We’re having our driveway, sidewalk, and front stairs re-paved this week. They actually began in the garage, ripping out a floor that had settled quite dramatically. That meant that we had to drag everything out of the garage and pile it up on our patio in the back yard. All this disorder is really yanking my chain. Here I am reading handbooks written in the 1950s about entertaining and running a successful home, which already had me readjusting my startlingly low standards in terms of house keeping and cooking, and now, I’ve got clutter all over everything and muddy shoes tromped through the house.
So I swing from running around trying to get the recycling out of the sink and picking up orphaned clothes; to wandering out into the street to watch the cement being poured. I try not to be conspicuous, but I end up taking pictures and edging closer and closer, and soon I’m chatting up the foreman, getting him to explain the importance of a four inch slump, and why we need a conduit laid under the sidewalk. What’s that for, I ask him over and over, much the same way my kids would crowd around me when they were little, pointing and asking questions when I was doing something exciting like cleaning the cat box.
Tomorrow the cement workers will be finished and then a new crew of masons will come to lay the brick on the front steps. As soon as one of them gives me a friendly nod I’ll take that as an open invitation to step closer and yell over the machines, Whatchya doin’ there?