Construction News

Construction – the rest of the project entries all at once April 26, 2008

Posted by jeanne in construction news, Gardening, Urban Development.
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note: i’m posssting the rest of the entries in one large post, because i’m tired of not getting it done. misspellings and all. i’ll go thru first and strip out anything not connected with the project.

saturday april 26 ’08
the place has been open, the tapas bar restaurant is doing very well, and we’ve got a few tenants, some we see when they walk their dogs. the economy blah and the place is way empty but it can only fill. they finally took the construction trailer away sometime in february. the tornado in mid-april was guided gently by our house by the building, which only suffered damage to the green canopy and nothing else. see atlanta tornado post, below.

thursday 11/7
below freezing last night, according to the predictions. cold, duh. nothing going on except some whiny sanding sounds, and a red electrical company truck outside. barel any workmen still on te site, but an overflowing dumpster and a pile of boards on the driveways.

friday 11/2
warm. 65 in the morning. cool in the shade. very little going on that we can see. but this is normal. someone put a bunch of boxes in the dumpster, but ti could be trash from the party rather than someone moving in. someone pulled up at night and dmped a whole bumch of stuff from thei car or truck. i guess i’ll stop keeping track of what’s happening when they remove the consruction trailer/
maggie-not has had a cement drievway put in off the alley, and today we saw her down there having an automatic gate put in. she’s tired of trying to park on teh street, what with the drestaurant and everyone always stealing her plae. so she’s going to come back into the back, if the illegal parkers a the cajun place don’t block her way.

thursday 11/1
big party. grand opening. the parking garage and the parking deck were full of cars. walked the dogs past the girl fitting freezing in the wind at the front entrance, and she said tat 12 people had bought units already. ya. late that night soomene dumped loads of empty bottles into the dumpster in teh alley. woke me up.

wednesday 10/31
husband suggested razor-blade shaped candy fr halloween. i figure the scare about razors in the apples was a ploy by the candy industry o get us to stop giging out natural, healthy snacks. conspiracy.
planted the last rose bush in teh back around the trees. moved the leaves i’d swept back in the ine of the drainage ditch and put them on top of the monkey grass – daffodil – hosta line parralleling the path. then i was exhausted. warmer still today, someclouds.
discovered a mini dozer and a cement truck at maggie’s hoouse. we went to investigate and discovered water pouring from the ceiling in the parking garagee, underneath the new restaurant-too-be. it was pouring thru the ceiling, and had taken some of the fireproofing off. maggie’s having a driveway put in her back yard, and it dowsn’t look like tehbuilding or the city is doingit. it looks like private contractors and she’s paying for it. i guess.

tuesday 10/30
a little warmer, but i woe gloves on the dogwalk this morning. it got almost hot in the afternoon, the sun still warm. the restaurant is coming long. they’re buidling a bar, it looks like, in hte middle of the place, and it seems like they’re building their own cold box in the back. they’ve got the entire half of athe front of the buidling. there’s only 2 more commercial spaces facing the streets, and they’re not huge.

monday 10/29
still cold, wind in the moring. 56. up to 65 afternoon. only a few truck sparked along cyde street. they’ve had o stop wateringthe plants, we’ll see how logn they last. there are a few red trucks up on teh parking deck, maybe fire control guys, someone attending to last minute things. forman hasn’t been here all last week, so i guess he’s gone. he cleaned out his trailer some while he was here, and i picked up loads of different sets of plans and a bunch of areal pictures that i’ll put up as things go along.

friday

thursday 10/25
fucking freezing thismorning. 52 at 9. up to 60 after noon. clouds still coming frmothe southeast, and lgiht and fluffy, an upper level low churning off in mississippi bringing stuff fromm the gulf, but it’s so cold.
more trucks nd cars parked on the parking deck. goig outside to dig in the garden, get the last of the daffodils down. dug holes yesterday for the rose bushes, might puut them in today. got 2 plastic garbage cans to collect rainwater from the gutters up on the roof.

weeddnnsaay 10/24riall dayy, moostttlldriizze,bu nw’s raiinng. quitteee coooll,,o baryhtiitng 60. novisible activity onttheees ixceptf orcars cominnggg adino in theparking deck – a copy taking a tour around, ffromthhee llookssso it,un e’s looking foofrsmenoe. noottticeedhh nneeantt’s ligs on last night after he dogwarlk. ohheree’ss omthiinng treesting. thhe syssccoottruukj camedwntee allyttooge t the cajun place. din’t know they’d use the alley access, ig ueeesswhavt oe xpect these things. drat.
the buildout of teh restaurant continues, the doors are all in place in a plywood wall, and i can see counters going up inside.

tuesday 10/23
75 degrees in the early morning. it wasssuppoedto rain around dawn. there was this terrific lien of thunderstorms approaching fom the gulf, and they just evaporated as they came across, the whole line. at dawn there was this wonrously sickly orange light, and it changed to green, band then it got really dark again, but just a sprinkle, not even enough to get nderneath the trees. drat.
yesterday i platned the remaining gardenia, at the southwest corner of the house, and put down a dozen or so daffodils alon the path, and dug the ditch coming from lak ahr a litle deeper so it would drain witout flooding my land.
forman is back, we saw him on our dogwalk, but he ws on the phone adncouldn’t talk to us. we said we were glad he was back, and he frwned and said it was temporary. a year and a half temprary. poor guy. but we’re still glad o see him.
the only visible action is a few miexicans in hardhats walking down the alley and into the parking garage.

monday 10/22
it started raining in the night, it’s cloudy now and in the 70s, and the rain is coming from the gulf. looks like we’ll get showers off and on all day. yay. i was told by the folks at the garden center that yes in fact there’s a total watering ban on now, and it looks like i’ve been violating it for some time, because even tho i’m watering a new planted area, i’m not a licensed contractor, andd they’re the only ones who get an exemption to water. so shit. we’ve now got barrells up to colelct runoff from teh roof, and there is at least 8″ in the one in teh back after our rain. we’e going to be saving dishwshing waer and dipping out bathwater from now on. at least it’s not hot outside, or this wouldn’t work.
grinding noises, but it could be those idiots trying to blow wet leaves off the parking deck. other than that, can’t tell what they’re doni because it’s all finishing work, punch list stuff. and forman’s gone altogether, we learned this weekend. went for a vacation and never came back. os much for saying godbye. noticed several weeks ago that the construction camera had ebeen taken down, so i’m sure that website where we could watch things happening is down now. i’ll try it sometime just to make sure, but i can’t imagine it would still be operating.
the workers are all mexican at this point, and mostly cleaners. they came back from lunch in a group, down the alley to the parking garage, flicing towelsls at each other.

friday 10/19
it rained last night, not heavey but steady. i get to go out and dig some now that the dirst is softened over the trash pit i’m currently trying to plant azaleas in. was woken up this morning. workmen out there in the wet using blowrs to take leaves off the alley and parking deck. i hate those things.

