In which I turn nasty

I finally lost a bit of patience with the whole construction crew, architects, everybody. It's now been over a month with exactly zero action on the site except for what I have done, which was not trivial, but was all unskilled, and didn't really move the project forward. Here's what I wrote, back on Aug 15:

We got another bunch of rain in our foundation trenches last night, and the forecast is for more rain this evening until tomorrow (Sat) morning. But next week is forecast to be sunny all week! Yay! Saturday afternoon I'm going to drain the trenches again, dig out the mud, and blow dry the rest. I'll also assume you folks manage to get the seals, permits, and other aspects of your acts together so we can pour soon. Mario, I can still provide info on the small batch cement supplier's name if you don't have it, and if you still think it'll speed things up to start on the garage before we pour the foundation. I'd like to see actual movement on Monday morning. I'd really like to see more action and fewer reasons why this isn't moving ahead. I'm upset with the delay, but I'm interested in solutions, not blame, and no one believes any of the delays are their fault anyway, so let's don't go into why we have delays. Let's go into what we're doing to eliminate them. Make me glad to be shelling out this money--you have a sales job to do, and I'l telling you what to sell: progress, action. Send me a daily (M–F) emailed update, even if it's short. That's progress report, not inaction report. Tell me what you have done, do not tell me why nothing is happening.

I got some speedy replies, including from my brother who said it was a good message and would certainly motivate him. No one has given me daily reports, but I am being kept fairly well in the loop, I think. The core problem was bad management on the part of the architect. Val is talking about suing them. I'm not ready for that, but it turns out they are not licensed to do business in Delaware, and waited too long to get their license. Then the county guys wanted better drawings and wouldn't give a partial permit so we could get started. The GC seems to be responding to my pressure and is doing what he can, with a new visit to the county each time a step is completed on the drawings. So I'm inclined to relieve the architects of duty as soon as the permit goes through. I dug the mud out of the bottom of the trench, made it nice and flat and dry, then covered everything with panels that the contractor brought over so another rain would run off and not into the holes. I dug trenches, sloped the panels so the rain would run into the trenches, and it looks pretty waterproof to me. We had a little rain yesterday that might not even have mattered anyway, and the covering worked fine, but it frosts me that we lost a month of perfect construction weather. That's not the only nastiness recently. Both Val and I expressed pretty strong disapproval to the dog when he got out and killed the last two chickens. He understands, he's supposed to leave them alone, but he's headstrong, and now we have no chickens. I won't describe the condition of the bodies, but they fit right into the nastiness theme. The geese are excellent sidewalk superintendents, by the way. They come over and survey the construction site every day and comment to me about the lack of progress. I have already mentioned that Val and I are reading Love Busters by Willard Harley as part of our continuing effort to develop a good marriage and skills that we can share with others to help them out. The third love buster is Angry Outbursts. It's the third step in the abuse of controlling. It starts out with unreasonable demands, then disrespectful remarks, then this. Increasing means of pressuring your spouse to get what you want. The book includes alternatives to these approaches, such as suggesting a test of what you want, being prepared to drop an issue, and never doing anything without securing your spouses enthusiastic approval. The book gives a lot more detail, but I hope I'm telling you enough to whet your appetite for the actual instruction. I'm thinking about composing a poem about motorcycling, but Jack won't like it.