Let the festivities begin

My neighborhood is looking like a war zone. The area is undergoing some massive reconstruction that promises to raise home values and add character to our streets. True, some improvement is needed. The potholes on Arlington are so deep, several neighborhood children were seen wading in them after the last storm. And I suppose a new sewer system is always a good idea. But the planning and execution of this two-year project seems a bit off.

Now, I am no expert, but it seems to me that maybe tearing up EVERY STREET in a ten-block area is not the best way to go about it. Perhaps they could have attacked the plan one, maybe two, blocks at a time? No. Our neighbor, for example, works at the Como Zoo, which is four blocks away. This morning, she could not get to work by car! I shit you not. I’ll address the logic of driving four blocks to work at a later date. That is not the point here.

Also, they are still working as I type this. It is 8:52 in the evening. So on the first few beautiful evenings of the year, when we have our windows open to catch the breezes, what we are catching instead are a whole lot of sharp beeping noises and a thin wave of dust that coats the surfaces of our furniture, the porch walls, my skin.

I keep telling myself it will all be worth it in the end, but we are two days into the second summer of the project, and already they have busted a water main (leaving us water-less right in the middle of dinner time, sending neighbors into the streets in protest. Hey, at least we met some neighbors.) and have left the few remaining open streets so full of pebbles and holes so as to render them 4 wheel drive territory.

Sigh.