AUGGHHH!

Normally, I'm not horribly put out by delays and such... even as extreme as this remodel delay has been, I'm not too upset. Yeah, living in squalor is kind of a pain, but it's tolerable. BUT my mood has suddenly changed. This is primarily because Sidney has aspirations to become a TV star. He's already a star in his own mind (he's confused when people don't stop to pet him on the street), but now a TV production company wants to film him in his home environs while getting ready for a Halloween party. Sidney has a more active social life than his owner, as Ally pointed out today. (But to clarify, I am also invited to the Halloween party as Sidney's guest. Sigh.) Of course, our home is not really in a state that would allow for this. So I've had to get really bitchy -- I've been crackin' the whip today with the interior designers and general contractor.

[The backstory on the TV deal: A year ago, a production crew was taking footage to make a documentary about a doggie daycare: Sidney's daycare! They shopped it around to various cable networks and had no takers on the documentary. I know - shocker, right? Anyways, they re-cut some footage to make a 6-minute funny short about life at the daycare from the dogs' perspectives. And they made Sidney the star of the show!! They shopped the short around as the pilot in a potential series and after getting a lame offer from Animal Planet -- AP wanted the daycare to advertise some crap commercial dog food -- they got an offer from the Women's Entertainment Network (formerly Lifetime) to make the series! So now they're shooting a whole bunch of footage at the dog show and Sidney is getting all kinds of airtime.]

So on the remodel -- very little progress to report. I called the contractors to come back to keep working (mudding, painting, etc.) in spite of the delay with the cabinets. Not much has been accomplished. Supposedly they will finish by Monday. Yeah, right.

Meanwhile, the cabinets are lost at the Seattle port somewhere. God only knows how long it takes for stuff from China to clear Customs (I'm assuming there were no women trapped in the shipping container waiting to be forced into the sex slave industry) but the cabinet company has been really non-responsive to the interior designers' requests for status updates. So I talked to Julia today and she said that if we don't get word by tomorrow, she will get her lawyers involved and hire another cabinet company (she has a contractor already lined up) to do the work -- and MUSA will cover any cost differential. THANK GOD!!

Anyways, I am doubtful that things will be complete by the time they want to film, but I'll just have to rearrange the furniture so they can film in some small area.