I spoke too soon. Thunderstorms have shut down the airspace encompassing the entire eastern seaboard. I unsuspectingly passed my phone over the boarding pass scanner and trudged into the jetway. Outside my tiny oval lens, a lazy sun unknowingly fuels a scorched airmass, stranding what I would imagine to be tens of thousands of people.

I’m now a prisoner. Living the nightmare you occasionally read about…sitting inside a hot airplane on a humid summer day, going nowhere. I was mistakenly lured into a trap. It’s now an infinite loop of renewed flight plans, second trips back to our gate to refuel, and I’m left wondering why we can’t just hit the reset button to cancel. I’ve requested to get off the airplane when we return to the gate. My desire was immediately repudiated with security concerns and FAA regs. I pulled a Dave and said “This kid ain’t goin fu*kin’ nowhere but out of this aluminum fu*kin’ tube boys…”

Amtrak Northeast Regional 170 departs Kingston Station at 11:43 am. This was my target. Up against a wall, I forced myself out of bed after a few hours of sleep and immediately went into robot work crew mode. The dehumidifiers (yes there are now two) needed to be emptied, furniture had to be put back into place, and both Diana and Kéa required a walk-through for imminent trouble shooting next week sans Sparky. Not that I’ve been a critical component to our staccato progress at 91 High Street.

In fact, I’ve been the anti-critical component. If not for Uncle Scotty and Dave The Floor Guy, we’d be dead in the water. Or maybe even dead. We’ve somehow managed not to kill each other throughout this process. It’s not that we haven’t gnawed beneath each other’s skin, it’s just the magnitude of utter destruction our house has been subjected to. With interminable horrid assignments from the morning shock of waking up through late evening exhaustion, no one has had any time to fight.

Yesterday brought a few key landmark accomplishments. In just nine days, Dave The Floor Guy wrapped up his three day refinish and install. This wasn’t really his fault. Diana and I had a punch list thirty pages long, and for some reason Dave developed a sympathy for our plight. Abandoned by Scotty and left to experiment with home repairs and renovations alone, we must have embodied the pathetic look of clueless home improvement refugees. This, coupled with the fact that Dave The Floor Guy had nothing better to do, literally saved our asses.

In merely six extra supplemental additional spare days, Dave The Floor Guy leveled our bare cabinets, was solely responsible for berating our countertop technicians into doing their job, carved space under a window to allow for a backsplash, and refinished our dining room table “because, ya know, I get bored and shit just waitin’ round for my poly ta dry. I’m a self stahtah. I gotta do shit, ya know? I can’t just sit around.” Dave The Floor Guy has a sixth sense. It’s as if he knew we’d be unremittingly screwed the second Scotty deserted our goat rope misadventure to flee and seek refuge at work in Alaska. Dave The Floor Guy stepped into the void.

We (and by we I mean Diana tearfully begging from the wrong end of a cell phone) were able to wrangle Bill The Plumber to stop in and perform what looked like open heart surgery under our beautiful new abeyant sink. There was a lot of noise. A lot. And some smoke. Dave The Floor Guy stopped doing, “you know, whatevah,” and took five to stand over Bill The Plumber to talk about Taska Ford Cobra Jets. This went on for a really really long time. I don’t have a bill from Bill, but I do have running water and a working sink. So whatevah it is, I’m gonna pay it.

It all came together. The floors are now finished. The countertops minus the backsplash are on the cabinets. The shrubbery is no longer growing into the dining room. Evidence of the kitchen fire has been removed. The deck and the railings are built…even legal! We now have a home that is arguably nicer than the one I’m returning to in AK. This is all great news, except for the fact that I had 7 minutes to enjoy it.

By the time I packed, stored our assortment of power tools, slipped my surfboard quiver back into the basement, and moved the last piece of furniture into place, it was time to go. We hit up the Ocean Mist for a last breakfast and sprinted up RI 110 to Kingston Station. I’m now in transit hell. Amtrak was wonderful. South Station, the iconic New England rail hub, is a fascinating mix of historic and contemporary passage. Boston Logan? Not so much.

In the words of Obe Wan Kenobe, “…you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy…” Air travel sucks. I do it a lot. It’s not improving. I can tolerate the work travel during the winter, but summer is an entirely different animal. Crowds of inhumanity packed into government controlled corrals fighting for meaningless advantage in their pursuit of exchanging A for B. And now…I’m in the thick of it.