thursday 10/18
the workmen are still lining up outside the parking gargage gates in the dark, waiting to be let in. aroun 7:30 as far as i can tell. it’s still dark then.
cleaned the fish tanks and watered te garden out front. i’m going to dig up the daylillies that haven’t ever bloomed and put them on the hill with the clover, as soona s they’re thru messing about back there, which they haven’t started. cloudy but not raining. in the 70s.

wednesday 10/17
spent a little time trying to dig another hole for an azalea, back by the kousa dogwood. the hle was so full of trash from 80 years ago that i couldn’t dig it, and got really tired and gave up. got 40 large dafodils that i’m gonig to have to take sme time planting, in a line between he mo nkey grass and hostas lining the path. this means diging in some spots right thru the layer of gravel that’s underneath the dirt, wheethey had a driveway 20 years ago, and digging thru the latyer of trash and coal that was there 60-80 years ago. sunny and bright, no chance of rain. in the 70s.

tuesday 10/16
cool and cloudy, bu t the rain is going to both south and north of us, so oh well. there are still workmen’s trucks lined up on the street. forman is still not here. there are a bunch of chairs in one of the bissey street windows, te first residential floor. looks like some sort of meeting space. the restaurant space is being built out now. there si a notice of isusance sign in the woidow, and while the opening is still boarded up, theer are doors stacked just inside waitin to be installed, and there are 2x4s being put up inside around teh wals. forman was hoping they’d build it out after he was done with it, and it lookks lie that’s how it worked. good for him.

monday 10/15
we saw tv flicker last night on the dogwalk, one of the west facing units. we have resident(s)!

friday 10/12
warmer in the day. still only hitting 70 at noon. very little work going on. got out and put in two more azaleas on the right side of the path, raked up a bunch of gravel on teh flat low part of the left side of the path, and used the blade of my shovel topare up a bunch of dirt to make the path lower so drainage will happen. used the dirt to fill in behind the rocks so the water will have nowhere to go. blue blue sky, no clouds.

thursday 10/11
another colf front in th enight. bright blue sky. cold this morning,and a cold breeze now aaftre noo. was 59 at 8 when we went for the dogwalk. now a cold breeze as well, but in the 70s. can’t tell what they’re doing but there’s a car aparked on the parking deck. still doennnnn’t look like anyone lives theere yet. someone came by in a pickup before dawn, stopped in the alley, loaded some of the stuff stored out there into their truck, and sped off. stealing? it never happens on a construction site…
out frnt, they’ve had to gte in and cdrill and bulldoze and lower and fill around the manhole in the intersection, because it’s too lhigh. so i’m waitintg to see if the cemen tiss till soft when i come back. who knows?

wednesday 10/10
cool f ront passed, cool at night, in te 60s in the morning. saw streetlights around the building, looks like they jsut put them up. and trees. th place is now fuly landscaped. almost done. forman is o vacation tihs week, hope he’s at home with the wife, doig nothing. only got into the 60s all day.

tuesday 10/9
guys came roud to water and remulch the plants. other guys doing punch list things, grinding off something on the face of te parking garage. cloudy and col, in the 70s until noon. it’s been in the mid 80s lately, and into the 60s at night. just wonderful weather.
plut in more monkey grass behind the stones of the walkway, laid out some of the azaleas o te left side of the path, moved the buckets of dug-up monkey grass into the path. need to plant daffodilsbettween sone and bric (between monkey grass and osta), and need to put mulch over it beecaus itwashes away eevrry tiiiem getttwae on. the beds whre i put clover seed two days ago are sprouted alreaddy.anthe hill between the property is turning green at a fast rate. still need to rake off the grrrravel on teh ower edge of teh left hand path and dig the dirt lower to make more of a channel. it’s suspiciously high there, but in fact it’s lower than the end of the path where it’s supposed to run off thru the trees to the drainage pipe. that’s goingto be troble.

monday 10/8
there’s a van parked behind the parking garage, but no sign of what they might be doing. it’s all cleanup and punclist at this poin, and we’re very glad to have no constructio noise happening when we wake in the morning. it’s a beautiful day, with puffy clouds. still in the 70s in early afternoon. how nice.
the city water people haven’t been back for a wekk. i’ve got roses to get into the ground when they’re done messing with the yards, but there’s no sight of them.

friday 10/5
cloudy much fo the day, and it rained last night for awhile. warm and balmy today, 80 seems to be the new normal temperature. nothing seemed to have washed away from my wildflower patch, but we’ll see. it might be dry enough to go out and dig and plant the 2 azaleas and the gardenia inside the wildflower patch; i haven’t yet turned th earth, andit needs oads of improvement before i can put plants into it, unlike thehostas and monkey grass which i just dumped in and covered over.
the 2 blue genie cranes have disappeared, and now tere’s no sound comig from the building. as if it’s done. so iwon’t be keeping this chronology very much longer. what a void it’ll leave in my life (not).

thursday 10/4
woke up to heavy rain, had to go out and clear out the viaduct (runoff chasm) from lake ahr before it washed away the lower part of the seeds i planted last night. the gravel paht was mucky whee theslope evens out, may have to do omething about that. but no leakage over intoe the wildfower patch, so that’s good. more erosion off the hill from lake ahr, but the clover isvisible from the house now, so that should stop soon. at the bottom of the wildflower patch is a layer of silt, which i’m going to rake up and cast over the upper part of thepatch in case it contains seeds (of course it does). more rain to come, i’ll be watching al day.

wednesday
all day looked like it was going to rain, but didn’t. i got the edge of the wildfower bed planted with monkey grass, raked thee gravel onto the newly dug path (had to deepen it so it was lower than the surrounding garden plots), seeded, raked and stomped the wildflower bed, placed the azaleas and gardenia at the head of the split and surrounded them with hostas. let’s see how it takes the rain.
punch list items on teh construction site. a guy with a bucket and a paintbrsh touching up parts of the outside walls.

tuesday
talked to foran for awhile. they’re going to put vines up on the northeast wall of the building to discourage graffiti, we thought it would be a dgood idea. says he’s 4 months behind, so they’re pissed off at him, but says he’s under budget so they’re okay. he’s hoping to be put on a job in the north of town next, dclose to his home. he’s hoping to just move the trailer with everything in it to his enxt jobsite, or else he has to unload everything and pack it into storage and then unload it again. there are several punch lists. the architects drew one up, and beancounter, and the owners of the building, and the tenants group (as if there are many pepople in that yet). each one has a punchlist, adn then there’s the punclist of the punchlist for all the damage caused by all the rapairs. the worst thing he’s having to deal with is having left the cleaning of thedecks until last, because the men track all the shit over newly installed carpets and finished walls, and he’s having to go unit to nit to clean that up.
finished smoothingand raking te wildflower patch, but can’t seed yet. it’s too windy, as well. i still have to line the path with monkey grass, still have to dig under the gravel on the path to make the level slope more. it goes uphill at the lower end, and that means it’ll pool. went to lowe’s with a $10 off card and bought pansies for the front, and a dozen 1-gallon azaleas at half price, also 2 gadenias at half price, and 2 bags of cow manure and 1 of mushroom compost. the compost goes on the newly filled beds behind teh house where i’m putting the loropetalums, because the dirt i used to fill with was red clay. not sure where the gardenia and azaleas will go, but it’s so nice to have a load of bushes to plant. i’m pretty sure teh roses will go arond the treees in backp ; they need 5 hours of sunlight and that’s abot the only place i can put them that won’t crisp them in teh summer sun.

