Shhh .... don't wake the road crew

      No one's reading the blog today. Shhh. We can talk behind their backs. Come over here. I've got chocolate-covered pretzels and Barq's root beer in a frosted mug. We can have a nice sit down and chat a bit before we have to be writerly and all that.
      Let me tell you of the latest annoyance in my life. The city decided to tear up my perfectly good street apparently just to put the street back exactly as it was. Or I guess that's their plan. Mostly we just have piles of gravel and crushed stone everywhere and a dirt road that wouldn't look out of place on the Oregon Trail.
      And the road crew has placed black steel rods -- at random -- in the street and in our lawns. I don't know what they're for. They're sinister in day and invisible at night. Frankly the whole thing is creepy, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a tribe of cannibals ravaging down the ravine and placing shrunken heads on those spikes.
      The road crew start work every day at 6:30 a.m., apparently thinking that all of us should be up at that time since they are. I actually am because it takes a while for me to face going to work (I need time to build up my courage and get sober), but some of my neighbors who work nights have been talking about taking up arms against the road crew. I try to discourage this as the crew has access to some mighty machines, and I have this mental picture of a critically wounded crewman driving his bulldozer through my house, and then where would I live? Not with Pamela. I've given up on her, especially since she got that court order.
      I was told by my red-headed next door neighbor that she was told by the man who raises roses two houses up that he was told by the lady who has the rat dog that the old man who walks all the time around the block was told by one of the road crew that the construction would be done in four weeks. That was seven weeks ago. So no one really knows when our street will return to normal if ever.
      At least, I don't have the view of the porta-potty that my other next door neighbor has. Every time she opens her front door, there it is, right across the street in all its green glory. And apparently the door doesn't latch or maybe the users are trying to get fresh air, but for whatever reason, she wears a startled look all the time now and has taken to using her back door to get out of the house even though that means she has to vault her security fence, which isn't easy for a woman on the far side of seventy.
      We've always had a nice neighborhood here, but now it has a distinctly trashy look. Or maybe like one of those post World War III movies where everyone slowly sinks into savagery except our hero who is an android and that one beautiful woman who is willing to make a life with someone who is basically an appliance. Yesterday as I wandered among the towering piles of road rubble and crushed stone, I think I saw those desert people from the first Star Wars movie. If only old Ben was here, he could use his light saber to lay a welt across the collective backs of that road crew.
      Did I mention the dust? I meant to, but I got distracted when I coughed up a lung. It hangs in the air giving us that smoggy foggy look that most people have to go to London for. And it's just about as healthy. It coats our houses, our cars, our children. "Dust to dust" has taken on a whole new meaning here.
      Of course, someday the road crew will be finished. They'll gather up their equipment and look out over the new street and feel a great sense of accomplishment. It will come as a great surprise as we rise up, seize our black spikes and insanely chase them out of the neighborhood.
      So ... what's shakin' in your world?