Wednesday, November 20, 2013

The House Part 6

                The paperwork was a mess and it took a long time to figure out that there was no logical order to the papers piled together. She first sorted the paper work into two piles: receipts and other.  Julia began trying to create a time line of the receipts; except nobody had bothered to put a date on over half of the papers that she came across. So she started with the easy to place papers with dates first and she took the entire floor when she did it. From these receipts she could see that the crew ate regularly, that things were pretty consistently progressing until her visit 2 weeks ago, and that she had purchased the same supplies 7 times in the last 2 weeks. She grabbed her business calendar that she had been notating the progress and all discussions about the property in. The purchases were all documented with a conversation except the first two. She did not worry about that fact though because that was the standing rule: Call before you buy it thrice! She was a little amazed at herself for allowing it to happen 7 times before she actually thought it through. She finally admitted this project had become a bit of an obsession and that she might need help figuring out what to do next. She could involve her family, they had offered, and she planned too, but first she needed to figure out where she was at. She needed to present a clear picture when she asked for help.
                She spent a lot of time and managed to make sense of the receipts. She organized them and placed them in one folder with the hand copied expense report she had created. It was a little ugly but not too bad yet. She looked over to the other pile and noticed it was quite a bit bigger. Her cursory glance told her she would not spend time organizing the data, it was all dated and in order. She would however spend a lot of time reading. The papers included official requests from the government, the daily log of the foreman and a lot of complaints the workers had filed. She was amazed that the complaints were such a large stack of paper. It intimidated her a bit so she put them off. She quickly read through the government related paperwork. It was legalese was abundant but not abnormal. She did not notice anything that looked odd except for the latest request from the local community. It looked like somebody had just enough law school in them to sound like a professional to all the regular folk out there but like an idiot to anyone acquainted with legalese. She blinked at it for a long time before dropping it into the file. Her stomach rumbled and she called for room service before picking up the foreman’s log. She paced around with it and ended up putting it on the table she had left undisturbed. She knew she would eat here tonight and it was a drag to have to clean before you ate. In the very same vein she had made sure there was a clear and wide path from the door to that table. The knock came and her food was delivered. She was very hungry by then because all she had was some fruit in the morning. It was now the evening and she wondered how the time had gone so quickly. She ate her food and then poured a cup of the coffee she had requested into a cup. She cleared the mess from the table and put the tray outside her door. She sat down to read the foreman’s log as she enjoyed her coffee.

No comments: