Can you speed it up?

So the lovely Patty from our mortgage servicer emailed the other day to request that we set up a draw inspection, which is good, and right on time. (A draw inspection is a regular meeting with the FHA Loan inspector and our contractors in order to make sure things are proceeding on time, and for the contractors to get some more money based on what they've completed since the last draw, as approved by the inspector and us.) So in the process of scheduling the draw inspection, Patty notes we need to be finished by May. Um, come again?

Yeah, so apparently these things should only take six months. Who knew? Well, we knew things could be open for six months at a time, and that you could get extensions. So at first our loan servicing agreement was good through December, and since in December we hadn't even gotten permits yet it was extended through May. Problem is, even though we've had a lot of progress lately (and hope to see more tomorrow, during the aforementioned draw inspection), we're not exactly done. Or close to done. Or thinking of being done.

Our target is still Labor Day-- it has always been Labor Day. At first, our target was Labor Day because we wanted to be sure Isaac could start kindergarten in Montgomery County schools. Then we added an "ish" after the target holiday because we liked Isaac's pre-k so much that we are nearly certain we're going to keep him enrolled there for kindergarten (and just drive him once we move). So now we can fudge on our target date, we think, because we're no longer pressed for that school-year-driven date. But Patty has other thoughts.

I responded to her email with an incredulous one of my own, then realized she's not the bad guy, nor is she asking us for anything we don't want to be giving her; after all, we'd like to be done by May! But, alas, that is not to be. Patty said we'd have to give her some really good reasons why we can't be done by May; I'm guessing "neither the electric nor the water and sewer utilities currently recognize our home address as existing, let alone are they thinking of beginning to inspect whether they want to allow us to apply for permits to possibly maybe turn those utilities on" is a decent one.

So where we stand right now is that we're trying to persuade our mortgage servicer to slow down, and our utilities to speed up. Meanwhile, we'll get to see progress tomorrow (with pics, I promise!) and we'll finalize all our plumbing fixtures over the next 24-48 hours (again, with pics, I promise!). In the meantime, I have to do some agonizingly early overtime over the next four workdays (arriving at work by 5 AM!) and all I can think about is that, in the end, these four days of jetlagging myself within my own time zone should at least pay for our dishwasher. (Gotta see the positives...)