Improvements

My house is vibrating again. And it's making my brain rattle around in my skull, which has the effect of reducing its function to a single thought: "This can't be good."

The street on which I live has been under construction now for more than two years. It's an "improvement project," but unless the street is paved with magical concrete that resists potholes and resurrects roadkill, no improvement could justify the nightmare that this project has been, nothing could make the headaches and inconveniences and interruptions in basic utility services worthwhile.

At this point, I'd be happy to be left with a dirt road if the construction would just go away already.

That would be an improvement.

We haven't been able to get directly to the main part of town for two years, having to drive 15 minutes out of our way to get somewhere that should take 5. Our sidewalks are trashed and dangerous, and they will not be repaired until at least next spring. One mailbox has been smashed and destroyed; the replacement box was uprooted and tossed on the lawn. Our electricity, internet, gas, and water are regularly turned off for hours at a time, deliberately or accidentally, mostly without any warning. We currently have no garbage service, and no mail service.

This morning, it snowed—and when Iain left for work, the construction crew told him that we would have to park our car "somewhere else until further notice." Where? There are no roads with shoulders near our house. This means we also can't use our garage, necessitating snow/frost removal each morning, and adding wear and tear to our car.

All of these things are inconvenient and annoying—but they are also costly. When one has to drive extra miles every day for two years at $3+ a gallon, that turns into more than just a cost of one's time. When we have to throw out spoiled groceries, when we have to replace our mailbox multiple times, when we have to fix the cracks in our plaster from the house-rattling work, when I lose worktime because I've got no electricity, when we'll have to replace our lawn from driving over it, when we had to spend thousands of dollars installing a fence because we have nowhere to walk our dogs anymore... This is more than an inconvenience.

We're spending an awful lot of money, in addition to the exorbitant property taxes we already pay (which have more than doubled since we moved into this house), to subsidize an "improvement" we neither wanted nor needed.

As I try to write, the house shakes, jarring my skull. The sounds of construction in the road filter in through the window. The beep beep beep beep beep beep beeping of reversing trucks is like a dozen digital gnats fighting a civil war in my ear canals. I breathe slowly and try to tune it out. It's an improvement project! Think of how improved everything will be!

The project was supposed to be done by now. But there have been two strikes, which caused significant delays in the schedule, since workers weren't immediately given the fair pay and benefits for which they were asking. There had to be negotiations and compromise and the usual rigmarole when people have the temerity to ask for living wages. No improvement there. Now they're working on weekends and holidays, making double time and a half, because the project is so over schedule. Thank Maude the state forced them to strike to bicker over pennies.

There are so many problems. There's no communication from the city government. There's no accountability. And now, the Democratic mayor has been voted out of office, in no small part because of the clusterfucktastrophe that is this project. People are angry. I'm angry. (Despite this, on Election Day, I tried to ride my bike to the polls, but I couldn't get there because of the impassable state of my street. Whooooooooops.) So she'll be gone soon, to be replaced by a Republican white dude who is a total garbage nightmare, who was straight-up sexist and racist to my face when he came campaigning at my door.

That's certainly not an improvement.

In the meantime, the project carries on. We have garbage piling up in our garage, nowhere to park our car, and no end in sight. And my brain continues to rattle around in my skull, a reverberating reminder of how much better everything will be totally definitely for sure someday.