Work gone wild and taming the house

I’m home sick with a migraine this morning, and I think I just need to sit and write for a little while. It’s been very stressful. Everything is probably going to be ok, but there’s far too much going on.

At work one of the managers, whose team works with my team, made a series of personnel-related mistakes recently, and the consequences have been affecting me and my team. I’ve been worried that either she, or one of her employees, or both, could be let go.

Then last week a well-liked senior manager lost his son to an undisclosed illness. This pretty much shattered everyone.

Then toward the end of last week, we were all abruptly told to leave early, at 4:30 PM. No one had any idea what was going on, but due to an accidental “reply all”, we knew that HR was involved. Uh-oh. Who’s getting fired? The next morning we found out that a completely different manager, not the one I was worried about, was let go. I have no idea why we needed to vacate the building for that, because she wasn’t even there – she had been out on leave for a month (I had assumed it was for medical reasons). I really didn’t see this coming. I didn’t even know there were any issues. I have no idea why she was let go. As you can imagine, everyone is on edge.

Then John and I had a difficult weekend. We are trying to do way, way too much. After the fiasco with a very inept contractor last summer, John has been wanting to do all his own remodel work. Not only is he wanting to be the general contractor himself, he’s wanting to do all the drilling and hammering himself. It’s understandable, but unfortunately, it’s not a realistic solution. He spends 50 hours a week at work, and then he works all weekend. We are miserable, and the house is miserable to live in with everything undone and our possessions still in boxes, and progress painfully slow.

We own several houses, we manage our rentals ourselves, we both have full-time jobs in different cities, I run a small side business, and we simply have to employ a good handyman/contractor. Or sell the house as-is and take the loss and buy something modest that doesn’t need so much work. John cannot do it all by himself – we are working ourselves to death. Plus, if John has any hopes of me ever coming around to liking that house of his, this is not the right strategy. I currently HATE that house.

I asked a well-recommended contractor to come over on Sunday and he seemed competent. He does both indoor and outdoor work. I’m going to have him start with a few things in Santa Fe, and if his crew does that well, I want him to tackle the Placitas house next. John says he wants to work along side him, and I’m like, no. Absolutely not. No. Too many cooks in the kitchen, plus, we need our weekends for other things. For us. That house has become larger than life.