How much do the Bush tax cuts help small businesses?

Have I been “silent” that long? I’ve been lurking — I’ve just been overwhelmingly busy/frustrated to the point that I was too tired to try to communicate.

My original landlord died last year and the daughter that’s going to inherit this house is also the manager of his estate — so — she’s doing what I call taking care of her father’s unfinished business. While he had some qualities that made him a blessing at many times — when it came to repair and maintenance — he was a poor landlord.

Bless her heart — she’s trying to fix up all the houses before probating the will and she’s trying to do it as cheaply as possible. She’s not at all knowledgeable about this stuff — but she’s essentially acting as her own contractor/foreman over the people her father would get to assist him. He didn’t do much of the required work — but he did know how to do it. So — she’s actually trying to do all the work he wouldn’t do — but she doesn’t know how.

She and mostly one guy were here all day everyday for about a month. The short version of the nightmare requires one to keep in mind I said they were here about a month — as in indication of how much work they did. All of the work was inside the house. I think the beginning is enough for somebody to understand just how disorganized and crazy it was — as well as how “pretty” the results were.

For about 5 minutes I was happy, happy, joy, joy — instead of putting in new carpets — she decided to go with wood floors. That is my first choice. I love wood floors for the look as well as their cleanliness relative to carpet.

The nightmare began when she decided that the long list of repairs — again to the inside of the house — should start with ripping up all the carpets and sanding the floors…

All of them in one day to avoid the expense of renting a commercial sander for more than one day. All of my things were jammed into small spaces and then knocked around as the only available spaces were places we needed to be able to enter/pass through. It’s a mess. They left last week. It’s going to take a while for me to put this mess back in order.

It gets worse. My happy, happy, joy, joy faded upon learning no 2 on that very long list was applying the finish to all of the floors. I don’t know how she didn’t know the end result of finishing floors immediately before making all those repairs, painting, etc would result in floors that looked like they needed to be refinished. She gave each floor only overnight drying time before trampling all over it.

A small thing that’s also very telling about the craziness and the quality of the work. I noticed a very odd thing. Her hired help painted the cord to my stove — almost the entire thing. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to him to just unplug it and take the cord out of the way. But get this. As I noticed my cord covered in paint — I noticed that he had only painted the rather small wall area on the rear side of the stove — he hadn’t painted the wall in back or adjacent wall on the other side. My cord had more paint on it than the wall area did.

I don’t know how I survived the physical work I had to do to try to protect my things from them or the stress — but thank God — I’m still here. I’m still trying to fight off a stubborn case of bronchitis caused by them mixing up all kinds of fumes in here at once — but — I think I’ll live. (Yes, they got ill — too — but not living here — they didn’t have as much exposure — so they didn’t get quite as ill. The boys went to my daughter’s for a while — and then to my sister’s.)

Anyway — I was lurking — so you weren’t seeing me but I was seeing you. Still — it’s always nice to see you — too.