Sometimes I think chaos is self-imposed — the result of bad planning, stupidity and lack of common sense on my part. Other times, I think it is a force of nature and I just happen to live in a chaos-prone area. Take my pool plans, for example.
I had worked diligently since April to get a pool installed…not a big monster project, just a little backyard family pool with a deck. The project was plagued with problems from the beginning, in spite of the months of latitude I had given it. City hall was short-staffed so it tooks months to get the permit. I fired the designer/landscaper because of unreasonable delays. The pool installer missed his first two promised delivery days and finally locked his doors and his installers quit. No one answered his phone and his mailbox was full. Emails went unanswered. My delivery date came and went. I called other pool companies, stock
was low, installers were busy until September.
I met the installers from the pool place in the parking lot where I was camped, trying to catch the owner sneaking in. They were looking for overdue paychecks but said they’d be willing to install my pool if I could find one. I rushed out and found one place that had one the size I wanted, in stock ready for delivery.
We signed up, lined up the installed for the following week and…guess what? There was no way, said their warehouse guys, that the pool could possibly be delivered by out install date…no way. Pissed and ready to go postal, I cancelled the order and found another pool and was about to drive out and grab it when the installer called to say he could get me a good deal from the manufacturer. By this point, getting a pool in time for my summer holidays was the focus of my life, so I said yes, yes, yes.
In a moment, possibly the only such moment in my life, the stars all lined up with the planets and the pool arrived earlier than scheduled, the pool guys suddenly had an afternoon open and the process of getting from pool-less to pooled was happening. Nothing could stop me now. The installer said the ground wasn’t level — I had levelled it twice, as best I could, with a backhoe — so he’d have to charge me extra for the levelling…20 bucks an inch. But I was a nice guy, he said, so he’d give me 3 free inches. That’s the worst-sounding offer I’ve ever had, but I took it with a smile. So I paid. I paid for the extra inches, I paid extra for delivery. I paid more to have the pool filled. Heck, at this stage, if he’d asked me to pay extra for the air that the workers consumed, I would have paid it. I wanted nothing to stand between these guys and a completed and functional swimming pool. And so it was. A pool was installed, water flowed in it and the world was right, for a moment.