Schedule Slip

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In there, somewhere, they are tiling the apartment bathroom! The end is near! The only trouble is, this should have been done a few days ago.

These guys had a three – month window between their promised end date and my first renters at the house where I have been staying. Three months. Wendy and family arrive on Sunday afternnon and really,  I’d like to be in the apartment.  No way, the guys are telling me, not even if I eat out and skip a shower or two. It’s not the tile. It’s the paint. The finish coat won’t go on until Monday. The floors won’t go in until after that. The floors are the issue I guess, more than the paint.

So I’m driving to Paris, five hours in a Toyota IQ. Did I mention that my car has been in the shop for a month? They are promising that it will be ready on Tuesday.  We shall see.

There is an outside chance that my life will begin to pull back together on Wednesday — car and country abode, both on the same day! — but it would be so silly to bet on that.

9 thoughts on “Schedule Slip”

  1. Fingers crossed! I don’t think there’s a word in the vocabulary of French workmen that actually means “schedule” as we English-speakers understand it 🙂

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    1. Too true, though the French workers are pretty much staying on top of things. The English guys, though, oh. Nice, hard working, here every day. Unfortunately they have no concept of the value of simple project management tools, things like, oh, schedules, for example. If they understood the value of a schedule they could work smarter and get a lot more done. Maybe some day.

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        1. I love Switzerland. I don’t care how fuddy that sounds. If I had Federer-level money, I would move to Switzerland in a heartbeat, though maybe not to a house like his. Maybe it’s all those years of Jungian analysis, I don’t know, but I love it there.

          On our way to Bern, Jacques and I sat next to an old-school pinstripe-suited banker who was on his way home to Zurich. I was worried about getting Jacques across the border, so I asked the guy about the procedure. His first reaction was “don’t worry, honey, you’re with me” — I think he was very high up in some bank or other. Then when I told him I had all the paperwork and was asking about the process, he just laughed. The idea of smuggling in a sans-papiers puppy was the funniest thing he’d heard all day. There is a part of me that would love to live in a place where such a trivial event could be kind of exciting. Maybe I should develop it a bit.

          A close second is the area around Lake Como: Italian charm and something approaching Swiss efficiency. It’s a good combination.

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          2. I guess it’s pretty regimented. That’s the feeling I got. Still, the people were relaxed in a way that I have rarely seen. Jacques and I met a woman who was walking her Lab in a fuzzy jacket, obviously before showering and dressing for the day. She was also obviously quite sane, not your basic crazy lady with a big dog at all. There was this odd paradox. People lived so far within the rules that they could do some pretty odd things. There were Buddhas everywhere and a Hamam on the corner, all kinds of stuff — all clean and perfect, but still. I bought some great incense in Bern. I would never have anticipated that.

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    1. Yeah, I’m a little concerned. I haven’t told you all about the part where we used all the tile from my bathroom to finish the apartment one, at least I don’t think I have. Of course my bathroom is the next to be done. I’m looking for a high-end overstock place. It may be my only hope.

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