monday
the usual. a flurry of activity that we can neither hear nor see. this morning was the first time we’ve woken up not to hear the sound fo the genie cranes or hammering or other construction noises. they were there, but they were all inside. it’s a wonderful thing.
the city water people were here digging u the yard of the furthest neighbor, but they didn’t do anything else, and went away. there was a bulldozer and everything.

friday 9/28
cool last night, front went thru. bight blue skies this morning, 78 for the dog walk. mexicans moving in and out, emptying trash. a team of mexican contractors pulled u pin a truck to water the new pants, they didn’t do a very thorough job, and did it after 12 pm, so mainly the mulch got atered. met a new neighbor to be, a small black guy and either an older friend or his dad, walking thru the ally looking at how safe the building was. someone had mentinoed that it might be possible to get in under the electric gate into the parking garage, but we din’t see that as very likely. all you’d need, husband pointed out, would be a garage door opener. a prpofesional would know how to reset it. this seemed true to me. thy seemed a bit over cautious. we told them how safe this neighborhood was, especially compared to 20 years ago. said how happy we were with the building, the construction process, the developer. we’re so tired of our neighbors being so nasty about them because they didn’t give them everything their hearts desired. i’ve never run across people who think the whole point is to get their way no matter how others sufer or what people think of them. i know they’re out there, but i’ve usually only met people who are anxiuos to get along with others, not to win at al costs. maybe that’s why our plumbing job is n’t subsitding adn theirs is, because they’re greedy and mean.
worked in tehback, shifted teh left hand path to a bettter slope, running it down a ridge of sorts to the back. it had gone straight into the hollow with no further drainage possibe. now it’s got a slope. started raking otu the dirt over the wildflower patch. going to need to do more smoothing before i palnt, but it’s coming soon. no sign of rain.

thursday 9/27
might could rain. in the high 80s. worked in teh back most f the morning, moving stones, getting rid of that pile of dirt, spreading gravel. i realized that the left han path is the steepest and will channel more water, which will then want to pool away from the drainpoipe, so i’m going to have to build up the ground beyond the path so the water won’t breach it, an chanel it off somehow toward the drainpipe. we’ll see when we get a good rain. put extra dit behind the stones so as to raise the level of the ground so water would run down the channels it’s just loose dit now but i’ll rake it and stamp it and seed it real soon now. if my energy holds.
the clover is up, and i’m anxious to get the wildfower seeds down in the sunny patch between the paths. we put a bunch of dirt on the 2 beds behind the house, and now we’re going to sow clover to stabilize the slope, and plant in the winter. still not sure if i wan lorepetalum in teh beds, and maybe the boxwoods lining the rock wall of the same bed. i need to wok some compost into the bed before i plant anything. before i sow clover. and i need to line everything, all the rock walls and pathways, with monkey grass.
machines going all day, seem to be in the parking garage, but could be on the parking deck. the genie is putting something up on the flors. there’s a yellow panel truck parked out back of the parking garage and i saw someone take a roll of something out and walk into the garage twoward the stairs.
went outside when chaarlie brown and zorine showed up with several engineers. charlie asked if i’d gotten my roses and i said no, which sent one of the engineers into a fit on the phone trying to find them, because they’d dropped them foff earlier in the week. oen of the neighbors (not maggie) was out there flirting with charlie, so i never got a word in edgewise becaise they were off talking to each other the whole time. guy came up quickly and took over, pointing out how the city ruined a perfectly good drainage by piling up to much dirt. he showed them where the sewer connection was already subsiding near his house, and the not maggie person showed them something similar. charlie said they would e aerating and seeding, but not regrading. guy argued some more. i asked them to come look at the drainage ditch i’d dug, and eventually the enginner went over nad had a look. i showed him how it ws now agully and asked if that was okay or should we put down a lot of rocks, widen and broaden it, or what. he looked over the porblem and eventually suggested they put in a drain at the fooot of guy’s and nextorrrr’s yards, and then regrade and seed. i said whatever solution they came up with tould be fine iwth us. at some point the mexicans out front cleaning off our sidewalks was mentioned, and i said this was just the latest examle of the good things the developers had done for us. both the neighbors scoffed at this, and said that anything they’d done was in order to sell condos, and not out of any concern for us. obviously they turn their noses up at everything they’ve done for us, including the regrading adn all teh dirt they dumped on their yards. because it wasn’t seived fresh topsoil with prime centipede grass, they consider it worse than nothing. i’ve never met such ungrateful people in all my life. i’ll bet guy is suing the construction company. what an asshole. and a theif.
later the guy turned up with my roses. they’d put them on the technicolor girl’s yard, and shed been watering them every day. they’re knock out soese tm, a patented disease and drought resistant landscape rose that will get 3×3. no smell, and single roses, but i’m not picky, and it’d be good to be able to let them go in summer. we’ll see, tho. patented. makes me want to take cuttings and propagate them. how can you patent a plant? like the whole patenting genes thing, it’s ridiculous, ad helps nobody but the corporations behindthem. evil corporations.

wednesday 9/26
almost up to 90, clouds but no rain.
put thee hostas in pots, covered with irt which turned to thick mud instantly. watered the ground, looks lke te red clover is sprouting already. put down more paving stones leading to the drain pipe, moved more of the ple of dirt onto the bottom land and up to the back of the house. a bunch of mxican workers wer up on the fro sidewalk of alll the neighbors’ houses this afternoon, scrapnig off all the weeds and exposing the bricks covered by dirt. nice of them. now i can go ahead and put monkay grass alnog the sidewalk around the maple tree.
beanconter came by with a bunch of the architects (to judge by the slim builds and black clothing) looking at everything. they discussed the lpanting of cedars and told him tey were too close together, like i said. we told him it was a really nice job. he was naware that guy is suing the city, and was disappointed at the news.

tuesday
back up to 90, no rain in sight. hardly any couds. full moon tonight, very bright. very quiet on the site all day. didn’t use the genie cranes t all. more trash being dumped into the dumpsters.
i started distributing the moung of dirt in the back yard, most to raise the level of the bottom of the yard and some to go back of the house to build up a hill to plant bushes on. stll have loads of hostas sitting in ater, and the water is getting scummy and mosquito-y, so i have to put them in pots tomorrow. didn’t reember to water the clover and other plants today, guess i’ll have to do it in the morning. must keep the seeds moist.

