"The Contractor" is in control.....

I never thought I needed a maid. I always knew if I ever got one it would just mean I had to clean earlier in the day to make sure everything looked nice when she got here....obviously not worth the money.

Seriously, I don't know how I ever worked full time and kept my house clean (I know right now Nutella and Tiny are saying......we know how she did it.....she had us!) Okay, maybe. I've only been planting trees for 4 weeks and I feel like I'm losing control of my surroundings. I guess the difference now is that when I come home from "work" I'm dead tired and don't want to clean. For the most part the house stays pretty much picked up because we're all gone all day. I have a Roomba that does the vacuuming for me every day and I always get the dishes done before we leave because I'm obsessive about that but the things that I'm losing the battle on are things like....dusting, toilet cleaning, mirror cleaning, and OH MY GOSH....the lawn, you should see the lawn!

We leave early in the morning so I don't notice it then but when we get home at night I swear it brings tears to my eyes. It's a good thing we live in a woods and the neighbors can't see it......they'd probably assume we were dead inside the house or something, we NEVER let our grass grow like this. The only days we aren't working are #1...when it's raining, and #2 on Sunday.....neither one offers any possibility of mowing. (I have a headlight on the mower but I'm not at that point yet!)

Adding to my stress at the moment is the ...... shall we call him ....."The Contractor". The contractor was hired in August last year to do two jobs, #1 build a rock fireplace to complete our Log Cabin....we'd been looking for 12 years for someone who could do real masonry work and finally found him.....and his #2 job?.....to re-roof our house which received some damage in a big hail storm last spring. The fireplace was projected to take 10 days to 2 weeks -- it took them 2 months to get started and SIXTY TWO DAYS to finish! I was ready to scream.

Well, when you build a fireplace like that there is a lot of ..... mess......inside and out. The inside I took care of, the outside ..... which consists of piles of leftover mortar, cement blocks, wooden pallets, cigarette butts (amazingly those are part of constructing a fireplace.....huh? who would've thunk), pop cans, styrofoam cups, bottles, metal strapping, tarps, plastic, wood, etc. etc. etc.

All of this stuff was left when the fireplace was finished just before Thanksgiving. "The Contractor" said that when they started the roof (in the next two weeks, weather permitting ....that was in NOVEMBER!) they would bring in a big dumpster for the roof stuff and all the mess would be picked up then.

Fast forward to May 2006. They started the roof (after constant nagging) about two weeks ago, they only finished the back of the house because it then began raining. They haven't been back. We called "The Contractor" on Friday last week and he said the next two consecutive sunny days (which is what they need....supposedly) would be "next" Monday and Tuesday (that means today and tomorrow). We left for another day of tree planting at 7:30 this morning and when we got home guess what.....NO ROOF! AAAAAAGGGGGHHHH!

Now we are living with a yard full of rubble from the fireplace, a roof that is half done, (including rain gutters half torn off and boards nailed to the roof from when the worked on the chimney LAST FALL!) and a HUGE dumpster the size of a rail car parked next to my porch! It's totally driving me crazy. I feel stressed enough just trying to keep up with the laundry and things I have to do inside, but to have the "public" side of my house look like this is more than I can handle.

To answer my own question, ....no I don't need a maid (they don't clean yards), I need a miracle!