I'm an Idiot

If you remember, last week I tore out my kitchen sink, counter, and base cabinets. Behind them was a leak of some kind and to save a little money, instead of a plumber, I hired my neighbor to find and fix the leak. I knew he was out of work and needed the money. While he was poking around the kitchen plumbing he asked me who was going to install the cabinets, counter, and sink. The answer is that I was. He continued to hint around that he might be able to do it, so in a fit of laziness I hired him for the job. It was a simple enough task and I asked him to make sure of only one thing, that the wall behind the sink was sealed shut. I didn't want any damn rats finding their way into the kitchen. He assured me that he was quite adept at such things and I had nothing to worry about. He'd be over Saturday morning at nine to do the job. Sure enough, at ten thirty in the morning on Saturday he showed up, with a helper. For the next ten hours he and his helper fiddled with things, banged on things, and argued. It sounded like Ralph and Alice Kramden in there. They were making me nervous so I stuck my head into the kitchen early on and reminded them that the wall needed to be buttoned up good. Later, when the arguing got particularly loud between neighbor and helper, I looked in on them again.

"It's got to come this way more."

"No, it needs to go back towards the wall."

"You're nuts."

"Alan, you realize you have an uneven wall here don't you?"

Ah, it was the oldest trick in the book. Make the home owner feel it's somehow their fault that things aren't working out. To make a long story a bit shorter, at the end of the day they managed to slap everything together. I had my new kitchen cabinet, new counter, and new sink. Unfortunately, the counter was one half inch higher on one end than it was on the other, the sink was installed without caulking around it, and under the counter, where I specifically had said I wanted the wall sealed, there were gaping holes for the rats to come and visit. So on Sunday, instead of watching football, I straightened out the counter, and caulked the sink. I still have to crawl under that sink to patch the holes in the wall. I'm such an idiot.

...Oh, and one more thing. At one point when they were going in and out of the kitchen, Bette disappeared.  It was when I was sitting in the living room eating a sandwich with Chandler drooling in front of me that I noticed she was missing. There should always be two dogs drooling. After searching the house and the back yard, I went to the front door. Bette was sitting outside waiting patiently for me to come and let her in. I am an idiot.