monday
fist saturday in moths when nobody was here to work. they had an open house instead, and on sunday the same. talked to forman this afternoon. he said tey’re 3 months behind schedule, and tho 99% of the building’s done, the punch list is killing him. they spent $250,000 onn waterproofing the building when they didn’t have to. stucco gives water resistance, but beancounter hired a waterproofing consultant who had them test the process at every stage and found leaks, and then hadthem waterproof the stucco after it was on. forman says of course it leaked at every stage, because it’s not until it’s done that the water resistance works. he said if you were putting on a roof and wanted to test the felt before the shigles went on, of course it woudl leak, and this is what they’d done. he said he didn’t want anything to do with it, and told them they could piss up a rope over it he said anyone in their right moind would know that that’s not the way to do it. we asked him if they were going to find our property pins and he said he’d ust been on to beancounter about it, so yes. then we talked about gy, who is now suing the city for $10k for coming onto his property to install sanitary sewer lines to pipe away his own shit. what an asshole. they do him a favor and he sues them. forman had worse things to say about him. and i agree with them. after stealing their sinks. i wish i’d taken pictures. forman said how the hanging pvc car-height barriers at the entrance to the parking garage and dck were specified in the architects’ drawings of the elevations of the buildings, but once he had them painted and installed, te architect came back and said that he’d just put any old thing on the drawing, ad it wasn’t what he meant at all. forman says they’re still changing their minds about the building, even as the pun h list is being completed. crazy.
warm, almost 90. too hot tow work outside now. yesterday husband and i raked off the hill between ours and nextor’s property line and put down red clover seed, stamping and watering it in. i also took a bunch of dogwood seeds, put them down onto raked earth, covered them with window screening to keep ot the squirrels, and covered them with leaves to wait until next spring. also planted maybe half of the remaiing hostas in a line down the path. stil lhave to put in the monkay gass next to the path stones on that side. still have to start pmmoving the pile of dirt, part to level off the back so the water doesn’t flow straight thru my wildflower bed, and partly to build up the plot behind the brick walkway aong the back fo the ouse, so i can plant either the oropetlum along it, or the boxwood. perhaps i’ll put teh boxwood waround thee the statue is going to go, in the flat place between the top Y of the path. co, moving in next week.
genie s-80 and s-130?

friday
maybe going to rain. heavy dew at lesast last niht. al summer we had no dewfall at all. the mexicans are out the back play fighting with heach other. thev’e pulled up a big yelow panel truck and aer waiing around to do something or other. we woke at 7:30 to the sound of a big saw cutting up some of the poured concrete alleyway. and then there was enough of a pause that we went almost back to sleep, and then the jack hammer started. so e got up and hd coffee. but it’s very dark outside, so i’m thinking we’ve got rain coming, and that means i’m out the back mrst of the morning prepring to set seed when it has finished raiing. oh joy.

thursday
finishing putting in the plants around the bac. stilldigging, still no plants on the sidewalk, whee tey’re going to put trees. guys fixing the breaker bar thing to limit height vehicles into the garage. getting cloudy, wind oming from the east, what seems to be a tropicl storm foming in the gulf offflorida is sending feeder bands up this way. only hiting 80 at 3 pm.
walked more cobblestones back to the back to lie the path, poured and raked more gravel. i’m down to the dvide between the left and right hand paths. the elt oe goes ight thru the pile of gravel and dirt, the right one goes down to the tomato plant an then turns and heads for the drainpipe. at least, i think that’s where i want ti. i need to get rigd of the dirt pile, spread it on the wildflower bed and pile some up near the bck of the house to use as a flat aised place to plant the loropetalum. i also need to rake off the protective leaves at the edge of the yard and sew the clover seeds. right now. so much work to do, and i never get a chane to do it because kid demands all my time.

wednesday
planting conifers along theback, look like cedars. they’re being planted too sclose togeter to make them look like they’ve been here longer, but they’ll grow to 20-30 feet evetually, and hide some of the back of the building from us.

tuesday

monday

sunday
working on sunday. taping up windows and resealing theback of the building. very chilly in the morning, not really up above 80 all day. must have been in the mid 60s at night. we used a blanket, and halfway thru the night, husband got up and shut the window clostest to him.

saturday

friday
big huge rain, remains of humberto

thursday
rain, dug more trench, carried everything waway, getting big already. more cleanup out the back, pinestraw where plants should be

wednesday
saw forman holdig is head with 2 other shirts, mexicans preparing to red-tile the walk in front of the restaurant and on the front bissey street entrance. more sheananigans with the canopies, wondering when they’ll put something in between teh bars to cover th entrances (3 canopies, or 4, counting the ornamental one at the top of the corner). they’ve restucoced the bottom panel of the first residential floor on tehcorner of bisey and cyde.

tuesday
got up o 96. no rain. cleaning up. urban gardeer is here watering plants, but still no landscape plants. guys in blue movable crane still doing things with windows. talked to husband this morning about turning the compost pile. it’s 50′ long, so we’d haev to do it one section at the time, and basically turn it into the other side of the fence, then move the fence sections. each section would take multiple days. but if we don’t do it now, byt the time the leaves start being bagged up and left on the neighbors’ siewalks, it’ll be too late to turn it and with the amount of vegetables we’re getting frmo the fodbank people every week, we need to turn it.

7

monday
war, 96 midafternon. no rain. very cool in the monings, tho – ui[ppe 70s. cleaning up. carrying things back to the back and dumping them in teh aley. plastic still on teh railings in the back of the building. on sunday husband’s 2 boys were over, adn tehy moved tehtrollwy rails back to the back. they’d been sitting beside our diveway up front for months, and finaly i burst a tire on teh truck running up against them. the boys moved them down to the path that i’ve newly run under the densest part of the trees (part that gets no rain) and they’re end to end, 5 of them. eventually they’ll be quite handsome. right now they just look like yard junk.

saturday
a few guys here, the 2 blue crane things were donig something very early, the pitches of their beeps just a quarter of a tone off. very upsetting. they’ve been filling in dirt wher the plants are going to go.

friday
they hired a big crane on theback of the truck, and it was holding up anotehr metal canopy overthecorner of the building. the two movable blue cranes wee up to each side of it and he guys were anchoring it in, or something. a pickup came by with a bunch of stair rails on the back of it. 86 at 1 pm. no chane of rain.

