Time

I spend a good part of each day striving to be efficient, on time or ahead of it with tasks, and so on. Given the effort I expend on things like meeting deadlines at work, making dinner as soon as possible after work to avoid having the whole family starve to death, keeping enough clean laundry in our dressers to avoid having us go to school and work naked, I admit that I am pretty miffed when other people don't follow through in the same timely fashion with things. In fact, lately I feel like I am running a race that no one else is even aware of. Why do I even bother? Probably just because I would feel disappointed in myself if I slacked off, but apparently others do not have the same kind of feeling about tardiness and foot-dragging that I do.

The main focus of today's rage is how freakin' long it has taken to get not all the way through the process of having our house hooked to the natural gas line. The utility company filed the necessary permit paperwork back on June 19. By August 19, not a single thing had happened, and we started banging down doors, so to speak, to find out what the hell was taking so long. A week later, we arrived home to find that the one-call had been made because there were spray painted markings in the street and on our front lawn, pointing out where all the hidden utilities are. Good, we thought. According to Ken, you need to do a one-call within 10 business days of starting the work you're planning to do. I thought we were nearly home-free.

Except today is business day #10, and no one has come to tear up my lawn yet and install the gas line. The nights are getting down into the 60s, and soon we will want to turn on the heat to keep the boys from turning into kidsicles in the middle of the night. Ken and I will be fine since we each end up with a beagle glued to us while we're sleeping anyway, but it would be awfully nice to raise our children in a home with heat this fall and winter. If gas weren't so flammable, I swear I'd be out front with a shovel right now, doing it myself.