CONVERSION BLUES

I never know when I’m driving back from the pool what surprises await me at home:

• a port-a-potty situated directly in front of my bedroom window, so when I open any window, the smell wafts in.
• a large hole punched through the kitchen wall from the other side. I can’t actually see how big it is because most of it is behind the fridge.
• the kitchen floor bowed and the fridge listing dramatically to one side, the cookbooks on the shelf above piled up on that end—a result of “leveling” the house.
• the living room walls riven with cracks, the plaster buckled and hanging precariously. Meanwhile, inside the closet I discover another hole in the wall and plaster dust all over my clothes.

One day after they’d leveled the house, I couldn’t even get out the front door to go swimming—the knob wouldn’t turn, and Alberto had to come over and take the door off its hinges to let me out, too late for the pool, alas.

Then there was the time we got an urgent call that the workers needed access to Gina’s apartment because there was a gas leak and they were worried that if she’d left the stove on, there might be an explosion.

And the times that I haven’t been able to hear them knocking to tell me they’re turning off the water—because I’m wearing earplugs to muffle the construction racket. So I only discover belatedly that there’s no water when I try to take a bath, flush the toilet, etc.

Also the multiple times I’ve had no phone or internet because they’ve cut the wrong wires.

At the outset of the project, Bob told Ella and me that we had to move all the stuff in our storage room to a new location in the basement of a building that he owns on the other side of the block.

Then last week we were on our way to Carmichael, two hours away, to see my aunt Audrey, who was in hospice care, when we got an urgent phone call from Gina—that the temporary storage room was flooded with sewer water and our cardboard file boxes were soaked.

And have I mentioned that because all the insulation has been stripped away and the basement left open to the elements, our apartment has been so cold that Ella and I have spent some evenings in winter jackets and blankets? No, I’m not exaggerating.

Then there was the missive Bob sent, saying we couldn’t use our carport behind the building anymore because the workmen needed the space for their trucks. Well, as I’ve mentioned, there’s no parking on the street because we live half a block from campus.

“Why do you have to be so adversarial?” Bob complained in a recent email to us tenants.

Hmmm. That requires some thought.