Doing Everything Wrong

We’re building (or having built) this new studio out back and I’m trying to coordinate the beginning stages of the project, including having a trench dug for the sewer, water, and power lines and getting the structure’s foundation started.

I’ve already managed to make a series of bad decisions resulting in unnecessary labor, added expense, and marital discord and we haven’t even decided what the building is going to look like yet.

I’m handicapped by two main handicaps: first, I understand only just enough about the process to get myself into trouble, and second, I’m impatient. The upshot of this is that I rush into things based on false impressions of what ought to be done; consequently, I find myself making one set of missteps after another, each one getting me deeper into trouble I could have avoided had I not acted so impetuously.

I had the bulldozer guy come out on Saturday and all we managed to do was wreck the side lawn and cut the phone line. He came back yesterday and since we couldn’t find the sewer, we essentially succeeded in digging trench to nowhere. There was some good news, though: he did earn 300 bucks.

The concrete guy is just collecting interest on the money we paid him up front; I can’t figure out when he should come back because I don’t know if the electrician or the plumber should come first. I feel like a blind traffic cop juggling chainsaws powered by money burning a hole in his wallet.

I realize, of course, that construction projects are inevitably like this; Rome wasn’t built in a day after all. Had I been in charge, though, the gladiators would have had to fight in a torn-up backyard instead of a coliseum.

I’m sure there will come a time when I’ll look back on all these difficulties and laugh… then my nursing home attendant will wipe the oatmeal off my chin and change my Depends.