Chapter One

1 Linc

Let me tell you about the screwed-up state of things in our house these days. We have no kitchen. We haven’t had one for eight weeks and four days. The refrigerator is standing where a bathroom shower used to be. I am boiling my pasta and making my oatmeal on the grill on the patio. Our kitchen table changes weekly. Right now it’s the new stainless-steel dishwasher, still in the box.

Midnight peeing has become a hazardous endeavor because someone inevitably has left something in the middle of my memorized, sacred, eyes-closed path to the toilet. Nails, screws, wood splinters, gobs of caulk and Sheetrock dust litter the floors, and shoes must be worn at all times. Bathrobes, too, for the girls. We have strange men coming and going in and out all doors of our house for most of the day.

The renovation at 363 Jacaranda St. has been systemic, to say the least, and I know now that we should have moved out for the project. Jo says we still should move out for the duration of the renovation, but how much longer can it take? Staying in this war zone has become somewhat of a badge of honor with me. If we can weather this, we can weather anything, right?

We are gutting all three bathrooms down to the studs. For the time being, we shower in one bathroom, pee in another, brush our teeth in a third, and this configuration changes with each week.

We are redesigning the kitchen and great room. We are replacing all forty-two windows and five doors.

But the biggy is this: We are literally raising the roof—okay, not the roof but the ceiling—of the entire house by eight inches because at six-foot-four I feel like Gulliver in this 195