thursday
conference. we were walking the dogsand gy came overand told kid to get out there because the grass sowers were going to get our bacyard first. so she ran out. when i came back in i didn’t see her aywhere in the house, so i looked for her outside and ther she was with all teh other neigbors, a big container of water on wheels in teh aley,and bunches of guys with reflective vests milling about the backyard. we’d heard earlier some guy out with a shovel messing with guys’ back yard and nextor’s. they were loosening up thesoil to spray with hydroseeding equipment. i sent husband right out and they both stood around watching the action. guy called 911 on the seeding guy, who had told him he had to get his truck out of the back yard or he was going to spray his truck. they almost came to blows and so guy called the cops, who came and watched. the seeding tuck finally left, kid and husband came in, adn i went out there to see for myself. we certainly din’t want any seed in our yard. i’d just finished placeing an order with wildseed famrms for wildflower mix, as well as clover for the slipe into nextor’s yard, and native grasses for our hill. so i didn’t want a mix of fescue and bermuda grass. neither did guy, and by extension, teh other neighbors. they didn’t want it not only because they din’t like the kind of grass, but because their yards are curently full of gravel, not evenly level, and lake ahr is back (which we’ve trenched to kep it from eroding onto our property). they want the city or the constrction project to come back into their yard, smooth it all down, screen it to remove the gravel, and then seed itwith expesive seed. mrs nextor, whose namei can never reemer, wanted tyo know wy the dirt in her yard was so hard, and i told er bcause the were supposed to have seeded it whe they first finished grading ti. but they’d never inteded to seed it themselves, so it was a flat acreage of dirt. oh well. charlie brown was there ,and busy going around seeingwhat everyone still wanted. he said privately to me tht he had wanted to get them all to sign a wavr when tey first finished teh job, and he should have. he wasn’t sure if the city was going to do anything for them, because their objections were minor, in the scope of the project as a whole. on the oher hand, i asked him what about the 6 rose buhes they ground into te dirt in the back of my yard, and he promised he’d eite deliver them or cut me a ceck, ad compared to the milllions he was spending on theis project, my requiremens were nothing adn eh was glad tosatisfy them. as for guy, he’d deal with him before and was getting tired of it.

wednesday 9/5
having taped off the corner windows in the back yesterday, there are 2 guys up at the very top of the crane’s extent, uisng sprayguns and making the surface more white. some coat of sealant is what i think forman was referring to.
nice morning, only hitting 80 after 10 am.
went over to see what they’ve done. husband made an appointment for 3:30 and we were an hour late but they showed us around. one of the top floors facing the city, and the back facing unit with all teh plants. everything was carpetted, air conditioned, lit softly. the units were designer-ridden, but everything looked nice. they were putting hardened bamboo on the floorand stairway in the entrance hall, the roof deck looked cool if a little too smal for other than private parties. they had a compost tumbler on the unit with the private deck and al the plants, like anyone’s going to make compost, but it’s in keepin with their leed certification, which it seems they’ll qualify for. we knew more about the constuctiona and the buildig itself than the agent, or the investor who went arond with us to se the place. tey’ve got assigned paring spaces in the basement for each unit, i saw the list. we felt proud to ee what they’ve done with the place, nice paint schemes, etc. we felt like we own the place because of all the ivlmet we’ve hadthru this year and a half of construction.

tuesday
labor day was yesterday, and there was a single tuck full of mexicns scaping and cleaning the brick patio space for the restaurant. the agent’ fofice ws closed, and we went up there to see if we could get in to tke pictures, but they wee closed. onh well.
sunny with high clouds, didn’t get past 86. what wodnerful weather. the dogwoods are aleady turning, adn the beries are comig red, way ay early.
today they spent time putting plastic on the back windows. just one rank of them, the farthest east n the back side. the two blue crane things were going beep beep beep about a quarter of a note away from each other, so it was quite painful. they’ve got all the windows plasticked now, and there’s some plastic on the railings o the decks. obviously they’re fixing to put on whatever sealant they’re using.
at one point the road was closd down at the bissey end, by some sorto f road work. there was a bulldozer looking like it was digging up the manhole in the middle of the street. fols were turning around in the street to take other shortcuts. hah, confoun them all.
the paper bags i put on the ground in the fall and then poured leaves on top of have completely composted. the earth underneath them is full of wormholes.the leaves above are till leaves, but they have kept the area from erosion. i think this is a very workable way to extend your garden area without much work at all.

saturday
cool, breezy. it’s like the season has turned. rain most days of thise week, no problems in the garden. getting a fair idea how we’re going to have to channel off lake ahr in the back so it doesn’t pool for mosquitos. got a letter from the arborist stated as a decision of some sort and giving us a chance to appeal something. i don’t iunderstand it, so a phone call on monday. only mexicans today, of course, and only a few of them, almost no trucks lined up on cyde street. removing trash, other inside things.
walked out in teh back and did some digging, cutting a trench fom lake ahr to our drainpipe in the back. the neighbors will probabl never notice, ut we figue it’s up to us to keep the mosquitos down. noticed that they’ve put up an awning on one of the first esidential floor pivate decks, with hanging plants and trees. must be the show apartent. on the weekends there are trucks and cars driving around on teh parking deck. i must get over there some time soon and take pictures…

friday
plasstic up on the windows and over the railings. they’e spraying something on the outside, i suppose as waterproofing, using the blue crane to crank themselves up there and then using sprayers. smells of solvent. put up a metl awning on the very corner at cye street, shading only the top floor’s corner window. rain in the afternoon and evening.

thursday
no rain, first day. they’re working their punch list.

wednesday
rain in the afternoon and evening, lovely thunderstorms

tuesday
rain in the night. husband’s son michael was here, and the two of them replaced the rcks the street sewer people were supposed to be back to fix. i need to call charlie brown about myrose bushes.

monday
cement ttrucks pouring more sidewalk. digging out and preparing the beds for the flowers all along cyde an bissey streets. remoing more junk. i’ve got my eye on a very heavy broken countertop that they’re waiting to put into the dumpster but it’s too heavey. rain in the evening

saturday
much cooler in the night, used a sheet mostly all nigh, but still had the fan on me the whole time. they’re cleaning up out there today. loads of metal junk – maybe scaffolding – is being brought down to teh alley, and guys are sorting thru it into piles, or soemthing. makes an awful racket. saw foman in the main entrance off cyde street, he was using body language to tell the mexicans (the only ones here today) to smooth the floor out, ropush stuff back, or something. ca’t hardly tell what’s going on anymore, and i know oi’ve been complaining of that for months, but thre you have it.
might rain, it’s cloudy and alternately sunny, but it’s still cool. tho not in the sun, of course. maybe we’re going to start fall soon.

friday
very humid all day. never got above 96, but felt miserable in the sun. clouds stated building up, and by 7 there was a massive thunderstorm moving our way, covering more than the whole perimeter. unfrtnately, even tho the radar said red and yelow on top of us, we only got rumbles of thunder unil after the storm had passed, and then it dripped on the trees for several hours and got everything wet except under the trees.
they poured the bissey street sidewalks. theer was a cement truck on cyde street, and 3 of them blocking traffic on bissey. they poured as if to leave a turning lane, cuting way into teh sidewalk area. that part’s just dirt at this point, and they’ve left holes for trees and flowers. don’t know what teh curb cut is for, tho. turning into the mexican place, or are they planing to put in a turning lane onto maine street?

