I am going insane.

Utterly and completely nuts. Full on, Skippy Super Chunk. I haven't been able to work. Haven't been able to sleep. I have a nervous twitch. I frequently shout obscenities at no one. I'm breaking out in weird rashes, and no, that's not from San Francisco.

I am being tortured. And I am losing my mind. If Rumsfeld is looking for a new interrogation method, he needs onle to send some prisoners to my bedroom.

I'm fairly certain a couple of my exes might agree.

The nice lady who purchased the house directly behind mine has been renovating it.

Since January.

Fuck. There goes that twitch again.

Since January, I have been awakened daily with a morning symphony of jack hammers and circular saws and air compressors. I live on Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach. A circular saw is loud when heard behind closed doors several houses away in a typical suburban neighborhood. Would you like to know how far it is from my balcony to her backyard? Would you? About 25 feet.

Still, and excruciating as those experiences were, for the most part, it was agony I could deal with.

But lately it's become a Home Improvement Horror, and Bob Villa is my own private devil. The tile saw. Cutting concrete tiles for the patio. Located 25 feet from my bedroom/home office. And as we have no AC here on the beach, I have to keep my doors/windows open all day. All day. Open windows. 25 feet from a tile saw.

It doesn't stop. They show up at 7:30 AM to start working. All day. Tile. After tile. After tile. This whirring, shrieking sound cutting through the center of my skull as violently as the blade through the stone. I can hear it from every room in my house. I can hear it from outside my house. I can't make calls. I can't focus on email. I can't even surf for porn with out grimacing. And so not in a good way.

By about two or three in the afternoon I am reduced to a quivering little boy, hiding under the covers just begging for it to stop.

I have been desperate for solutions. I have been working from the corporate office frequently, but this results in me spending a fortune for lunch for the week, I can't complete sales calls successfully in loud, public cube farms, and I don't think well on the phone when I can't move, gesture and pace. And frankly, after about five hours in a cube farm I go almost as crazy.

Only my headache comes from beating my head against the desk. Not from the screaming demon from Hell Depot.

I wish I could say I want to be big about this. To be strong. But I think I could handle anything they suffer through on Fear Factor far better than I can handle this. At least on Fear Factor you know there's an end in sight, the bug is gone after it hits your stomach. This renovation has been a daily torment. And I'm beginning to think that when they are finished, they will just tear it down and begin sawing tiles all over again.

I want to be a grown up. I've asked them nicely to move the tile saw inside. Provide me with at least some level of insulation. It's still against the fence. Right under my bedroom.

But today, I snapped. I couldn’t take it. If I can't work, at least I can try to drown it out. For two hours I had 2Pac as loud as I could. How do you want it, bitch? How do you want it? Gangsta style. I'm throwing auditory gang signs out the window. Tomorrow, it's the complete Van Halen catalog, as loud as it can go.

I am considering a little midnight covert action with a pair of wire cutters and a hammer. Fuck it. I live on the harbor. I'm thinking that tile saw may need to receive some Luca Brasi style justice. Splash! The saw sleeps with the fishes.

I have suffered. Everyone in my neighborhood has suffered.

I'm thinking it's time to turn the table.

It might be time to consider moving the Kenwood and the JBL towers from the living room into my bedroom, pointing them out the door and playing the most repetitive, annoying drum and bass for hours. I'm thinking Riverdance. I'm thinking the Cotton Eye Joe. I'm thinking Achey Brakey Heart. On repeat.

But the real fun's gonna start when the construction is finally complete, and she moves in.

I'm parking my truck in front of her house, every morning at 6, and setting off the panic alarm from my balcony. Repeatedly. I'm going to spend every Sunday for a month, blasting the Macarena from my bedroom window. Like Hangin' Tough? Better learn to like NKOTB. You are bound to hear a lot of them. I am going to introduce her to the joy that is Rob Zombie. At 7:30 in the morning, every day. I'm investing in a good bird feeder and hanging it right on our shared fence until her newly laid tile patio is covered, covered in pigeon shit. I'm going to feed sardines to Seagulls from my back yard. I'm buying a Marshall amp and taking up the guitar despite the fact I have never played a chord in my life. I feel like playing a private game of Trading Spaces, only instead of showing up with a carpenter and a crappy designer bringing a tagger and a lumberjack.

But right now, most of all, I feel like having a big dinner of garlic bread and asparagus and using her fence as a toilet.