I've been doing work for some friends of mine.
They're a couple who broke up sometime back after ten years of tumultuous relationship. She's in her fifties, rather high-maintenance, works for the state government, and bought a foreclosure house that needed a lot of work. He's in his late thirties, very blue-collar, a carpenter by trade who likes nothing more than to sit back with a beer and a cigarette. (How the hell they ever got together in the first place is a bit beyond me, but what the hell.) She has hired him to be her general contractor for remodeling the house, and they sometimes hire me for a few days as his assistant as I happen to be pretty good with tools myself.

The other day I was repairing a set of leaded glass windows in the workshop when he came out back carrying a couple of beers. I kept working as we chatted, and I could tell he had already had several before coming back to find me. All good, as he was done for the day at that point, but he was obviously pissed off at her. Finally he told me that they had had a fight about money.

"Ya know, we had a budget worked out for the work on this house, and I think I had it pretty close. Now she's bitching that it's gone so far over budget- but look at the place! She couldn't have your basic fifty-nine cent light switches, she had to have the dimmable ones with the wide flat switch on it that cost eight bucks apiece! And we couldn't just go out and get lighting fixtures from Lowes, she had to order top-of-the-line stuff online at three times the price! And you know those two used Persian rugs in the living room? She paid $700 for them a couple of weeks ago!" He drained his beer. "Yet she can't afford to give me another two thousand so I don't have to live on pasta!"

"I wondered about that. Where is she getting the money from for all of this?"

He grimaced and spat. "Where'd you think? From her dad. She runs out of money, then he gives her some stocks which she cashes in and Fed Ex starts showing up a few days later with new things. She hired a feng shui expert who told her how she had to have things done or the energy just wouldn't be right. When this is done this goddam house had better shit happiness!"

Yeah, that about sums it up.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 1 Mar 2012, 13:58, Reply)