I wouldn’t have had any time to write a story today. WordPress, my blog platform, shut me down. One too many F-bombs? Regardless of reason, the blog flatlined. Apologies to my fan.

Many exciting things happened today. And I promise to tell you everything. Or at least the excruciating painful details that will make you feel very happy that you aren’t me. It’s late here in Lil’ Rhody. We only stopped working at 11 pm. I leave for AK in 12 hours and we need at least another two weeks to come within squinting distance of a checkered flag. Stay tuned. This blog still has a heartbeat…

I’ve been censured. Not sure who I’ve offended, but apparently I’ve been blocked by WordPress. Stay tuned. I’m going to fight this….

The long awaited granite tops finally showed up in the back of a Benz sprinter van. Three Portuguese guys rolled out of the cab and sauntered into our kitchen. There was some heated discussion in Russian Spanish, which is what Portuguese sounds like to me, and a dismayed tall guy calling himself William pulled me aside to break the news in five agonizing words.

“It’s not going to work.” The following five words projected from my brain speaker has become quite the theme this past month. “Are you fu@king kidding me!?!”

William looked worried. Probably because he was. He explained that the operation was “too risky” and that proceeding with the instal could result in major damage to our cabinets or fracture the granite. He would need to take the granite back to the cutter one hour away and return on another day with two pieces. And then Dave The Floor Guy stepped in.

“That counter ain’t goin’ fu@kin nowhere but on that fu@kin’ cabinet boys.” Dave The Floor Guy is my new favorite human of all time. William hung his head, fumbled around his pocket for a cell phone, and dialed a number. There was some pacing coupled with arm circles, and the conversation wrapped up with a head bow and slow 180 spin on his heel. Dave The Floor Guy was going to get his fu*king way.

What transpired next was a tense 90 minutes of wedging a giant slab of flat rock into a space designed for 1880’s technology. Diana and Kéa couldn’t take it. They wisely sought refuge upstairs in the only semi-chaotic free space. Dave The Floor Guy chipped and buzzed pieces of wall while the three stooges angled our expensive rock into place. I did what I do best, which is to stand there slack jawed and totally useless.

After a lot of shouting, the counter tops were successfully installed. And that would be amazing, except that the new sink doesn’t match the old plumbing. We had no way of knowing this. Or more accurately, we had no way of asking anyone knowledgeable to know if we had no way of knowing this. It’s not what you don’t know…it’s what you don’t know to know what you don’t know.

We now have beautiful granite cabinet lids…and no running water. It’s a fairly moot point at this stage. Dave The Floor Guy is currently putting another coat of poly on the kitchen and dining room. We have given up the majority of any hope this will ever end. Diana and Kéa went to a movie and are now at the beach. I finished our deck rail with cable to make it legal, and in hopes of establishing some small sliver of sanity, I took the rare opportunity to hit the gym.

We’re all pretty well over it. We have a line on Bill The Plumber for tomorrow. If the stars align I might get one single night in the house before I head north to another enclave of crazy. As for the girls, they’ll have to remain in this sphere of insanity for another week.

Sunday happened. It was a nice day of forced relaxation while navigating our home construction site like a horse with blinders. I managed to focus on the frivolity of enjoying running water in a detachable sink rather than what a complete disaster our kitchen has become. We’ve been altogether consumed by our Pandora’s Box of a house. With our noses pressed to the grindstone, we literally haven’t had a second to look up. That is, until Monday morning.

Standing in front of our counter-less breakfast bar massaging my aching neck, I looked up and posed the question first. “…Why is the ceiling black?” It was an innocent question at first. But the longer I stared, the more it appeared to resemble the soot shadow of an RPG attack. Then we heard Dave The Floor Guy take notice. “Jee-Suhs! That had to be one helluva kitchen fye-ah!” Upon this new revelation, it took less than three seconds for Diana’s head to spin an entire 360-degree revolution and begin speaking in tongues while reaching for her cell phone. While some of what was being said was unintelligible, the next five words were not.

“You gotta be FU*CKIN KIDDING ME!” The hits just keep coming. Including blows to our pocketbook. We’ve been trying to clean up our language, and made a deal with Kéa to pay her $10 every time we use a four-letter word. It’s been a very expensive month. Unfortunately for Kéa, Dave The Floor Guy neglected to enter into our agreement. There is no possible way to produce enough F-bombs for Dave. If it’s a bomb, and it’s fabricated with the letter F, this guy is going to throw it. All day every day, regardless of kids or grandmothers in earshot.

