I'm practically in tears. The "reasonable" quote we got from the contractor we wanted to use was raised to 60k over the original... What the hell?

The most frustrating thing is that I had gotten an e-mail from the first contractor we spoke to, Steve on Monday asking for an update. I had spoken to "Reasonable" Contractor and had gotten assurances that he had confidence in his quote, and we needed to get a more detailed one and then we would sign a contract. So I decided to e-mail the first contractor and tell him we had decided to go with somebody else. No sense in leaving him hanging.

The second I hit "send-receive" I got the revised estimate from the "Reasonable" Contractor. So, now I've pissed off Steve who worked really hard on our bid.

I'm just so inexperienced at this and I HATE not being good at something.

So, I called Rich and he immediately made me feel better. He said the worst case scenario is that we move into the house AS IS. Not a problem, it's a nice house. We get a "pile of cash" from the sale of our condo. We stick it in the bank and we live in the house as is for a year and then we'll get a sublet next spring and do the construction then.

I think we'd have a much better sense of what we needed after living in the house for a year.

So, I'm feeling better.

My husband is so reasonable.

I love him.

We got back from Florida last Tuesday. The flight was an hour and a half late, but not too bad considering there was much snow falling on Boston.

The trip was amazing, and complicated. We got up early with Eric (who miraculously slept until 7 more than half the days we were there.) But it was warm and we took him out almost all day every day. It did rain, but there's all kinds of museums and things to take him to. I'm looking forward to spring.

The trip was hard because it was sad to see my grandparents. They've gone down hill quite a bit in the last year. My grandfather stopped going to "day care" at a local senior center. They started following him with a strap around his chest to keep him from falling down. He's not so senile that he didn't notice, and it drove him nuts. They have in-home helpers now, but they are through an agency that only pays $7 an hour, so it's really hard to get good people that stick with it.

My grandfather fell out of bed one afternoon. We were sitting in the living room and we heard a roar. So, I went and checked on him, and he was lying on the floor looking bewildered. Rich and I helped him back into bed, and my grandmother (not surprisingly) slept through the whole incident. I really shudder to think what would have happened if we hadn't have been there. She shrugged it off. She's really angry about things he said to her in the 1960's, and she "can't forgive him." It's so strange she goes from screaming at him "SOL! Go back to bed!" to talking to him unbelievably gently when she offers him food or tries to help him with something.

It was a great trip. I'm glad we went. I wonder how much more time we get with them. My sister is almost 40. Not many 40-year-olds have 3 living grandparents. I think we're pretty lucky in general. They are in relatively good health, but it's still hard to watch them grapple with losing their independence.