Squawk Radio

Over the course of this summer I, like other squawkers, have been immersed in Home Improvements.

It began innocently enough. We live in a 50's style rambler with the original windows and siding. Sometime, oh, in the winter of 1998 or so, my husband said, "Wouldn't it be nice if come spring some of these windows opened?"

Things being as they are in this household, around 2001 I answered. "Yeah."

Then wham! I wake up one day in June of this year to find the yard being invaded by buff young shirtless men carrying saws and crowbars and lumber and windows. Okay. I admit it. At first it wasn't bad. The blood rushing through my temples succeeded in drowning out the buzz of electric saw and insistent pounding of hammers. For a while. But those days were short and short- lived.

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Soon, my aesthetic appreciation for the young male form had been replaced with irritation. They are everywhere I look: hanging outside every window (and if stepping out of the shower only to see the shadowy form of a painter hovering outside your second floor bathroom window doesn't get the old heart pumping, I'm here to tell you NUTHIN' will!) smoking under the tree in the front yard (I'm a reformed smoker, I want to join them,) hammering in time to the blare from their CD player (from a mere distaste for Beyonce I have developed a full blown case of loathing.)

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Added to which, my dogs chase the sound of the ladder being dropped against the siding from one side of the house to the other. Their equipment is snapping the branches and leaves off my shrubs. The pre-pubescent Paris Hilton wannabes in the neighborhood wobble past my house in stiletto heels and increasingly scanty clothing trying to attract the crew's attention and I am concerned the morality police are going to start conducting raids on the neighborhood-- and not take the workmen!

Today when Jon (who cannot be more than seventeen and has the best ab muscles in a five state area) banged on the bedroom window and told me to hurry up and open it so he could paint, I cranked that baby with enough force to knock Jon's ass off the ladder. Alas, he must have recognized the demented light in my eyes, for he casually swung beneath the window, snickering as he went.

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Next time, Jon, next time.

Anyone else out there have remodeling war stories? Anyone ever actually been convicted of a crime related to their home improvement experiences? Was any prison time involved? Inquiring minds need to know...