Improvements, Part Two

[Part One.]

There's a hole in my driveway, dear Liza.




The vibrating has somewhat diminished, now that the destruction of concrete is mostly complete. Now I am able to hear the workers shouting and laughing and hollering all day. I certainly don't begrudge them having fun on the job; it just makes more difficult the task of writing when one's mind keeps seeking to listen to voices outside the window. Not that the vibrating was better.

(Yes, I have thought of earplugs, but my goddamn stupid ear canals are too shallow to keep them in. This has been the bane of my existence since the invention of ear buds, when I was still walking around with my Walkman earphones plugged into my Discman like a TOTAL LOSER! So I was told.)

We didn't find out when the end of our driveway was demolished until about 10 minutes before the work began. Iain was leaving for work, and the crew had to move so he could back the car out. It was then they told him our driveway would not be accessible "until further notice." Some of our neighbors were not so lucky, and their cars are landlocked in their driveways. Or were, until they drove across lawn after lawn down the street, until they were free.

Anyway! There's a hole in my driveway. But the improvements are coming. So I am told.

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.

Seen

On the bumper of a van in front of us on the road, on the way to dinner with friends Friday night: "If you can read this, you weren't ABORTED. Call your MOM and thank her."

Capitalization original.

I tried to get a picture of it at a stoplight, but our headlights' reflection off its gloss rendered it unreadable. Sad trombone.

Given the fact that Indiana has the most abortion restrictions of any state in the union, it might make more sense to call Mitch Daniels and thank him.

If you're the sort of person inclined to thank people for your lack of abortedness, that is.

Daily Dose of Cute

Video Description: Zelda the black-and-tan mutt chases Dudley the white-and-red greyhound around the back of the garden. When he gets too far ahead of her, he slows down to let her catch up, but never actually catch him. They stop, and I tell her, "Zelda, get him! Go get him!" She runs after him some more. Repeat.

* * *

As I mentioned, we recently had to have our back garden fenced in, as the two-years-and-counting increasingly FUBARed construction project on our street is set to leave us without sidewalks in every direction for possibly six months. So, since we live in a place that doesn't give a fuck about basic amenities, but do ourselves give a fuck about providing our dogs with regular exercise, we had to spring for a fence.

(To give you some idea of how absurdly mismanaged and chronically stupid this project is, they are spending today tearing out the street in front of our house. Great idea, because who needs access to their driveways on a holiday weekend? I'm sure no one was planning on having people over for Thanksgiving.)

Anyway! Although it was highly irritating to be obliged by local incompetence to put ourselves in debt, the dogs are convinced we've gifted them with their own private dog park, and their joyfulness makes me happy.

Dudley has also been inspired to invent a new game which I call Bump. Basically, the game consists of Dudley bumping me, lol. I stand in the middle of the yard, and he walks over and flops against the back of my legs as hard as he can, and then I say, "BUMP!" and he curls around me then flops against the front of my legs, then the sides, and around and around, looking up at me and grinning like a fool while I say, "BUMP! BUMP!" and pet him and give him kisses.

He is 70 pounds, and this game will definitely put me on the ground someday. But probably not before Zelda's new game of "RUN AT TWO-LEGS AT TOP SPEED THEN LAUNCH MYSELF THROUGH THE AIR AT HER WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" does.

Indiana Continues to Bear the Hideous Fruits of Unchecked Conservative Governance

[Trigger warning for disablism, classism, and racism.]

Me, in February, responding to Most Willfully Stupid Person in the World David Brooks' gushing boycrush on my garbage governor Mitch Daniels:

[N]aturally Daniels proudly "spoke of...the education program that will give scholarships to students in failing schools so they can choose another." And while he talks a good game about how students from low-income families should have the same chance to attend a private school as students from wealthy families (as if a scholarship program for some poor kids really levels the playing field), the Indiana Coalition for Public Education has quite rightly noted that "taxpayer money shouldn't be directed to private schools, which can deny admission to certain students." The proposal thus stands to "reverse the state's progress on desegregation efforts."

Mitch Daniels' policies are consistently rooted in the conservative pipedream (which Brooks sooooooo loves) that there's no such thing as institutional bias and everyone can achieve precisely the same things if only they work hard enough. Just give poor people the same opportunities, and failure can thus be regarded as unassailable evidence of laziness.

Except: Shitty healthcare they can't afford and competition for education vouchers that favor low-income students who come from home environments that already give them a good chance of success, despite poverty, does not the same opportunities as wealth provides make.

Especially when rerouting tax dollars to private institutions that may select for existing biases means marginalized students may end up with the choice between shitty private schools and a shitty public school system. Swell.

The Associated Press, yesterday: Indianapolis Chief: Charter Schools Turning Away Homeless, Disabled: "The superintendent of the state's largest school district requested a state investigation Monday into his allegations that charter schools are turning away homeless and disabled students in violation of state and federal laws."

This, despite the fact that the same superintendent last week swore: "We take everybody that come through the door, whether they are blind, crippled, crazy."

Yeah, he's a real charmer.

Suffice it to say that discriminatory policies that target students by wealth disproportionately affect students of color, so in addition to being explicitly disablist and classist, this alleged practice is implicitly racist, too.

Anyway. Welcome to Indiana: What happens when you let Republicans run rampant with no meaningful checks or balances. Bootstrap Paradise.

[H/T to Shaker PK.]