tursday
fucking hll, a lien of thunderstorms moved acros eh region, and a hole opened up right around us, and so it didn’t rain. i can hear thunder, i can sell water. but no rain.
cars are driving thru the aley now. somebody was here with a work trck fixing the plumbing things. fewer and fewer cars and trucks on teh jobsite. it’s begining to be quiet back there. all the little bits and pieces are beginning to look final. it’s sad, really. iw was so used to the construction.
it didn’t rain yet again, close tosunset. and then it did, a nice storm deveoping slightly east of here and mushrooming to huge all over atlanta. it rained hard for maybe 10 minutes.
in the middle of this, road crews assembled in our alley, and now they’ve just moved a road milling machine out back, o it looks like they’re going to be milling adn paving al night, righ toutside our windows.
it’s much coler outside now. oh joy, we’ll use the sheet to cover us tonight. yay.

wednesday 8/22
only 96 on the porch, but it’s only going down to 86 at night, so it’s still feeling every bit as hot as it was. the plumber guys are gone from the back, but our brcks still aren’t replaced. there are fewer trucks parked on cyde street, so it seems there aren’t that many workers present. there are balloons outside the purchasing office. my poplar tree at the very back continues to lose its leaves, and still there’s no answer from the arborist, whom i called twice last week to come ou and documet te damage.
it was 98on the porch at dark. this is ridiculous.
last week sometime they painted yellow stripes down the middle of ahr street.

tuesday
86 on the porch at 9 am. so if the heat wave is over i can’t tell. some contractor had 3 or 4 leyland cypresses on the back of his truck, and i saw the blue crane on wheels taking them into the parking deck to put on one of the floors as widow dressing.

monday
the newspapers say the heawave is over. it’s been coolish – low 80s in the morning, but still up to 96 or so on the porch in the midle of the day. the road guys, really the plumbers now, are still working at the backs of other people’s houses. our house is still a mess of dirt and piled-up bricks in back.
forman says that the job will be finished by the end of august, but that’s only 10 days away, so never mind. he’s got people cleaning everything up, and indeed there’s a big pile of scaffolding on our driveway entrance.

saturday 8/19
cooler this morning. a font came thru last night and everywhre buthere got a nice dose of ain. it’s the second nigt this week when we’ve used sheets. is the heatwve over? its it fall already? nah.
aside fommm some guys in a generator truck doing something in the alley, i see nothinggoing on, but there are trucks parked along cyde street, so something’s happening. people are now able to drie right onto the parking deck and have a look around.

friday
almost cooler. wha’s left of erin is swirling in texas, not moving. they’ve dug pipes into the corner space where they used to have the plants, on cyde and bissey. 3 6″ pvc pipes full of it looks like conduit. they’re getting ready to form up for sidewalks. there aer light sconces lining the outside walls. there’s a cover for the fan that’s at street level along bissey street down by the mexican restaurant. lots of finishin things happening.

thursday
tropical storm erin (td 5) hit the est coast of texas today. doubt it’ll affect us. hasn’t rained in awhile. 100 on the porch again. all the neighbors were out the back this morning when we took our dog walk. they were all talkingwith charlie brown about what he was going to do fo them. guy looks a ot fatter inthe face than he used to. wonder why.
on teh construction site, they’re formin up the bissey street sidewalks, they were putting in dirt where the plantings are going to go on the cysde street side. poured concrete yesterday forsidewalks. i’ve given up trying to get my initials in it. they’re so vigilant.
since they dug up the backyard near the trees,there’s been a massive yellowing and dropping of leaves. not sure if it’s the pecan or the tree next to it, but something’s shedding.

wednesday
pouring cement into forms built for the sidewalks on the corner and along cyde street. taking down more scaffolding on the back, guys hae put up a leve f scafflding in order to reach the scaffolding being handed over the first residential floor patio wall. it’s leisurely. it’s also hot.
out front out back, taking the equipment away from the back yard, finished with the digging of new sewer pipes.
last night was the irst time we’ve used a sheet since he hot weather began. and i only reached for it around 6 just as the sky was lightening. but it’s something.only a little cooler midmorning, tho.
out back the plumbers were here with an itty excavato that left tracks along the back yard but again did no damage. the plumber guys, a family of men, rolled up th hose and dug down to connect the sewage pipes. i managed to get a bath run before they cut off the water, and then didn’t think about it and emptied the bath right onto them in the hole there. oops. then they cut off the water.
100 in the shade.

tuesday
charlie brown here to se if i was happy, told him i was elerious because thy’d smoothed out my hill and killed the poison ivy for now. they destroyed 6 rose bushes and a bunch of wildfowers, but the guys didn’t touch myplants at all, and i was very happy. asked for some dit and gravel, which the guy was very kind to supply me with, making sure i had the gravel that would pack and not the bigger stuff. we talked about guy’s larceny and how even tho charlie is going to do everything he asks, he’ll still sue when it’s over. said there’s one like him on every block. just as greeedy as he can be. he thanked me for being so nice, unlike some of our neighbors, and said that husband was even nicer. i responded that he was a pushover, adn that e even took in mineo our homeless guy. he knew about mineo. told him he could bury mineo and we wouldn’t complain.
the sewer guys spent the day digging up nextor’s trench, having to go thru the driveway tht had been buried under all that dirt.
some of the transplanted plants not doing so well, the elderberry wilting immediately, the butterfly bush wilting. i’m having to water every day, sometimes twice for the elicate ones. the dogwoods are doing okay, but if i stop watering, the one with the fewest roots will die.
100 in the shads

monday
lo and behold, first thing this morning they were out in my back yard, starting to dig. the little dozer just happened to fit between the rocks, and the guys were very carefulto walk outside e tape, so nothing got damaged. they took hours digging a deep trench, we could see what the underlyinggrond sttrata looked lk, and they went all the way back to the manhole, making a huge pille of dit that the guys threw their water bttles on as trash to get buried later.

saturday 8/11
100 on the porch. mexicans here doing stuff. grading the front and side prepatory to pouring sidewalks. i finished moving plants in the back and aam now ready for the poipes to be laid in my back yard. there’s 9′ clearance for the little dozer at the narrowest point. sunday was cooler, with cloud cover, the wind from the east bringing wet air, and i was able to work in the garden until 11:30; moved the rest o fhte nursery bed, dug and potted the monkey grass, even swetp all the leaves behid the red tape so i can still use them as mulch.

friday 8/10
105 on the streets, striping the parking deck. road guys put in guy’s conection. they said in this heatthey’re lucky to do one house a day, in the winter they can do 3. moved the burning bushes and several of the seedlings from th nursery bed. i’m having to water everything every day, and the dogwoods are not appy about being moved.

