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1:11 pm | 16 July 2003 | welcome home. watch your step.

My apartment building--or, rather, the area immediately surrounding it--looks like some filthy low-rent set for "Kabul: The Movie." Under some vague pretense of "improvement" (improving what exactly is unknown--the sidewalk was fine and the street had just been repaved), the City has been out there for weeks, shredding concrete en masse without actually changing or replacing anything. Pure destruction. The street has that flayed dermabrased look. At SEVEN AM every day a fleet of new and threatening machines arrives. One, sort of a cross between a crane (the bird) and a compass (the drawing implement), exists apparently to peck holes into the ground at the base of the lamppost; another clutches clawsful of dirt and flings them in nonspecific directions.

The real bonus of this is that the very first day or two they took up the sidewalk in front of our building, already a sort of shady one (the apartment on the first floor seems to be host to an ever-changing roster of folks--at least six must live there, i think, among them a mustachioed man who lets his dog poop in the street, and two young Latina girls with walkie-talkies who are ALWAYS standing in the main entryway looking kind of pre-hoochie). And every day the rubble--a mixed bag of dirt, gravel, broken cement, plywood, cinderblocks, the aforementioned dog crap, and some metal bits--gets rearranged, again for no obvious reason, so every morning is like another refugee version of American Gladiator as yours truly wobbles on her high fancy work shoes through all the debris. Some days there'll be a sheet of plywood, meant to help us along, and now there seems to be a sort of "bridge" made of sand dumped in a little ramp up to the doorway. It's like the construction workers never figured out they left the sandbox. And it's really great having friends over. "Yeah, right on the corner, across from the funeral home. No--yeah, the building with the piles of dirt and shit in front of the door. No, yeah, THAT ONE."

Every morning is a disgruntling experience as i glare at slackjawed constructors, leaning on their shovels and spitting brown globs of chaw onto MY BUILDING. At this point, asking them when it'll be done is just a waste of time; i'd almost rather challenge them to really get my attention. "YO, this gravel? It ain't shit. A cracked manhole cover spun off a gaping (duh) manhole? Yes, please. That's a cute little jackhammer you've got. Bet you can't make the sidewalk any worse. Oh, yeah? BRING IT, MOTHERFUCKER." Argh.

I know i'm a spoiled american and all that good stuff, but i feel like i ought to be laying stores of tinned goods, bottled water, and rifles. It's fairly post-apocalyptic without any of the fun Mad Max stuff or radiation mutations or jetpaks. Seriously. If my house is gonna have that post-mushroom-cloud look, can't i at least get, you know, a giant ammonia-filled tentacle on my back or some gills or something? Disappointed again! clm.


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