While cleaning out the basement last week, I remember coming across an empty fire extinguisher. At the time I thought it was odd. Why would this fire extinguisher be empty? Did these guys just shoot it off in the back yard for fun? Did they experiment with the trigger to see if it works? No. They depleted our fire extinguisher because they set my fu*king kitchen ON FIRE! Who were these demon spawn renters and what hole did they crawl out of? Oh right…that would be my hole. And now I have to paint it.

Monday was unjustly absorbed by painting the kitchen ceiling. I did my best to help, but made a fantastic wreck of everything I touched. Luckily for Diana, my phone rang. It was Dawn from Greenwood Credit Union. It turns out that wiring funds is more complicated than originally thought. This was bad. I still owe the second half of our countertop installment and all of the floor repairs. Today. As the world around me began to pivot, Dawn let me twist in the wind for a long confounding minute. And then she mentioned something about a check.

“A check?” I responded. “Like a check I could drive up, collect, and even cash? Today?” This was good. With the world coming back into focus, I told Dawn I’d see her at 1 pm and raced out the door. Forty-five minutes later I pulled into the bank parking lot, loitered in the lobby for Dawn, and in due time received an envelope.

$5000 in cash…in my possession…for an entire 60 minutes. It was a spiritual hour for me. Alone. Driving a Mercedes-Benz. Fifty one-hundred dollar bills in my pocket. I wondered if this is what being a rock star might feel like. Except it couldn’t be. Because rock stars don’t drive their mother-in-law’s weathered German sedan. And when they blow five grand in under sixty minutes, they can get five more in sixty seconds. That’s not me. Not even remotely. What was briefly mine is now helping to power the economic engine of South County Rhode Island. Half went straight to Arnold Lumber for the countertops and the other half went to Dave The Fu*king Floor Guy.

Diana did a good job of painting over the evidence of our house nearly burning to the ground. Dave made some fu*cking progress with the fu*king kitchen floor and hopes to get a fu*king coat of poly on “that thing” soon. With so much happening in our kitchen, we haven’t been inspired to utilize it for actually producing meals. The cheapest dinner in town by far is Dragon Palace. The three of us can eat for two days on $7.50. We have leftovers, but no microwave. Our renters spent 45 minutes cleaning theirs and absconded with the only appliance they didn’t destroy when they slinked away last week. Time to head to Marshall’s.

Marshall’s has everything. Except microwave ovens. In the time it took me to realize that I was barking up the wrong tree, Diana and Kéa had managed to fill a shopping cart with three lamps and some other random stuff I still can’t properly identify. This would be ok if I had been able to find a microwave, but I failed miserably. We wheeled our plastic cart of lamps and miscellanea to the check out line…that wrapped 60 people deep around the back of the store. Why the entire population of Narragansett had descended on Marshall’s at 5:30 pm, I’ll never know. All I did know is that Monday needed to end.

Eventually we found our way to a register and paid for our lamps. When I slid my debit card, a message from Marshall showed up on the PIN pad that said “Irresistible Finds,” which after the last month I immediately transposed into “Insufficient Funds.” I snapped my head back and said something that resulted in Kéa being $10 wealthier before realizing that the transaction had been approved. Thank God. We checked out and took our new lamps straight to the beach.

Our daughter was given her daily 45 minutes to enjoy herself and we cooled off after another day of hell. It’s now Tuesday. There is no possible way this project will be completed by Friday. Diana and Kéa changed their tickets to stay for another week, but with a new boss and five incoming freshmen, I have to get back to Alaska. My flight leaves Friday. As much as I’ll be happy to remove myself from the madness, I’ll be sad to leave the girls and miss seeing the finished product. Dave says that the fu*king floors will be “smokin!”

It’s been humid this week. But that’s ok, because it’s also been extremely hot. The only relief is to get even more damp by jumping in the 72-degree ocean. Not a bad solution at the end of a long sweaty day, except that nothing dries. Nothing. No matter what. You can hang a slightly soggy used towel over the deck rail, IN THE SUN, and six hours later it’s still wet. Full-page paper receipts that come straight from the printer, crisp and fresh with new ink displaying how broke we now are, turn limp and flaccid the instant I step outside.

