ruined my appetite

holy christ i feel like a sock monkey right now. glazed over, malleable, soft, tacky. i worked 10 hours today. it really only feels like 10 hours if i skip lunch. never on purpose. always never on purpose... until 3pm when i eat some nuts and think about how i just ruined my appetite by eating a handful of nuts so i eat 5 more handfuls of nuts. and ruin my appetite.

i got up early today. 6ish. had a note on my desk to get ventana reserve lot 12 to donnie by this afternoon. vr is a small development of stupid million dollar homes surrounded by landscapes of 1/2"-3/4" deco rock shoveled around the desert by young men who are just trying to survive with a job that can pay their rent and buy them at least a forty a day. more like 3 forties a day.

i had to see what kind of a landscape the house was left with after they cleared most of the lot for the home. one 20ft. saguaro, one poor, velvet mesquite- mangled by the builder's bobcat, a boulder the size of a baby elephant, some desert shrubs- brittlebush, prickly pear, cholla.

back at the office, paul is waiting for me by his truck. i am 15 minutes late. "donnie needed me to check out this house, paul." "yeah yeah yeah, mumble mumbe" mumbled paul. i like paul. i like everyone i work with. we stopped by some fast food joint and got some breakfast biscuits. paul smokes a cigarette. i eye the bacon. do i love it? am i scared of it? i love it. who cares that you can see through it. you can actually see through the red part of the bacon. it tastes good. so does the fluffy yellow filling in the center of the biscuit. i think it is egg.

we drive 40 minutes east. lots of traffic. i asked every question i could imagine about bidding landscaping jobs, what we were on our way to do. it really just came down to "you measure it, and it costs a certain amount". silence. until i re-word the question and get a slightly different answer, silence.

we got to the job, a place i have been before, off of old spanish trail in vail. johnny williams and his wife are here to retire. they have worked their whole lives, mostly as border patrol and homeland security in the nation's capital. retiring on a 1.87 acre lot in a multi million dollar home along the foothills of the rincon and saguaro national park east. common story. johnny hires a fly by night landscaper who installs rip-rap, low voltage lighting, an outdoor fireplace, plants, drainage, irrigation, brick paver patios, 2ft-5ft cmu stuccoed walls, and an outdoor kitchen. the guy did all of this stuff. all of it. really really really shitty. really shitty. the outdoor kitchen was full of water, the grout used for the tile work was mixed wrong and things were falling off, the masonry was poor quality, the fireplace looked like a large bomb shelter or tomb with a teeny tiny fireplace, the wiring for the lighting was buried all throughout the yard and not connected to a thing, the rip-rap along the slope in the back had defective mortar. it was washing out from between the rocks. we have to bid the removal/demo of everything, and the putting it back together. he is getting bids from 3 other companies. this process is for some kind of homeowner's blahdy blah, so he can get reimbursed for his mistake. he might not use us to do the job, making the hours of estimating a waste. but i really tried to connect with this guy. we were both very familiar with virginia AND i just asked if he worked for homeland security in dc- he had said he worked for the government- he did, AND my cousins wife just happens to work there as well, of course they didn't know each other, but we made a connection and that half-hour we were there, i was so interested in this guy. he was funny, smart, and from dc. after the half hour was up, we left the ogre and his wife in their beautiful home in the middle of the desert. its like living on the outskirts of dubai.

back at the office.
i have a list of plants that can go in. 3-15gallon trees, 10-5gallon shrubs or accents, 10-1gallon shrubs or ground cover. i chose palo verde, mesquite, chuparosa, soap-tree yucca, giant hesperaloe, mount lemmon marigold, santa rita prickly pear, and salvia greggii. maybe some other things, i can't remember. I made a little note at the bottom of the plan telling jason, the foreman on the ventana reserve jobs, that i would like him to pick out some of the existing stones and boulders on the lot and incorporate them into the landscaping- have fun, i wrote. it must suck having to follow someone's plans all day and not get to do your own thing. not a big deal, but if i were him, i would love to put the rocks where i wanted, really if i let him put everything else where he wanted, i wouldn't have a job.

done.
dawn, the boss, wants to know where the raised planters are that i was supposed to design. i hadn't actually had the time yet, and started as soon as vr12 was done. i did a plan of 3 raised planters, 2 are 34" high on one side, and the other side arcs up 6 more inches in the middle. they are capped with brick and stuccoed white to match the house. 2 have benches built into the curves of the walls, one is 2 feet high and 20' long, running along the edge of the pool. computer freezes, data is lost, time is lost. cursing under my breath. i have to get this done, this is a test, dave is meeting rosalee about my salary today, they are testing me. shit. it is 3pm. i lost data, i have a meeting at 3:30. dave's meeting is at 4 with rosalee. i quickly reworked my drawing saving, saving, saving, i had to leave. i explained to dawn my situation, i could have her the planters tomorrow morning. no prob.

i drive to the englehardts. they have a contract for the work of the design i did for them. i want them to sign it. kevin is allergic to palo verdes, have to take it out. they want to change a few things, add the irrigation and make the palo blanco bigger. done. sweet. they just added a couple grand to their job. great. our guys can work another week.

i get a company truck to drive to my appointments. rosalee calls me to fill me in on the meeting with dave. he's gonna talk it over with dawn. good enough. "listen to this" VROOM, VROOOM, GRRRR, VROOM! rosalee is having me listen to a harley that just pulled up next to her on her drive home.

back at the office. 5:15pm. just dave and me. i'm working on the planters. dave asks me for a favor, sure. 530pm. can i put together a proposal and email it. sure. i have dinner plans with anast. supposed to be there at 6. his sister is in from out of town. dinner at 6. i'm late. must get a raise...ninja...ninja...ninja...

done.