I want my house back

Renovating your house is expensive, and there are always more costs than you planned on. For instance, the shopping bills you run up because you can't stand to be home and look at the mess.

At least that is what is happening at our house. Not content to knock holes in the walls of our basement by himself, Joe has brought in a cadre of professionals to do it, with the result that certain military personnel being deployed have ended up at our house, mistaking it for a war zone.

Long-neglected brick and stone walls are slowly coming into view -- what's left of them. The dust has seeped, like a rising mist, throughout the whole house. 170-year-old dust. The dust is black, except that wherever we sit, a ring of white forms itself into a perfect outline on our posteriors.

But Joe will not let me see the progress in the basement. When I come home from work, he greets me at the basement door with "Hey, honey, how are ya? -- Go around to the front."

"Why can't I come in this way?"

"You can't."

"But you came in that way."

"See ya at the front."

This has nothing to do with the fact that the first day after the work started, he very unfortunately got home after I did. He found me in the middle of the basement, "Rachel weeping for her beloved fireplace, which was no longer." He was unable to stem my wails at the sight of what the workmen had done to the house. And that was the best day.

So now I am heartily encouraged to be out and about in the evenings, until the stores close and I have to come home, but not through the back door.

"I spent lots of money today," I say.

"Great, great!" he says. Spending money is incompatible with crying.

Because of the money being spent on this project, and the money being spent to keep me from slipping into depression, we are quickly coming to the realization that the trip we were planning to take to Hawaii this year may have to be scaled back. For instance, instead of a luau on a romantic beach in the shadow of a gorgeous sunset, we may have to hold one in the shadow of brick and dust. Instead of an open fire, our new cast iron stove. And a white ring around our posteriors.