Remodeling will tear us apart

A while ago, I was in the depths of the exhaustion that happens when ones house is 17 weeks into a remodel, and one has perhaps stupidly decided to stay in that house. In the very back two rooms. Neither my husband nor I was able to bathe, or make ourselves a cup of tea, or figure out where anything was, starting with our winter coats and ending with postage stamps. Worse still, decision fatigue had ground our marital nerve endings into bloody stumps: Brushed stainless or shiny? Round drawer pulls or rectangular? A 10- or 11-inch counter overhang? We stopped bringing each other our morning toast, started snapping orders as we flew out the door to return tile samples or buy paint before starting our real jobs.

As I watched my husband walk away from the house one morning without having even said good morning, I said glumly to our contractor Charlie, The only thing that will perk me up today is if you come out back at exactly 11:30 and bring me and my writing students chai tea.

We laughed. It was a joke, after all. This isa guy with strong opinions on grout and hinges, who disappears his underperforming subcontractors overnight with Gadhafi-like efficiency and derives his daytime nutrition from Marlboro cigarettes. Asking Charlie to bring Indian tea to the building out back where I teach creative writing carried the same odds as asking Newt Gingrich to bring us cupcakes.

Imagine my utter amazement, then, when Charlie showed up in the middle of class with a tray of chais and mochas for my class and me, and then returned with another tray of muffins and pastries. Newly bought.

Every woman in the room gasped. Charlie flashed a wolfish smile, while his eyes sparkled a green like the wave crashing on a beach in Costa Rica with the sun setting behind it (the same exact color as 1-by-2-inch glass tile named SURF currently available at Daltile in Denver for $18.80 a square foot). Oh dear. Id been counting the days till our contractor would leave. Was it wrong, now, that I hoped hed never leave?

But I wasnt the only one ready to slut out over a cup of coffee delivered by a man in a tool belt. My class was all pheromones.

He is so hot! whispered the lady whos been married for 20 years.

Hmmmm breathed the lesbian.

A few days after the chai incident, my husband, Peter, put on his tool belt. He had worked for years as a carpenter before he became a psychotherapist, and our shed needed some new siding. He was wearing an old white shirt and some jeans a skidge on the short side. His tool belt had suspenders.

Dont you have a regular tool belt? I asked in a tone more horrified than Id intended.

Excerpt from:
Remodeling will tear us apart