Extremely loud noises are permeating my living room as workers pull the walls apart to remove a mold problem around our windows. We renovated the entire house two years ago, to make it accessible, so in my opinion this should not be happening. But I have a lot of opinions, and only so much control.

The first to arrive was Ronnie, at 8am, in a dark polo with the logo of his company and jeans, his scruffy blond beard a match not only for so many people in his construction industry, but also nearly every man in San Francisco. Beards have been in for so long that I keep expecting the backlash – – didn’t everyone read the articles about how beards are as dirty as toilet seats? Scarlett keeps trying to get Rob to grow a mustache. I am not a fan of that plan. But again, opinions.

I will disclose that the last time Rob grew a mustache, a friend of mine who had never met him asked if he was my dad. This story still makes me laugh, and that is why I enjoy sharing it widely. Rob is less enthusiastic about my telling it, but he should get his own blog. I’m sure there would be plenty to say.

Ronnie tapes a plastic tarp around all the windows to keep the rest of the house clean, and then admits that once he is trapped inside of this rustling cage, he is overheating. I don’t know where Ronnie is from. His English is perfect, but tinged with an accent I can’t place.

An idea occurs to me.

“Ronnie,” I call into the plastic. “Where are you from?”

Denmark. He is 37 like me. He’s lived here for 15 years.

“Are you writing this down?” he asks, perplexed.

Evidently normal people don’t grill their construction workers mid-project. I don’t care; I make him tell me all the tools he’s using: hammer, flat bar, impact screw gun.

Around noon, Ronnie finishes what he’s doing, and Lamar arrives. Lamar is in charge of the stuffing in our wall, which we now need to replace with mold-resistant stuffing. People who know what they’re talking about do not call the stuffing “stuffing.” They call it sheet rock. So Lamar is the sheet rock guy, but as the supervisor he is just checking in to see how are things going. Lamar is wearing an Oakland Raiders sweatshirt and glasses, and the remaining hair on his head is pretty gray. Ronnie wants to know if he can read what I’m writing. “No,” I say.

Then Freddy arrives to take over the work. Freddy gets into the plastic tent and starts overheating, too. Freddy is short, maybe shorter than me if I could stand. He is from Mexico and speaks to my assistant in Spanish, a sound infinitely preferable to the grinding of the impact screw gun behind the tarp. Later I find out that he was basically hitting on her and telling her about his unhappy marriage. “Were you uncomfortable?” I groan. “Not really,” she laughs. She is happily married.

It’s difficult to write like this, mostly because every time I try to use my dictation device, the computer picks up the whine of the machinery, the voices in the background, and the dog barking, hysterical that there are strangers in the house while he remains outside.

I’m a big baby about Otto, I think because I have begun to identify so closely with him. He and I are dependent on other people for everything, although he can eat grass and bugs if he wants to, which he clearly does, because he is disgusting. But he is also a puppy, my puppy, and when he cries at the door to be let in, I want nothing more than to open it. I can’t open doors, and right now he needs to stay outside, because no one needs him eating the tarp.

When I ask Rob questions like did Otto eat? does he have enough water? don’t you think he just wants some attention? I’m really, maybe, talking about myself. Of course I can use my words in a way that my dog cannot. But sometimes I think it would be nice if people would just pick up on the signals. A dog whining at the door, a woman sitting in a wheelchair staring out the window and thinking how nice it would be to have a hand rested on her pointy shoulder.

Enough. Otto is fine, I am fine. I decide to ask Lamar some questions about himself.

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