Death By Remodeling...a True Story - pt. I

“Give someone a finger and they will bite your hand off”, says yet another of Bulgaria’s smartest proverbs. It seems that Bulgarians always have a nice proverb for any occasion, a saying, containing the essence and the wisdom of the centuries of history and wit.  If only we would follow our own advice…

It’s high time I tell that story. I’ve been preparing you for it and waiting for the fruit to ripen, so I can give you a nice, high quality and high-proof fermented and distilled story, to keep you entertained for the rest of the day. I’ve been promising and preparing you, my friends and readers for this moment and now here it is, upon us. Yes, you know some of the facts already, from former posts, and yes, it’s ironic how when you look at the consecutive months on my posts, they get less and less every month. But the reason is not the lack of ideas or inspiration, nor the lack of time, really…it’s the harshness of the circumstances, leaving me speechless and in wonder…what should I start with!

So it all started with that innocent post from Oct 24^th, about the beginning of our remodeling. The truth is, we had our house emptied out on the 22^nd. We stuck all furniture in the garage and in the one room downstairs and decided to live in that room, along with Sami for the next “four or five days”, as promised by our licensed private contractor. But he didn’t show up, as you know, because he had a “family emergency” that was going to last a week, and only lasted 2 hours, so I rehired him and then Alex fired him as he was 2 hours late the next morning. Little did she know, what those two hours of patience would mean, nor did she have any idea that she should have listened to her ridiculously accurate horoscope, saying for that very same day: “Don’t let emotional decisions get in the way of business, because it could mean a major setback!”

At the time I was like, “yeah, she’s such a toughie! She just fired the guy! We’ll get another one in no time! They’re all piling up to do the job!” and there I was, all excited and on the phone again, dialing number after number, negotiating and explaining what the plan for the remodeling was. And what a plan it was! We were going to build a wall that would separate our loft, from the rest of the living room, giving us an extra bedroom, where our precious child could sleep, so we could selfishly reclaim our own bedroom and live a bit of a more normal life.

The negotiations were successful, we had a winner, who was going to do the job by building the wall on the side and attaching it in place afterwards, for a little as a Grand ($1000). I didn’t care. They were on!..until a day after they were hired and I called them to see when they would be here, so I could hear the following excuse: “We were doing another job and the owner of the house car-crashed into his own garage, so now we have to stay for another week and fix his garage up!” OK, you’re fired too! Idiots! What an excuse, uh!

Time was passing, our patience was growing thinner and thinner. We were spending our fifth day in “The room”. I felt the worst about Sami. I just knew how his little explorer's heart was pounding, ready to go and roam about the dust and mess of the house, but instead he was spending day after day stuck in a tiny little room, with the same old toys, that sing the same old song and make you wanna get the one and wack it into the other one, till the stupid little melody doesn't die forever, so you could have a bit of peace between the "A_B_C_D" song and "Marry had a litle lamb"!

So I made a few more phonecalls and I made this guy come by and see if he would be merciful enough to get us out of our single-cell jail. He was on! His workers were going to start on the next day and it would take no more than five-six days! Oh, jump with joy, in six days our life would be new!

Our spirits were so high up, that we even hired a baby sitter and went to the hottest Halloween party I’d ever imagined! Those Americans, they don’t play around! When they wanna do a party, they don’t just do it at their parent’s house and clean for the rest of the week after. They just RENT a house, put up decorations, a DJ and an enormous table for liquor and all the cool people are invited! Don’t even ask about the costumes! It was hard to keep a normal conversation with alkA and she kept trying to get my attention, because those costumes of the like 200 people, that were there, were crazy!!!

 

So, as you can see, we felt so loose that we’ve got everything under control that decided to go for some fun. The next day the workers came and I was dead asleep, so I couldn’t even remember to wake up and let them into the house, so they would start working on the ceilings that I totally had messed up, by trying to fix them in the previous days. Well, at like 9.30 am I wake up and look frightened at the watch, I jump out of bed, like it was a pot of boiling water, open the garage door (that has no bell on it) just to find a couple of Mexican guys hanging out there “for the last two hours” as they claimed. I apologize, let them in and the work begins!

I had the grin of a person, no suspecting what’s to come and the hope of a naïve, attempting to improve his live with logical solutions! What the hell is wrong with me?!