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Hiring someone to care for our diabetic cat is simple unless you have to find someone to hire. How on earth do we hire a person to give our cat insulin shots twice a day? Last I checked, that was not a common entry in the want-ads. As usual, Lea Ann finds the way to make that work. She calls on several organizers, asking for help finding such people. Sadly, many of the organizers are flakes who are no use, but one finally comes through. This person gives us some options and we end up with Barbara, who agrees to stay in our house, look after the cats, and keep an eye on the house—all for the chance to shorten her commute by about 45 minutes. Not a bad deal for everyone. Of course, now we feel guilty because our house is a wreck. We decide that the first priority is a clean bathroom. However, a simple cleaning will not be sufficient and, so, becomes a need to replace a couple of things. Did we mention that the shower had some issues? The shower has issues. Many tiles are broken, the grout is coming out from between man of the tiles, resulting quite a bit of tenacious mildew, the shower doors, which are mirrored are losing their mirror in flaky bits, and (best of all) the middle knob of the shower knobs has broken off and we cannot change the water between the shower head and the tub faucet without a pair of pliers. The second priority is closing off some of the remote parts of the house so that the cats cannot hide from Barbara. This requires that we actually put doors on the holes that currently lead under the stairs, into the laundry room, and behind the furnace. In these areas, the doors either never existed or came off the hinges for some reason. (An adult actually pulled on one of our bi-fold doors enough to cause all the slats to fall out.) So the idea is to hire someone to fix the obviously wrong parts of the bathroom and fix three doors in the basement (under the stairs, into the furnace, and into the laundry room). All this needs to be done before we leave and before Barbara comes to stay at the house. Knowing that we can, in no way, attempt to do any of this before we leave, we look for an estimate; and this is where the problem comes in. Santiago, suggested to us by a friend, takes one look at the bathroom and offers that, for not much more money, he can replace the entire bathroom. The result will be better and almost as fast. Lea Ann and I think about this and rationally consider the options, factoring in our lack of time, sleep, and energy, not to mention the impending trip. And we decide to have the entire bathroom replaced. |
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All materials © 2004 Lea Ann Mawler & Stuart Mawler