thursday 8/9
98 in the shade. the excavator stayed in my yeard all day. i went out to move more plants around 9, and they’d alreay stopped work, waiting for some part to e brought in. they spent all of the morning sitting in the shade, and then had to work thru the hot aternoon. but they left at 3:30 because of the heat, or else because they could. they dug up the trench and put their pipes down. they got within 5′ of my pecan tree, and i went out there for pictures. lots of roots hae been cut. i believe they have now killed the tree. i called the arborist immediatly, but they’re in a 20day meegins, and won’t be returning my call until monday. i got picturres. they’re going to haaaave to pay for removing the tree when it dies, and we’re goingto document this so we can gt them to. they put one form in, and then a larger form, and then concrete boxes looking like bunckes sunk into the earth. and they capped this with a manhole, and laid pipe alongside it for our drainage ditch, and thn covered it all back up up to the box and the last 6′ of pipe. it’s sticking up abovethe level of the tree.
i moved all te stuff from one nursery bed, 5 leather fens, to under my trees safely out of ht way. i moved the two poor dogwood seedlings, twice in a week. i’m certain they won’t like it. so i put them in permanent spots well out of theway, and we’ll just have tos ee how it goes. there were a bunch of ladders stored along the dog fence which someone would use as a pretext for walking on my dogwood seedling, so i moved all the ladders into the fence. and then had a big glass of cold waer before sprinkling everything, watering in the new plants, putting mulch down. i even watered the tomator plant, even tho it was 3′ from the huge toothed bucket of the excavator, and won’t last the week with them swinging everything around so wildly. talked to the vietnam guy, who wanted to discuss irish music, and assued me he was going to use the itty digger.

wednesday 8/8
almost 10. gidding up the back yards all day. i got out early and moved herest of the boxwoods, mulched the loropetlum and juniper, and on imppulse, moved the sugar cane that was back by the tree. they seemed to be getting kind of close. when i came back to the houe hours later ,there was an excavator sitting right on top of where the sugar an had been. cost me $18 this spring. the excavator has already crushed and buried all my rose bushes that i put back there after the construction guys were thru fucking up my yard. and now this. it rained while i was gone, a hard rain. there was no sign of it when i got back.

tueday 8/7
over 100 forthe second day at least. the thermometer on the porch, in the shade, said 100 at2 pm. all day the road crew were making noise in our back yard. i spoke to the vietnam vet we’ve known for months now, he said his tomatoes didn’t gt any bigge than mnie did this eyar. sayds they’ll be coming thru my yard with teh big excavators, whic husband measures at 12′ wide. i’ve got to move the plants i ust planted, everything’s goingto have to go to the edge of the dog pen, and i’m going to have to remove the dogwoods as well as putting up orange hazard tape everywhere.
they were putting on yet another layer of sealant on the parking deck, even the part that’s under cover. the smel covered the block. good thing those guys wear respirators. even still.

monday 8/6
vry hot, over 100. got out there to move the boxwoods and found that they’d already taken down the boards on the front of te buildin. so i was just in time. couldn’t plant them today, so covered the 6 bushes with mulch and watered. their roots are much bigger of a ball thatn i’d expected.
the guys out front are in the back now, working on digging up the rest of the alley.they’ eve got 4′ pipes to put in teh grond, 2 forms, and the bulldozer keeps running in and out with loads of gravel, long black pipes, etc. the dumptrucks are lined up and taking off dirt every few minutes. a group of guys came aroudn to see our pipe, wweren’t sur where it was going, and finally decided to dig up our crawlspace and make it go straight out the back nd then diagonally to the lower of the two stakes in the nextor corner of our yard. which will mean only oving some things, but still moving a lot, depending on the size of the equipment. as a foretaste, the mexican guy trampled all over my garden without realizing it, so i’m goin to have to be very vigilant or i’m going to lose plants. he alomost went thru the nursery bed, where i’ve got 2 dogwoods that i moved yesterday, one with a root ball and one that fell apart to just roots as i was diggingit.
theyve been testing the fire alarms all day, off and on. at least i hope they’re testing them. ti sounds like thousands of metal cicadas, and it’s very loud and disturbing.
i
‘d forgotten how much noise construction equipment makes, excavators, bulldozers and dumptrucks. it’sthe same noise as when tey first started on this project, and it’s now in our backyards. i wonder how we stood it last summer when they were digging the site.

sunday 8/5
hot and muggy, 95 in the shade. no rain. the mexicans parked in the alley today, reminding us that our back yard is now public. they were here to continue puting solvents into the atmosphere. i read the labels of the cans last night. 50-gallon drums of urethane, 5-gallon tubs of concrete sealant, and pallets of sand. the sealant is brick red. they recovered the part inside the buidling, the covered part of the drive into the parking deck area. peeuw.
i dug up the last loropetalum and the two grey owl junipers (tho they look more upright than spreading to me), and while husband dug holes fo them out in the back, i planted them and watered them in. then i leared off a part of the half-shady garden and spread some of the seeds i’ve been saving – foxglove, daisy, adn soemthing unidentified i found in a baggie in my vegetable keeper from last fall. tomorow i have to get tehboxwoods and put them soemwhee. al of these plants are to emain in the shade, getting watered daily, until the late fall when i can move the mto where tey will go, if they survive.

saturday 8/4
coolish in the morning, in the mid-80s. no clouds. went out briht and early (8) to get more plants dug up. i found out that what i’m rescueing from the ornamentl bgarden thing at the edge ofcyde and bissey streets is loropetalum, grey owl juniper, and boxwood. i dug up 3 more loropetalums and wheeled them to teh backyard, where husband was trying to dig holes for them in the waste ground that used to be driveway and before that used to be coal bin and trash heap. it was almost impossible to do, and he had to use a pikax and take frequent rests. but i got them in, and now i have 5. there’s one more, 6 boxwoods, and 2 jumipers left. i’ll get most of them tomorrow morning. i’m going to have to water every day until wel into the fal to keep them alive. and then i’ll have to transplant them in the dead of winter, such as it is. forman cauht me coming down the street with the wheelbarrow and took an imaginary picture of me stealing plants, but i gaily said i have permission. i told him that the tree work in the backyards was arranged for free by guy, and that the city man knows all about him. forman knows the city man. i told him i ws still mad about guy stealing the contertops, and that the way to catch him would be to look up all the propeties he owns and is rehabbing, and go around to all of them looking for new contertops. and then they could slap his ass in jail. which i would aprove of. i told him if he needed help doing so,i i’d be glad to.
the mexicans dress all in white in the summe. there’s a gaggle of them on the top of the parking deck. they’re spreadingsome kind of solvent-based something around on the deck, and others are going along broadcasting handsfull of sand. maybe they’re sticking te sand down to teh floor surface. hard to tell. they’re not being very careful about he sand casting. i can’t see if they’re being diligent about spreading whatever liquid it is nder the sand.

friday 8/3
hot and dry. 95 for a couple of days. too hot to move plants this morning, going to have to wai until the weekend. at least they haven’t torn the boards down yet, that gives me some time. more scaffolding went bye-bye on teh back of a semitoday. this morning theree were loads of trucks parked all oer cyde street, and half of them were att trucks, doing something to the box and down the manhole. again. they’ve been out several times this last week or two, and won’t tell me what for. i hate that.
the tre people were back, removing limbs from another tree in guy’s back yard, then coming up on ahr street and removing limbs from enxtor’s house. i called the city guy in charge and he said that guy had indeed wormed this out of him, that he was well awre of guy’s reputation and his greed, and he was just concerned that the tre over gy’s house not fall down and kill someone. it’s just that guy was too damn ed lazy to pay for getting the tree removed hismelf. jerk. he’ll be here on monday to lay out the trench they’l be digging in my back yard, and then i’m going to hae to move a bnch of stuff, not the least of which ae the little dogwood seedlings.

