I’ve been getting behind, it’s been a crazy week without a doubt. So…

Day 1:

Sat down to breakfast to the tune of hole saws, hammers, hums, buzzes and stomping around (hey Joe, get out of my chips!). Walked outside after I finished. The house looks like it’s on intravenous with all the blue, black and clear hoses running out of it. I half expect a 12 foot tall nurse to come waltzing into the backyard and take it’s vitals.

Around 12:00 the flooding started. Ran outside and up the stairs to the second floor where they’d been tearing out the old bathroom…not a soul around. Yet Little Niagara Falls was coming out of the ceiling over our new electric stove, soaking all the burners, cat dishes, two cats, towels and an electrical outlet (220 no less). A very bad combination.

I opened an umbrella, set it on the stove, stuck an old sap bucket under the rest of it and went off to read the news.

Day 2:

Had 3 appointments at the VA. Spent the day down in White River Junction at my “local” VA facility (113 miles down to road). No flooding down there.

Day 3:

Ceiling finally stopped dripping. We could now use the stove which was a good thing since we hadn’t eaten since Day 1.

House still on saline and mild tranquilizer drips although the crew states it should be able to be released by tomorrow morning.

Ate lunch to the soothing sounds of screeching/stuttering hole saws, screaming circular saws and somebody beating on something cast iron in the upstairs bathroom with a sledgehammer. There was a man pounding something onto the frame of our back door with a large hammer.

I went into the bathroom, locked it and spent the afternoon driving myself to utter distraction with my wife’s games and puzzles magazines. I literally suck at those things.

Day 4:

Weatherization crew finished up the night before. I finally came out of the bathroom just in time to go to bed.

Bathroom crew (our landlord and a guy named Gus) arrived shortly before 5:55 AM and proceeded to cause hell and discontent in the upstairs bathroom precisely at the strike of 6:00.

Went out into the kitchen, took my rifle off the wall, checked the clip and fired a few well placed shots into the ceiling over the stove. Things quieted down right quick after that. Went back to bed for an hour.

Sometime during the day there was a rather nasty din of someone(s) tumbling down the outside stairs along with what sounded like the old cast iron bathroom sink close behind. A final, sudden explosion of everything coming to a sudden halt at the bottom of the stairs punctuated by a short piercing scream then all was quiet.

I pulled out my hearing aids when I heard the sirens coming down the street. Sirens and hearing aids don’t mix well.

Day 5:

The bathroom crew didn’t start in until a more reasonable 7:00 AM this morning and even managed to keep the noise down to a dull roar all day. It should be all over by tomorrow.

This is a good thing since my wife’s son who lives on the second floor has been holding his water since Day 1.

Mondays have long had a reputation of being the worst day of the week for the working set–of which I was a part of not that long ago. Now that I’m on the other side of the fence I can attest that Mondays can also be the worst day of week for non-working folks as well.

Let me explain…

Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh!!!!

Let me clarify the above statement.

We live in a very nice place. It consists of the entire first floor of what used to be a single family home. Beautiful woodwork, handmade cabinets and all that wonderful kind of stuff. But we don’t own it. Our good friend does. And he counts his pennies. And the heating oil he pays for.

Recently the State of Vermont added a boatload of new additions and incentives to their weatherizing old houses program which includes paying half of the cost of things like new insulation in walls, basements, crawl spaces and attics, weatherizing old doors and windows–things of that nature.

So over the summer we’ve had the State people in looking at this, looking at that, checking here, checking there and basically being a general nuisance. Decisions were made and dates for the actual work were scheduled, etc, etc.

Somewhere in the midst of all the preparation for this upcoming work the upstairs bathroom blew up. In doing so water flooded out of the ceiling, ran all over the stove, utensils, pot holders, oven mitts and into the various cat dishes. We were not happy. Obviously the bathroom had to be replaced. Temporary repairs were made and schedules for replacement of said bathroom were discussed and arranged.

Now guess who showed up at the door this morning?

Yes, all that scheduling for the weatherization and bathroom replacement all funneled down to everything starting on December 1st. All the days left in the year and 2 panel trucks (weatherization crew) a pickup truck (crew leader) and one Chevy Van (bathroom replacement guy #1) all crammed into our driveway this morning at 8:00 AM ready to work.

And guess who ran out of pain killers two days beforehand?

They were upstairs, downstairs, in the attic and in the basement. They were swarming outside. And in the upstairs bathroom which is, as I stated before, situated right over our stove, the cat dishes and the counter to the right hand side of the sink–someone began pounding on something hard with what sounded like a sledgehammer.

The invasion had begun.