Our hotel room afforded the three of us a brief oasis of perspiration-free living on Thursday night. If it weren’t for the fact that our bank accounts are completely devoid of money, I would have sprung for another night. That brings us to Friday. The long awaited HELOC closing at Greenwood Credit Union. With 91 High Street paid off, we thought it would be a great idea to make it not paid off anymore. After signing no less than 73 sheets of still dry paper, we collected our copies and watched them wilt on their journey from the bank to our car.

Our document wasn’t the only thing drooping. During our closing we learned that we wouldn’t have access to these funds for a while. The loan needed to record and a home equity line of credit takes a while to set up. Meanwhile, we needed to pay for countertops, floors, appliances, a roof, and a seemingly endless list of new odds and ends to complete jobs.  The one bright spot in all of this is Dave our floor guy. We love him, but we’re now into day five of his three-day-job, and he’s talking about at least three more. We’re living in construction chaos, but the longer this takes the better chance I’ll have of being able to cut him a check.

I don’t live well amongst the chaos. I’m not smart enough to be disorganized and function in clutter. I crave order and cleanliness in my physical world to offset the pandemonium and disarray of my mental one. Upon returning to our expanding piles of clothes, stacks of furniture, missing counters, and taped off floors, I completely lost my mind.

I couldn’t take it anymore. It wasn’t the long hot day or the fact that my bank account is bereft of funds. It wasn’t Providence traffic on summer Friday afternoon or the tatted up pierced out inept Dunkin Donuts guy that can’t get an order straight. It might have been the fact that we had to stop at Home Depot, again…only to learn from the sinister orange apron people that they discontinued the black metal balusters I used for our deck rail and only needed 8 more of, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t find my nail clipper. In fact, I couldn’t find anything.

Dripping wet, standing in the upstairs of my house turned sauna, and desperately seeking air circulation, I came unhinged. I needed my checkbook to find my bank routing number. I needed to take my shoes off, but I didn’t know where my flip-flops were. I needed to peel off my clothes, but my quick dry ski team workout shirt was missing. I wanted my sunglasses but they were somewhere buried and probably destroyed. And god damn it, I needed to cut my f*cking fingernails!

Diana has seen this before. Many times. When the disorder overcomes my ability to think, the only cure is to carve out a small spartan space and attempt to make some sort of progress in hopes of creating order. Knowing full well her fate, Diana took one look at me after my tirade and said, “Tell you what, why don’t you get yourself organized and I’ll hit up the grocery store for something to grill tonight?” The question was rhetorical, and within an hour I had found my flip-flops, my shirt, my checkbook, and my fingernail clippers.

Saturday was supposed to be a half-day of work for us, but our 2 pm stoppage goal quickly became 5:30. There’s just too much to do. Thunderstorms rolled in last night bringing heavy rain, but cooler dry air in its wake. We promised Kéa a work free Sunday. As I write this story while enjoying a hot coffee on our new deck, the girls are packing up for the Ocean Mist, Go-Karts, and a Narragansett Town Beach sunset surf session. We have a good day planned. Now if I can just find the keys to the Mercedes…

Today we lost one of the good ones. I knew our time was short, so I woke early to care for and spend some quality time with my fated friend. He lived a very full life. In fact, I don’t’ think he could have fit another cubic foot. His world was filled with special fragments and memories of my own. Infused with napkins from my wedding, trinkets from far reaches of the globe, and snapshots of debauchery in my 20’s, I said goodbye to our beloved dumpster.

It’s as if my life before the Internet never existed. Mixed tapes, beer steins, and fax machines were pitched into the void and carted off. By Mumford and Sons. It’s not like I’m going to miss any of it. Most of what ended up in the dumpster is fantastic trash or all together obsolete. A few nostalgic pieces were difficult to part with, but for the most part, I found our mass disposal experience to be extraordinarily cathartic. Junk is junk.

We passed the day sweating buckets while painting super awkward corners of hallways, screwing excessively repetitive fastener patterns for decking balusters, and steering clear of Dave Gilbert – our hardwood floor aficionado. The countertop folks came by to produce a template for our kitchen, and I destroyed what was left of our kitchen sink. This is not a good development.

Scotty bought us a brand new copper sink. It’s stunning. It would have looked amazing above our refinished original wood floors and under our new granite countertops. It’s a work of art. But it won’t fit in our 1887-engineered kitchen. Too big and too deep. Just another daily setback in the life of 91 Why Street. I needlessly brutalized a 14 foot 2 x 6, Diana poured joint compound over our stone retaining wall, and we continued to pound out another 10-hour day. I just wish it didn’t feel like treading water.

