Whatever happened to Protestant work ethic?

I dunno, but, even though I'm only nominally connected to the Protestant movement (ever since Dad left seminary & became an atheist -- right about the time I was born), I still have problems just sitting on my haunches and watching time go by. Granted, some of that is the manic end of bipolar disorder, but some is also that hard-core ethic I had been led to believe was the better part of what made this nation strong.

So, last evening, having received a call here at work (yeah, the computer is at Mommy's house) from the contractors hired to repair my porch, I was a little concerned I would not be able to get things ready for them again this morning. I'm used to having lots of sawing and hammering and all those other nifty sounds kick in practically at dawn... or at least by nine a.m.

By the time I got the call yesterday, and spent the next hour negotiating with my neighbors, it was too late to do what needed to be done for the workers.

They're scheduled to come power-wash my porch, to prep the surfaces for painting. My problem? I don't have outside access to water. I barely have inside access. The tub doesn't have a standard bathtub faucet, but a sink faucet with the nozzle removed, so all there is is a bare screw-fit tap to which I have attached my shower massage hose. And I didn't have anything to adapt and extend that 6' hose beyond my bathroom window.

So Mom and I raced out to the builder's supply place downtown as soon as they were open (8 a.m.) and bought a 20' garden hose, an adaptor to fit the two together, and an attachment so that the water can be turned off at the end of the garden hose, so the contractors will have some control, and I won't have to go running back and forth all day when they need the supply turned on and off...

I got home by 8:20. Got the system hooked up and tested by 8:30. Sat down with Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk. Polished it off. (By the way, I heartily recommend it. Her style is lively and the essays are outstanding.) Started in on Dillard's An American Childhood. Have finished 2 chapters. Got a sore behind from sitting on the porch step. Walked back over here to Mom's to wait for a call.

It's now 10:53 a.m., and no word yet from the contractors about where to find the water access... not that they should have any great difficulty finding the dripping hose -- I left it hanging from the back of a dinette chair in the middle of the yard. But I would at least like confirmation that they've arrived and are ready and willing to waste my expensive tap-water hosing off the porch instead of doing it the old-fashioned way, with a couple of big-ass buckets of TSP-laden (okay, TSP substitute) water and a couple of scrub-brushes.

So, when did contractors start keeping banker's hours?

Update: 11:45 a.m. went over to my house. Contractors were there. They'd been there long enough to (a) find the hose & hook up (b) cut away the entire of my climbing rose (no loss. I was intending to do something comparable this fall), and (c) spray clean a whopping four feet of pilaster at the corner of house and porch. Neighbor said they had arrived "about a half an hour ago. Give or take." I extracted a promise from the lead guy that he would call me when they were done so I could come turn off the water & disconnect the hose from my bathtub.

We shall see.