the grinch who stole easy listening

My house is "semi-detached": on one side, we rub right up against one next door neighbor's house, our houses cheek to jowl, but on the other side, there's a little space. The neighbors' house is right up on the edge of the border, but on our side there's a little room, with a paved and gated path from the sidewalk into our postage stamp-sized yard. Being "semi-detached" is a big selling point in San Francisco, where most houses are not detached in any way, because presumably it's quieter. That is nice for the neighbors, as our shrieking children and shrieking parrots can pump out the decibels at times, but meaningless for us. The neighbors are extremely quiet middle-aged gay professionals who rarely make any audible sounds, except when they are tending quasi-obsessively to the landscaping out front. We're quite lucky with the neighbors on both sides and across the street, who are all charming and highly enjoyable people.

You would think that when neighbors have work done, it would affect us more when it's the conjoined neighbor, but ironically, no, it's the semi-detached neighbors. I barely noticed a sound when the undetached neighbor had people in working. This year the semi-detached neighbors are renovating in a big way: replacing the foundation, building a new fence, re-paving their yard with special bricks, repainting the house, reshingling the roof, etc.., etc... My neighbor told me that his goal was to have the work done in the foggy, cold summer so when the heat of Indian summer hit, it would all be done and we could all peacefully enjoy our yards. I believed that, and I was hopeful that when I came home from Burning Man, all the work would be done and I could have some peace and quiet.

The contractor in charge of the prior work was quite possibly the loudest person I have ever met, and it drove me insane listening to him shouting obscenities all day long (I also got over-the-top filled with rage when his worker dropped a big pile of shingles on my miniature fuchsia). I was glad when his part of the project seemed done. Little did I know that those were the golden days. The next contractor, the one painting the house, was really the torturer. An extremely angry looking silver-haired old white man who glared at me every time I crossed his path, he had a horrible habit. Every morning he set a crappy ghetto blaster on the sidewalk in front of my neighbor's house, tuned to the easy listening station, and put it on as loud as it would go.

The Backstreet Boys. Mariah Carey. Whitney Houston. Miley Cyrus. Endless ads for colon cleanses and life insurance. All at horrible, nerve-rending, soul-killing volumes, and scratchy and distorted to boot. Shouldn't people doing manual labor rock out to heavy metal? Even house or trance music would have been preferable. Maybe free form jazz would have been worse, but maybe not.

I let it go. I like to listen to music or books on tape when I'm working with my hands, sewing or cooking, and I figured it couldn't take that long to get my neighbor's moderately sized house painted. They weren't even doing anything fancy, just slapping on another coat of dark brown, without even a contrasting trim. I just kept all my doors and windows hermetically sealed. But even so, that horrible, bland, scratchy music penetrated. I tried to take a nap a couple of days when I'd been tortured by insomnia, and that godawful easy listening music made my blood pressure so high I couldn't fall asleep, no matter how sleep-deprived and tired I was.

Additionally, because a small fraction of my neighbors' house can be reached only by coming onto my property, the painters wanted my gate kept open all the time, and the mellow-music addicted old crab was constantly striding up and down my path, glaring at me if I came or went. I figured my green hipster braids were offensive to his middle-of-the road sensibilities, but the angry glares added to the unpleasantness.

On Columbus Day the children had the day off from school, and I had a nasty head cold and no energy. Horrible Henry, our tabby, brought a very beautiful little dead mouse upstairs and left it in the middle of the landing. The children were extremely upset, and the only thing which calmed them down was the idea of a funeral. I donated a little jewelry box, and Lola made an exquisite card. She put a lot of thought into what a mouse needed for happiness, carefully inscribing "I wish you food, friends, and safety in your second life." They were ready to bury the little mouse in the backyard, but as soon as they ventured out, they were back in, corpse in hand. The blaring easy listening music and the glaring workman made it impossible to hold a solemn ceremony. "We can't be out there," they said firmly. I ended up dragging my Kleenex, aching head, and racking cough down to the Aquarium of the Bay so we could escape that awful music...

but when we came home, it seemed the children had misplaced the dear departed. Somewhere in this house, there is a small dead animal in a lovingly decorated little box, and I can't find it anywhere. I can only imagine that eventually we'll be able to locate the remains by smell, and I'm not looking forward to it.

I snapped on Tuesday. I was looking fruitlessly for the missing corpse, and the horrible mellow music was fraying my last nerve, pounding on me, and it was one of the few, tragically few, days in San Francisco over 80 degrees, but I couldn't even open a window. I wanted to be relaxing in my yard with a big glass of iced coffee and my cats, who love it when I spend time outside with them and are much more friendly and companionable in the yard than they ever are inside. I contacted my neighbor and told him I felt like I was living in Abu Ghraib and that if his painter didn't stop playing that godawful easy listening radio station I was going to commit a homicide. Within minutes the radio turned off, and it didn't come back on.

Now the painter does have a reason to glare at me, but maybe without the comforts of easy listening he'll pick up the pace and get that house painted. I can open the windows again, finally. Now if I could just find those remains, I could even have a solemn burial.