The Hillhouse

Here it is. Finally, after having our new well’s location dowsed and then successfully dug last summer (the dowser was right on, btw!), today we are having the well plumbed to the Studio. Lights, camera, water…

I’ve encountered a slight hitch, however. I really should have attended to this months ago, as I’ve had the estimates for a while now, yet it was only just this morning, on a whim, really, that I looked up the wholesale cost of the pump that was being sold to me for over nine hundred dollars. My mother is funding this, and that’s been the agreement from the start, but nonetheless I don’t want to spend a penny more than possible on this – and it seems we are about to spend lots more than we should.

I understand markup, of course I do, but should a pump that wholesales for $435 be sold in turn by the well drilling company for more than twice that price?? That seems crazy! So I’m sitting by the phone, just waiting for the hour to strike nine. As soon as that office opens, I’ll call the manager and ask her if we mightn’t have a chat about the price. I’m prepared to buy the same pump at another place and then have her install that one – that way I stand to save a couple hundred dollars. Money that I could use to paint the battered interior of the Studio. Money that I could use to have the grass cut. So if she might see her way to giving us a better price, I won’t pull the plug on today’s job. Hope that doesn’t sound too bitchy. I’m not great at this business stuff. I do know, however, that she’s already scheduled the backhoe guy and would rather get this job underway than postpone it. I also know that she has a bunch of pumps sitting in a stockroom that she can sell for whatever price she chooses. It’s her business. She knows what she can handle.

This is my business too, and I know I gotta at least try to get a better price. Dare I even say that I’m “pumped up” to do it? Here I go.