Mayor McCheese?

Late one evening, St. Pauli Girl and I were sitting in our courtyard enjoying a cocktail when we noticed a light reflecting off the side of the house. It disappeared then came back. The courtyard is surrounded by a five foot high brick wall, so we couldn't see beyond it without standing up. Having sat out there on many a night, I knew it couldn't be the headlights of a car.

"What's that light?" I asked. "Is that a flashlight?"

Then we heard a grunt.

"That sounded like an animal," I said.

"Yeah but they don't normally carry flashlights."

I pushed my wrought iron chair back dragging the legs along the bricks trying to make as much noise as possible.

"Hello?" I called out as I walked to the brick wall.

I peered out out over the wall and saw a scruffy man in a white t-shirt, grey shorts and sandals and using his cell phone as a flashlight.

"Hello, can I help you?" I yelled out trying to be firm and civil

He said something, but I couldn't understand it. He stood still staring at his phone.

"Time to get serious," I thought.

"Hey! What are you doing on my lawn?" I said in the deepest foreboding drill seargant voice I could muster.

"I'm looking for my wife," he snapped back as he resumed looking at his phone.

"Not good enough. What are you doing on my property?" I demanded.

I turned to look at St. Pauli Girl to tell her to get ready to call 911, but she was gone. Then I saw the front porch light come on. I quickly ran into the house and to the front door. I came out into the front yard and saw St. Pauli Girl talking to the stranger. I ran toward them as St. Pauli Girl walked back toward the garage.

"Marcellus Wallace, I live three houses down." the stranger said as he held out his hand to me. (Names have been changed to protect the innocent and not so innocent.)

I introduced myself and shook his hand.

"Just looking for my wife," he said. "So you bought the De La Hoya house?"

"What?" I asked while still trying to grasp how this weird situation had now become a normal conservation. "I didn't know the house had a name."

"They were the previous owners," he said smirking.

At this point I noticed his wobbly legs as St. Pauli Girl came back from the garage.

"Well she's not in the garage," she said. "Did you meet Mr. Wallace? He said he saw his wife walk up here."

"Yeah, I was concerned," he said. "She was pretty drunk, and I'm just trying to get her home safely."

"I don't think so," I said, "we've been out here all night and haven't seen or heard a thing."

"Hmmm, maybe next door."

We watched him stumble across the driveway into the neighbor's yard.

"I wonder who's drunker, him or his wife," I said as we walked back to the courtyard.

"You know who that was don't you?"

"No."

"That was the ex-mayor."

"What? Really?" I asked.

"Yeah, can't remember when exactly but I guess before you moved to the Great Republic of Texas."

We resumed our cocktails when about ten minutes later, we saw the same light flashing on the house. We walked back out to see Marcellus walking up our driveway again.

"She's not here," I yelled. "We would have seen her."

"Just let me check your garage."

St. Pauli Girl walked through the garage and told him the same thing.

Marcellus threw up his hands and walked down the driveway and back to the street. He weaved badly in and out of the street. We stood and watched him stumble up and down the street a couple of times.

"Do you think we should call the police?" St. Pauli Girl asked.

"I'm torn between not wanting to stay up all night getting interviewed by the police and being awakened by his cell phone flashlight shining in our bedroom window. If we see him come by again before we call it a night, we'll call the police."

We sat down and quietly contemplated the incident for a few minutes.

I finally broke the silence. "You know, considering this is Texas, it's amazing and lucky that we were both unarmed."

We didn't see him again the rest of the night.

Several weeks later, St. Pauli Girl called me at work to tell me the dogs had escaped from the backyard. Both the sidegate and back gate were wide open, and I failed to notice when I let the dogs out.

"Do you think the mayor was looking for his wife again?" St. Pauli Girl asked.

(The dogs returned safely.)

How Not To Be a Contractor

I may have mentioned previously that when we bought our current house in the fall of 2012, walking through the front door was like stepping into Mr. Peabody's WAYBAC machine with the dial set to 1973. The front rooms had greenish yellow shag carpeting which amazingly looked a lot like Elvis' Jungle Room at Graceland circa 1976 (no, St. Pauli Girl would not allow me to recreate the jungle room). So for the past 18 months we have been slowly renovating and have learned the many idiosyncrasies of contractors, like how they work in their own time and space dimensions.

