Construction has begun #2

[Construction has begun #1]

Last night I was up late, working. I went to bed very late, fully expecting to sleep in; I didn't have any early commitments.

Ah, but the best laid schemes....

I was awakened at around 7 AM by the sounds of blasting. Rock blasting. Just outside my bedroom window, it seemed. I hunkered down and covered my head with every piece of bedding I could muster, determined to squeeze a few more drops of sleep out of the morning. Which I managed to do, although not for long enough to suit me.

When I got up and looked outside, I saw that the end of my small driveway was no more. Instead, there was a twelve-foot-deep trench, and three workmen next to two enormous gray concrete pipes.

Yes, I knew they'd been working on the sewers lately in my neighborhood--but, till now, nowhere near me, and rather quietly at that.

I asked them why they hadn't at least warned me this was going to happen, since it would have been a simple matter to have taken my car out of the driveway before they started and parked it a little ways down the street. Now I was trapped here. Their answer was that this was their first day on the job, and they hadn't thought of it. I politely suggested it might be something they should consider adding to their job description in the future whenever were about to obliterate someone's driveway.

Fortunately, today was a rare day when there was no place I absolutely had to be; I was able to jettison the things I'd scheduled. It's actually been sort of fun to have an enforced day in the house, although I wouldn't want to make a habit of it. I've even been getting a few--just a few--long-postponed tasks accomplished. I've been able to notice just how very excellently the new gutter performs during a deluge--because, like almost all the other days here since I've returned, we've had rain. I've wondered just how much more rain we can stand. I've been grateful I live on a hill and therefore don't have to worry--yet--about my basement flooding.

The workmen promised me that this would be done by late afternoon, the hole miraculously filled in as though it never had happened, and that I'd be liberated to use my car once again. But the rain has made the workers stop and start periodically, and so I wonder--and then, at the very moment I'm typing this sentence, I realize the noise itself has stopped just a few moments ago.

And so I stop as well, look out the window again--and voila!

Fixed: