Kitchen Chaos 2: The Heretic

Okay, so after a week-and-a-half of having a kitchen that looks not unlike Dresden after the bombing, my lovely wife emails our phantom contractor this past Wednesday and reminds him that we did not sign on to eat all of our meals out for the remainder of our lives and that the temperature is predicted to rise considerably this coming week, which could conceivably add the piquant taste of Botulism to all of the canned goods we're currently forced to store out in our yard and, hey, just where the heck is he anyway? And he emails back that he's been forced to move his workshop to somewhere just east of the Black Forest and his email has gremlins and bears have stolen his cell phone and, hey, he told us he'd be back, didn't he, so what's the problem? He then sheepishly tells us that he'll be by on Thursday to drop off all sorts of equipment he needs and that he'll be at the house first thing Friday morning to get back to work.

Right. And the check is in the mail and there's another bus right behind this one and...well, you know the third lie already, don't you?

So Thursday comes and I have a couple of meetings to attend, so I leave the house at 10:30 in the morning and return at 3:30 in the afternoon, and...what a surprise, nothing has been dropped off in the interim. Still, one must continue to hope.

Friday morning comes. Hours pass. No sign of our contractor. At 11 in the morning, I leave a message on his cell phone (apparently, the bears bought him a new one) and ask where he is. No reply. At 12:45 in the afternoon, I leave to meet a friend for lunch, then drop said friend off to pick up his car at the repair shop. I get home about 3 PM. There's a note on the door. It seems the contractor showed up at 12:46, missing me by just a minute, having had some problems with his truck. He was going off to a local car repair shop (a different one than my friend was using) and hoped to come back soon and get to work. Well, he did indeed come back -- at 2:59 in the afternoon, at which point he left a second note and said he'd be by today to continue working. I tore out considerable portions of my hair.

Well, comes this morning, no sign of the contractor. I'm working on my remaining hair when I hear some commotion outside the front door at about 11:30 (which apparently is first thing in the AM to contractors) and, lo and behold, there he is, unpacking his tools.

He's been working in the kitchen ever since, anchoring our new cabinets and countertop to the wall. After which, he'll install new wallboard, cut the new through window to the living room into the wall, attach the new upper cabinets to the new wall, add the shelves, finish mounting the frames for our new flourescent lights, thus cutting off our contact with the Hubble telescope, and God knows what else. He says he'll work as late into this evening as he can, then come back tomorrow to finish the job. I'm trying to believe him.

Still, in the spirit of preserving my sanity, I'm also starting a pool to guess when the job will actually be done. I've already picked six weeks after the next Presidential election. Anybody else want in?