Send in the Clones

There are just more things going on in my life than I have time to manage, so many that I’m not even sure which way to turn. Here, I guess, where you get (once again) to listen to a litany of complaints.

I spent two hours yesterday when I should have been working meeting with Dusty, and every decision he wants requires time I don’t have. His main concern is (and has been) flooring, and although we have looked and looked on-line, we don’t really know what we’re looking at or for.

We like the notion of bamboo for its sustainability, but by the time flooring places tout their strand click engineered wood, one wonders how environmental you really might be. A lot of options say they feature “no added” formaldehyde; what does that mean? That the substance is infused throughout with toxicity before we even start?

I tried, sort of, in Arvada to get my hands on actual samples, but phone calls to a variety of big boxes (made by my mom, who is much happier using her phone than I am using mine) indicated that none — not one — of these stores had so much as a single sample of bamboo on hand. And I don’t know how useful a 3 x 3 inch square really is.

Although we promised him an answer last night, Lynn and I just kept running into questions, so instead of blogging earlier this morning, I e-mailed Dusty. As a communication option with him, it’s generally bad. Yesterday, after not one but three of our suppliers at work notified us of price increases due to tariffs, I re-sent the e-mail I had sent him in mid-March with things to order for my bathroom. At least I had it in writing (or whatever we call e-pixels), which is a very good reason for sending e-mails.

There are also still paint decisions which require time to put samples on walls, time to go look at paint and buy more samples, time to stand back and look at them . . . Yesterday’s discussion also started toward cabinetry and appliances, and to talk to people about those things locally means taking more time off work. This would be much easier without a job.

But today is the run-up to one of the two most popular days at work each month, pay day. My presence is not only requested, but required. And yesterday I looked at the calendar to realize this is one of the bad months, when the 20th falls on a Monday. That’s the day sales tax is due, but since the State of Colorado has yet to design a user-friendly website, in order for your payment to be credited by the 20th, it has to made before noon at least one business day before then, sometimes two. Which means I have to have all my sales tax put together by tomorrow evening.

We had two employees out Monday, one expected, one not, and yesterday was the start-up of a problem that crops occasionally with young workers: the Girlfriend Who Stays. I had one a few summers ago who absolutely would not leave. I tried everything I could think of, short of bodily removing her or firing her boyfriend, but the problem didn’t end until they broke up. And now I had a young woman sitting at a work station yesterday for three hours because she’d had to go the whole entire day before without seeing her boyfriend. I must be getting old and crabby, but we’re also running leaner than we’ve tried in several years, an experiment we’re starting right as our busy season ramps up.I don’t have time to indulge young love.

I don’t feel like I have time for much of anything these days, and none of it feels very productive.

My “new” truck is still down for the count. I managed to locate the battery charger (and Lynn’s sprinklers and garden gloves) by straightening up a corner of the garage, but it’s much, much tinier than the charger I borrowed from Kara’s husband last week, and last I checked, had not managed to get the truck charged up. It could mean it’s time for a new battery, but I’d like to figure out why this battery keeps running down before I squander more money. (I’ve put more into this truck in three weeks by a large factor than I have in the year and a half I’ve had my electric car.) And what does that take? Why, time, of course.

None of this addresses the sick friend in a Grand Junction hospital who is literally begging for more attention, but that’s a long story and I have already ensured that I am going to be late for work for the umpteenth day in a row, so that will have to wait. Oz needs a summer haircut, I haven’t even thought of packing or cleaning (except for a tiny corner of the garage) the house . . . why aren’t there more of me?

What? It isn’t “clones”? It should be. It totally should be.