In February, we decided to finally tackle the kitchen, which would be our biggest and costliest renovation. We spent January getting estimates from plumbers, contractors, and electricians. It took all of January because most of them never returned our calls, the ones who did and made appointments rarely showed up, and of the final few, only two submitted an estimate. (Not to mention the tile guy "finalist" whose estimate looked good so we hired him, he said he'd start on Monday at 9:00, and we never heard from him again.) To summarize, we had to make six calls to get one estimate.

For the main project of knocking out a wall and reconfiguring a counter inot a breakfast bar, we finally settled on the bid of someone we'll call “Joe the Contractor.” Joe said it would take a week, maybe ten days. Did I mention that contractors live in their own time and space dimensions?

Day 1: Joe never showed up. He finally called and said he'd definitely be there the next day.

Day 2: Joe showed up with a helper. We were off to a good start.

Day 3: Joe's helper showed up by himself. Joe called later and explained the helper would remove the kitchen cabinets by himself. The helper successfully accomplished this task.

Day 4: Joe showed up and waited for his helper who never showed up. Joe complained to me, “I just don't know about these guys. They say they want to work and then disappear.” Hmmmm.

Day 5: Joe and another helper removed the wall and kitchen sink. The hard part was done! Or not.

Day 6: Joe started work on the new countertop which would extend out into the newly-opened space as a breakfast bar. He was very proud of his carpentry work and the new countertop looked nice, although the bar part seemed kind of small to me.

(It's important to note here that St. Pauli Girl designed the new kitchen layout and went over it detail by detail with Joe before he began. Had I been in charge, I would have said, “Well, we need a refrigerator, a microwave, and enough storage for the paper plates, cups, and sporks. That should do it.”)

When St. Pauli Girl came home that day she had a meltdown: the width of the new countertop/breakfast bar was a good 20 inches less than what she had specified. She called Joe and reminded him of the measurements they had gone over, stressing the "breakfast bar" part.

Day 7: Joe apologized, tore off the countertop and started a new one. He said, “I don't know, Dexter, maybe I should start writing stuff down.”

Day 8: While we were still waiting for the specially ordered laminate for the counter, Joe had an electrician friend come in to re-route some of the wiring from the old wall. Later that night, St. Pauli Girl noticed there was no electricity in the entire east side of the house.

Day 9: Saturday. The electrician pointed out he had disconnected the ceiling fan the previous day. I pointed out he had disconnected half of the house. “No, just the ceiling fan,” he insisted. I showed him the non-working half of the house. A few hours later, we had electricity again.

As much as we liked how hard Joe had been working, we really needed a break from him, so when he reported that he'd be back on Sunday, I said, “Oh no, take a break. Besides we'll be in church. And it's going to be a long service. Like all day.”

Day 10: The laminate for the countertop arrived. Joe carefully installed it, a beautiful faux marble. I couldn't wait for St. Pauli Girl to come home--she was going to love it!

Day 11: Time to install the new sink that had been waiting in the garage for weeks. Joe started on the cutout. After a few hours of diligence and lots of noise, I heard, “Damn!” followed by a pounding on the countertop. Joe came to my office and slammed open the door. “Dexter, you aren't going to believe this.”

He led me to the kitchen and showed the hole in the counter. “I read the sink specifications on the box and cut the hole accordingly. Maybe I should have taken the sink out and measured it.”

Yes, the hole was too big for the sink. Joe proceeded to tear off the second countertop, fresh laminate and all. We would have to order more, which meant more waiting.

The days had turned to weeks as we trudged through the project. Joe went off and worked on someone else's kitchen tasks while we continued washing dishes in the small bathroom sink. Joe hinted that he and another guy could tile the kitchen floor while we waited. Imagining what that comedy of errors might entail, we hired a third-generation tile-ist (whose five brothers also did tile/carpentry work) who showed up on time and finished the entire floor and a brick backsplash in two days.

After eleven days without a dishwasher or kitchen sink, the countertop installation was a success on the third try; the sink and the plumbing were easy after that. Later that day we let Joe know that he wouldn't be needed for the rest of the kitchen (Phases II and III). We called the tile guy to finish the rest, and he and his partner had it done in a day.

We have since scaled back our future renovation plans. If we can't do it ourselves, it's not going to happen.