By 6 pm, Dave needed to apply a coat of deadly wood floor poly. It was our cue to bug out. We hit the beach to afford Kéa her 45 minutes of happiness, and continued east across Narragansett Bay to the posh sailing burgh of Newport. Home to raised polo collars, pink pants, and top-siders; Newport is our brief port in a seemingly endless storm. For now I’ll happily take refuge.

We’ve reached a point where progress has been severely obstructed by prioritization. We found a guy. A job fell through and we lucked out when Dave (we have no idea what his last name is) had a hole in his schedule. Thank god.

Dave has forgotten more about hardwood flooring than most experts will ever know. From the second I met this guy I knew he’d have all the answers. I couldn’t even keep up with the right questions. I hired him on the spot. One day later, our house is back to being uninhabitable. Guess I forgot to ask about a place to stay.

It was about 3 pm when Dave, who had been killing himself to beautify our plus century old wood, asked Diana where we were staying tonight. This was a conversation stopper. “You mean we can’t stay here?”

Apparently in the hardwood flooring industry there’s this little thing called “outgassing.” I thought it was isolated to Mexican food and certain poor dietary choices, but it turns out that refinished 131-year-old floors emit some seriously toxic air. Huh.

Looks like we’re homeless. Dave was nice enough to give us a 24 hour reprieve, but come tomorrow…we’ll need to find a safe house from whatever the hell gets applied to freshly sanded really old wood. Hello Newport…

Why not spend an even more obscene amount of cash than originally intended to not only protect your ancient floors, but stay the night in one of the most expensive towns in America? It worked for JFK. How bad could it be? We pulled the trigger on a room near Bowen’s Wharf.

At this point we’re over a barrel. I’ve completed as much as I can do on the deck. Diana can’t paint because of hardwood sand fouling the walls. And Kéa is a prisoner of summer work jail. Time to call it and go to the beach.

Can’t get too comfortable though. Templates for the granite counter tops happen tomorrow, and sadly, the 30′ yard full size dumpster is being ripped from my heart. I knew this day would come, but I had no idea how painful it would be. I’ve fallen hard for the magic container. The place where things remarkably disappear, never to return.

As sad as I am, it will be nice to park the silver 1973 Mercedes Cutlass Neon Falcon (Sally – you know I love you. And I’ll love you so much more if your next car is a Porsche 911 Carerra 4S) in our own driveway. As for tomorrow, we’ll see what fun new misadventures reign down upon us.

One of the best things about spending time in Rhode Island is that everyone sounds like Peter Griffin from “Family Guy.” Seth McFarland got everything right with his hit adult cartoon series. I have to say that I find the regional inflections and cadence of speech to be extremely comforting. Even addicting. After a few days in South County, I too find myself loosing the occasional R from various words.

The Rhody accent is ubiquitous here. And that makes me a clear outsider as soon as open my mouth. I get the “huh, ya naght frahm heah, ah ya?” look every time I walk into the lumber-yard or hardware store. I could try to fake it, but it would be horribly obvious and I’d risk getting beat up. Or worse yet, banned from my supply of pressure treated boards and deck screws.  I’m getting by ok with my California drawl. So far, anyway.

Mostly, people are just nice in Rhode Island. It’s why we cried when we pulled our U-haul out of the driveway at 91 High Street eighteen years ago. We didn’t want to leave, felt apprehensive about our temporary move to Alaska, and moved heaven and earth to keep our little historic colonial home. It’s just cool here.

When we bought the house 21 years ago, the headline of the Providence Daily Journal was “Would The Last Person To Leave Rhode Island Please Shut Off The Lights.” Wakefield was a fairly run down neighborhood of South Kingstown with boarded up shops on Main Street, and Peace Dale was a no-fly-zone. A place you wouldn’t really want to walk around after dark.

Fast forward to present day. Peace Dale and Wakefield now have Historic District tags, Main Street is thriving with restaurants, pubs, and shops. The bike path right behind our house runs 7 miles to Kingston Station in one direction and 2 miles to Narragansett Town Beach in the other. You wouldn’t want or need a car unless you were dumb enough to start a major construction project with your mother-in-law’s rusted out Mercedes.

I love Alaska. It’s big. The mountains rise straight from the ocean. Bears amble across our back yard and we can walk to a chairlift.  It’s the largest US State by massive proportions. With one foot firmly planted in our biggest state, it’s really nice to have the other in the smallest. Go Little Rhody.