And so it goes......

It is July the 4th. It is early and the house is quiet. Michael left yesterday to go to the Texas coast for a "fishing 4th" with friends. Stephen is in College Station. That leaves Rob, I and Buddy the dog and all of our junk piled up everywhere as we endure day 7 of the remodel. I would estimate that there has been about 9 true hours of work done since this started. I am just so glad that I am in real estate and knew that it would be this way going in..... I jokingly said that we would be lucky to have Thansgiving in our house this year. Now I am thinking Easter 2009.





As is ALWAYS the case in these kinds of processes, we have had a couple of "problems" (also known as situations that will cause the work that needs to be done to double in price).....problem number 1 .....electrical work. So we decide that we are going to replace lighting in four rooms. We "budget" $1000 for fixtures and $1000 for the work. The electrician comes over and says ...."have you considered that you should probably replace your breaker box since it is 30 years old?" Ca-ching.....add an extra $1000. Not done yet obviously. Power has to be turned off for 8 hours to have time to make that happen. I intend to be in another state before the power goes off for 8 hours in the heat of the summer.





Problem number 2....flooring. so we were going to put down laminant flooring in the big screen room to be more "durable" for our lovely 13 year old and his rock band. I was a little worried about the noise factor but thought the fact that they could not hurt it was worth it....so the first guy comes out yesterday to measure etc and he walks into the room and says "this room is not level" blah, blah, blah about you will probably need to have a concrete person come in and get the floor level and in order to do that they will have to drill holes and pump concrete into the holes blah, blah, blah ....when Rob tells me that, I say VERY quickly..... Forget it. Carpet is going in here. The real estate agent in me continues the same chant....THIS IS A HOUSE ON THE BLVD DO NOT SINK TOO MUCH MONEY INTO IT. There will be no concrete person drilling in here in order to get the 1/8 inch area that is not level fixed. I digress....before we embarked on this whole deal we had a structural engineer come out and he announced that the foundation, etc was fine....so the last thing I am going to let happen is for some "concrete guy" start jackhammering into the slab of the house. No way. Carpet it will be and it will be fine.





Our WONDERFUL neighbors Kim and Lenny (Kim is the saint who has helped us make all of our selections for the house) came over last night with a gallon of Blue Bell Pistachio Almond ice cream. We sat in our kitchen with boxes stacked all around us and talked and laughed for a couple of hours and ate ALMOST THE WHOLE Thing of Ice cream. Lenny and Rob had to drink water out of Mickey Mouse glasses because we gave away ALL of our other glasses because they were "etched". There are very few people who I would let in the door right now and they are two of them.





We talked about work and at one point Lenny said "man, Helen, you are at full court press ALL OF THE TIME at work with the drama. And most of it does not have anything to do with real estate." I replied "people are people and stuff happens......but it did cause me to ponder...is it better to try to help people through all of their drama or would it be better to be like the bank Prez and tell them to "check it at the door" and take it back up after hours?" I am going to think that through. In every environment there are the Pot Stirrers.....those are the people who love drama and when they don't have enough they will do or say something that creates some. Those people drive me nuts. I always think that they should go out rock babies in the neonatal icu and then they would not make big deals out of small things. I hate to admit this, but I think that I used to be a pot stirrer myself. As the right hand woman in the organization for a long time, I was privey to all kinds of things (more like peoples private issues ) and everyone came to me for feedback ....or for gossip I now realize. My parents did a good job of teaching me a work ethic and also, how to keep secrets, so I was not a pot stirrer in the truest sense.....plus I was simply too busy to take it to the next level.





Then one day it happened, I did not want to talk about it any more. Any of it. I had two jobs and 4 kids and I was working 18 hour days. I was busy, busy, busy and I had no time to gossip. I had no time to worry about what someone else was doing or saying or getting paid or not getting paid or not doing. It was like an epiphany for me....the reason we have this constant undercurrent is because people don't have anything else to do so they talk about other people.



Person A goes to lunch with Person B and they talk about Person C then Person C and Person A go to lunch and talk about Person B and then all three go to lunch and talk about Person D. Then the 4 of them go to lunch and talk about the off site workers and how unfair it is that they don't have to be at their desks at 8:30 or whatever and blah, blah, blah. Then the off site workers talk about the fact that they worked on a project until 11PM and it stalled because Person A took off at noon and did not get them the data they were supposed to get and now everyone would get mad at the offsite people for complaining that Person A did not dowhat they were supposed to do. And the "in office" person says "well if I got to work in my pajamas every day I would not need to take off at lunch" and on and on and on it goes. Then Person A says "I am not going to do job c as it is beneath me" and person D says "its not fair" and there it all goes .....off at firecracker speed and there I sit, The Prez, thinking "DOES ANYBODY UNDERSTAND THAT WE NEED TO HELP PEOPLE SELL HOUSES TODAY"?



The most hilarious discussion and this really amazes me seems to be "what is his/her title and job?" So I think that people sit around and talk about that! Whoa that just makes me dizzy....As a person who has been here for 18 years and has had 13 TITLES, I think....."I have had 13 different titles, but always had only one job and that was to do everything that I could to help someone buy or sell real estate TODAY"....I might have done that through checking commission plans or being relocation director or filling in for an office manager or recruiting new agents"....The mission was never in question. We are here to help our agents serve consumers who need to buy, sell or lease real estate. No one TOLD me what to do everyday, I came up with a new way to support the agents every single day. I just assumed that everyone else would do the same, but I now know that is not the case. Perhaps because they don't know what to do, perhaps because they are not in a job that is truly utilizes their strengths....or perhaps they don't care enough to develop initiative. Thanks to my parent's for helping me focus and thanks to the bank Prez for helping me understand responsibility and that I needed to EARN my pay EVERY SINGLE DAY.



As I sit and listen and ponder the drama that is unfolding, I think, not only..."this has to change" but more importantly, "this is going to change but IF IT IS TO BE, IT IS UP TO ME". I will report back on that next week. People are people and they need to be heard BUT only as long as it results in progress. If they keep on saying the same old things day in and day out they don't want to change and they will need to realize that.

We simply have the very best real estate agents in the nation and I will see to it that they recevie the support that they deserve. Day in and day out. It is a tough old worls out there and my job is to make it easier.

The boxes are calling. More packing to do! Happy weekend.