so. HELLO!! I DON'T HAVE THE TIME ANYMORE!

The plumber is getting blasted next. He HAD to have the big chunk o'change two weeks ago to get the boiler and water heater right then so it could be installed and I could have hot water once I moved in. No frikkin' boiler yet, and the plumber was up here twice this week.

The electrician is REALLY going to get it from me--there's light switches that connect to nothing and lights that can only be shut off at the main panel. And there's no surround sound installed, like I reminded him of SIX times; the lighting in the house is nowhere near what the plans called for, so I have to get creative to accommodate for that.

Feeling my pain, y'all? And you all know I can bitch endlessly when I do finally decide to start bitching. And most of you have seen me mad; I KNOW you're glad you're nowhere near the state of NM right now. You each know that I'll calm down, too. And I have. But I'm still in an orifice-tearing mood.

Manana will find me at the storage facility getting out the three possessions I need: bed, washer and dryer. My friends Kenda and Sheila have offered to help me. As have Bea, Nancy and a handful more from work.

We'll get there. I'll get there. I DO have the best friends in the world, and I know which ones of you are seeing me through this, and which one didn't.

This Woman Is SCORNED!

I cancelled the move from TTC to the house. Too many fuckups, too much frustration and I'M FINISHED with having my chain yanked. Anyone crossing my path is gonna have their head cut off. I'm not filtering my feelings anymore.

I'll update when I'm in a better mood, or in the house. They may coincide with one another, or they may not.

This is my world right now.

There’s No Place Like Home

OK, so I’m a couple of days premature with the sentiment expressed in the blog title, but, REALLY, what’s a day or two when I’ve been living in “Oz” for the past 396 days? Since I’ve now actually done the calculation, why not move in on the 400th day? WTF?

Y’ALL!! I’M MOVING INTO THE HOUSE THIS WEEKEND!!!

To my most loyal readers, I wouldn’t mind at all if you popped a cork over this, ‘cause you’ve labored over this (kinda sort, in a way, but not really) as much as I have. Go ahead, get the celebratory beverage of your choice, unwrap the cigars, put yer feet up, get randy with your S. O. (s) and find a nice little cave-like hollow somewhere in your house and pretend that it’s all brand new and virginal.

Naw— even I can’t fantasize that deftly. Well, ok…yes, I can, and so can/are you;)

For those of you who have been kind enough to take this bumbling, stumbling, nightmarish travail across uncharted territory with me by just viewing the pics of the journey—you can only indulge in a photograph of some celebratory beverage of your choice. Karma, y’all. Comes back and bites in ya in the butt every time. j/k—Party along with the rest of us. It’s not like the rest of us would ever know that YOU’RE CHEATING. Ha!

The latest pics are fresh as of yesterday. Today I shoulda/coulda/woulda taken pictures to be the freshest I could be in my updatedness, but…I didn’t. Neener neener. I’m the blog wench and I get to make the rules and post the pics. Technically I shouldn’t be moving in at all since there’s no official Certificate of Occupancy issued yet, but FUCK ‘EM IF THEY CAN’T TAKE A JOKE!

I’m only moving in basic essentials: Bed, sheets & blankets, some clothes, EVERY TOWEL I OWN, washer, dryer and my toiletries bag. I can make the trek to and from TTC for stupid shit like the microwave, food, cervesa, some buried-in-the- Mesozoic-layer-of-paperwork receipt that suddenly needs unearthing, garbage bags, laundry, milk, cheese, tortillas and the like.

Breaking down the bed and making it look like it’s just being stored in the garage is a snap—it’s a Sleep Number bed and is nothing but a king-sized bed of k-nex-type plastic planks, a couple of air-bags-on-steroids air chambers and an air pump. My clothes and towels I can just toss on the floor and no inspector in the world will ever see them there, given the gender of most inspectors. Crafty, eh?


Here’s the lowdown: The master bathroom is completely tiled, the tub, shower and toilet are all hooked up and useable. The vanity gets installed Friday. The hot water heater is in, but the propane may not be done until Friday, Saturday, or Monday at the latest.

The master bedroom has the walls mudded, radiant floor tubing installed and the packed adobe floor is in and nearly all dried. The light switches are in and the electricity is connected. The ceiling fan is in and running (so as to help dry the floor.) There’s some door trimming for the MBath and a door and hardware to install (15 mins, tops), but it ain’t stopping me from moving in.

