Nothing happened today on our construction project. I sent a missive to The Bank last night basically saying this: come on, you fools, you ought to be able to tell me how long it’s gonna take to reach closing!! Seriously! Also I liquidated some assets so we have enough cash to take to closing. Unless The Bank has not accurately estimated the amount of money we need to bring to closing, in which case I guess I’ll liquidate some more. And each time that changes it has to all go through underwriting again, because I have to produce an assload of documentation confirming that the money in my bank account (for which they have 90 years of records) came from my investment accounts (for which they also already have 90 years of records). I don’t actually know what “go through underwriting” means, but there’s some guy somewhere called an underwriter who has an incredible amount of control over this part of my life right now.

I don’t think I’d want to be called an underwriter. It sounds too much like undertaker. Which by the way I think is one of those crazy words that quite poetically describes what the person does, i.e., take the dead body under ground. Kind of creepy really. The underwriter, by contrast, is perfectly capable of killing well-designed loan opportunities, so he’s less of a care-providing person and more of an assassin.

Anyway, I sent a somewhat obnoxious, needy, whiny, and loosely demanding email to The Bank People last night. I complained and snarked. I wagged my figurative finger. I typed the whole thing on my iPhone, so I was especially grumpy by the end of it. I said I wanted some transparency. I want to know exactly what additional hoops we need to jump through before we get to closing, so we can decide whether we’re even going to be able to do this project this year.

Today, The Bank did not respond. Nothing. Wall of Silence. Apparently, someone did call our design/built person, Kristi, to iron out some meaningless language details in our bid proposal. But that is all. No one called me, e-mailed me, texted me, or sent me flowers.

Bad form, Bank. And so much for transparency. I’m giving serious thought to walking away from the deal and wiping my hands of it. We’d lose a couple thousand dollars in various fees that we’ve already incurred in this excruciating process, but I would be free of noxious banker oversight. I hate being beholden to anyone, and I hate the thought of some inspector — not from our city, mind you, but some guy acting on behalf of the bank — wandering around my home eyeing all the work and making completely random decisions on whether my contractors get paid.

Anthony’s been out of town. He gets back tomorrow night. Let’s hope I don’t do anything foolish before my rational and practical man gets back, like calling The Bank and telling them to go suck it because nothing happened today.