The stripped bark pine post that goes in the corner of the MBedroom will be bolted in and Closet-That’s-Bigger-Than-The-Small-Spare-Room doorframe needs trimming out, too, but no door is being installed. Why have one? I don’t close closet doors EVER! Not since the late ‘70’s when I came kicking and screaming out of the closet I’d been living in then. It’s a morality issue for me. And iconic. Symbolic. ICK!

All of the main living area walls are mudded. The two small bathrooms are cement stuccoed and will be lime plastered in the next (last) couple of weeks. Tiling will be done on the Guest Wing bathroom manana. The rest of the radiant heat tubing started going in today and will be complete manana. Inspection has to happen for the heating before they can pour the rest of the floors. That should happen…manana or manana + a day.

The trench for the propane line will be dug…manana, and Jerimiah (the dirt mover from the Great Qwest Dig Debacle) will bury my septic tank and line while he’s at it. I’ll be stationed between him and the house while he’s operating the heavy machinery. With my shotgun, I’ll be between him and the house. (see I’m a Bitch blog entry)

Lighting is being slowly installed. They brought toggle switches but not faceplates to match, or they brought faceplates but not the toggle switches. Maroons! It’s taken ‘em three days to do A DAY’S worth of work. The plumber installed the water heater, but hasn’t been back to install the boiler for the radiant heat system. He makes me angry, but he does good work. The boiler and its tie-ins are all that’s left to do plumbing-wise. Well, and the inspection. Pffffff.











Is my To-Do list getting shorter, or am I forgetting stuff?






Kitchen Cabinets/Countertops: ordered and being built. Three to four weeks.
Bathroom Vanities: One on Friday, the other in a coupla weeks.
Interior Doors: Ordered, will be picked up Friday. Installed next week or after floors have hardened.
Lighting Fixtures: All necessary ones are installed, electrical is hooked up and working. Rest will be gotten within two weeks.


Plumbing: Completed and inspected by end of week
Exterior Stucco: **Just found out this has to be done. So, by next week**
Bancos: Planned today, built and installed before rest of floors get poured.
Major Appliances: Any damn time I manage to get to the store to get ‘em!
Toilets: Two to go. This weekend, fer sure!

All the trim stuff (shower curtains, window treatments, towel racks, etc.): As soon as I can find someone to go shopping with me to keep my goofy side from overruling my refined taste.
Mexican Tiles: I’m rethinking this detail….(the countertops are to DIE FOR! I don’t want a clash of cultures going on.)
Fireplace: **Another Must Do NOW update**. I’ll go in search of…next week. (Weee!!)
Fencing: Hmmmm. Before Thankgiving. {I may be entertaining Lego & Monsterdog over the Day of the Bird holiday. AND my favorite blog goddess, Jane Devin may be staying awhile with her dog Hanna as they flee the soul-stealing wilds of Minn-a-SO-tah. They need refuge. I have one. They can stay.}

I feel myself getting giddy. I should stop right here.

Bottom line: By the end of October I should have a Certif. of Occupancy and be fully enwombed in my Tits 2 the Wind Ranchita, running wild through a freshly completed house, following the LED glowing screen on my GPSr with the electronic crumb trails to guide me from Guest Wing to Master Suite, kitchen, Ventana Room, studio, Powder Monkey Room, garage and beyond!

Don’t nobody snort, snore, grouse, grumble or pooh-pooh this dream I’m having! I wanna enjoy it for just a bit longer before the pinch of our greedy, money-grubbing, oil-encrusted, total-waste-of-protoplasm national ‘leaders’ manage to foreclose on me in their huge ruse of a bailout scheme effort to save their rich pals’ golden parachutes.

Awight?
Awight!

Thanks for traveling along this dusty trail alongside me, those of you who’ve trusted me and stuck it out with me. You’ve earned a free night’s stay! The rest of ya? Well, I let the kids ‘earn back’ grades/trust/their souls, so why not YOU, too? WTF?

Manana times four mijas y mijitos = THE 400TH DAY!! Imbibe some fine rum instead of yer regular swill on that day and know that I’m running Tits To The Wind through mi casa!