thursday 8/2
startig to take down the board wall along bisey street. guys prying off the pictures. they’ll be preparing for ceent sidewalks next. more scaffolding piled up on theside of cyde street. more sawing sounds. hot and uggy. a tree service was out in the back yard all day, butting down guy’s tree. we suspect it’s part of the ‘landscape work’ deal he wormed out of th city for compensation for letting them put in a sewer connection in his backyard.
after dark, they started up in the evening out front along maine. they’re past the cajun place now and into the alley. they worked all night out there, very loud, etting closer and closer to the backyards.

wednesday 8/1
hot and muggy, cloudy but i don’t think there’ll be any rain. got out there first thing and dug up two of the plants i stil can’t identify (red leaves, purpule fuzz in the early spring) and put them into a new nursery bed that was almost impossible to dig – clay. i’ll get more tomorow. there are 6 of these purple things, 6 smal hollies without prickly leaves, ad 2 blue spruce looking thing that i’m not sure about because they’ll be huge.
out front, i mean out back, i mean on maine stereet, they waited until after dark, more like close to midnigt, and started working. the sound of that huge excavator being moved in the night is something out of a bad horror movie.
it’s hot and muggy even at 1:30 am.

tuesday 7/31
hot and muggy, in the low 90s. pouring eent aagin out front. i really must get those plants out of the ground; perhaps this eeeving, bcause it’sway to hotnow.
no work out front, i mean on maine street. the heavy excavation equ0ipment is still sitting out on the back yards of the neighbors.
at dar, they started up the big excavator and drove it oout onto the road at maine street, closing off one of thelaes. it worked out thee until 2:30 am and then came crlanking back to the back yard on its reads. they’re storing several huge big steel forms for utting into dug trenches in the back yard also. what a racket. the dogs barked.

monday 7/30
damp, muggy, cool untl the sun comes out then whatch out.
out front, out back, actually probably over on maine street, the other giant excavator is working. there are dumptrucks lined up on ahr street waiting to be called out there. the traffic sign is still back in the yards, tho.
they’re pouring the sidewalks on cyde street. guys in the cement up to their ankles raing the stuff into place, two guys on a board flattening the cement and another guy with a very long squeegie thing coming along behind them maing it smooth and shiny. oh for my keys and the opportunity to leave my mark in it. ah well. they’ve got rebar laid out on the drive into teh parking deck, but the sidewalks have no rebar.
saw forman there, he said there didn’t need to be rebar under sidewalk. i asked why the scaffolding was up in the front still and whether the windows leaked, as the neighbor said, and he said there as a procedure they still had to do, soemthing to apply on all sides of the building, and that they were going to use the crane-like hoist instead of more scaffolding, which was horribly expensive. he said another month of work at least, and they weren’t gong to put him onto another job before this one was finished, hopefully. i told him it would be sad losing him because he was so entertaiing, bitching and moaning all the time. he looked at me and said, yeah i’m the asshole. and i said, not the asshole, you’re the poor long-suffering bastard.
they’re still using pullies to take buckets of dryvit mud up the scaffolding along the front.
forman said i coudl take the plants at the side, so later i’m going over there with the wheelbarrow, and i suppose i’ll put them whe the azaleas failed during the drought. i have to be careful where i put thing because they’re fixing to dig up our bck yard.
scaffolding coming down on cyde street side. more cement being poured. have to go out and dig another nurssery bed for the plants from the corner gardenlet.

saturday
springkles only, gray sky, under80 into the afternoon. the mexicans showed up fo whrk, can see some of thm out on th balconies fixing stuff.

friday

thursday
didn’t rain yesterday, doesn’t look like it’ll rain today, but it’s hot and sticky and the sky is white.
out font is now out back. yesterday the surveyors were out back, and today there was a traffic control sign thatat lights up sitting in nextor’s yard, a whole bunch of white guys putting down white lines and standing around, a whole whole bunch of mexcans sitting in the shade. our work crew. i saw some gy we’ve sseen lots before, teh old vietnam vet with teh white beard. said we didn’t expect to see him back here, he said yeah but they ddecided on this thing here, so he was bck. they’ moved a huge excavator that says slow death on the back of it, and another thing liooks like a giant ditch witch. they parked them on guy’s yard, and left.
guy was out back, talking to husband. they were talking about what the road crew is going to do. i was looking for the property line, trying to figure out which of three stakes was it. we discussed it, and guy said he yelled at them about where our property lines were until they agreed to send out a team of surveyors to mark them. and then he said ‘you’re lucky to have me as a neighbor’, and all i could do was walk away.
noticed that the plants on the corner of cyde and bissey are being undermined from the other side of the fence. the workers are preparing the cyde street side for sidewalks, building forms, clearing stuff. so i asked forman, and he said to call beancounter because it was the owners’ property. so i called and elft a message, asking if i could have the plants before they went bybye.
we stopped and spoke to the cyde street neightbor. he said there’s still 6 weeks to go on the project, which is yet another putback of the timing. he said the architects fcked up and expected the construction people to notice anxd correct it. so they had to add another 6″ to the corer (i’m guessing upwards), and all the windows leak, especially on the bisey street side, which would explain why the scaffolding is stll up on teh front.

wednesday
could rain, clouds are building up. the water dept was out back with nextor, discussing how they’re goingto run the sewer line – not out the front like they’re supposed to – but because they’re so low, they’re runing all our block’s sewer lines out the back. we came up and they started discusing how they’re going to run our line, and wheter it would avoid the tree roots and go from teh ditch, or go on the otehr side of our yard by the driveway. the pipe lets out on teh other side. i entioned to mrs. nextor that i saw two guys stealing countertops the other day, and siad we’re all going to need to upt up fences to protect ourselves from that kind of thing. she was appalld. i didn’t tell her i knew it was guy and his frien.
the scaffolding is ofof theback and they’re installing the railingxs on the balconies. it’s beginning to look pretty handscomup there.

tuesday
puttin gup railings on the bakc of the building. taknigdown teh scaffolding. making all sorts of asty metal-grinding noises, sounds like the’re kcutting up pipes or conduitl or even gutters. something noo too flimsy but made of metal. squealy grinding sound.

monday
noo rain. someone in theearly morning or overnight ran a truck by the looks of the tire tracks marks, into the blue boards that wall off te onstruction from bissey street. mangled te board al to shit. afterthe wind of that storm blew down the boards ad they put them back up again, the whole fron to fhte wall looks horrible, with marks an scratched paint and bent up boards. and now they’fe just taken the bottom end of the boards riht of after soeone ran into tehm.

saturday
cool, a front has passed, we got lots of rain yesterday. guys out in teh alley this morin, mexicans, the americans don’t work on ssaturdays. they were cutting up this ugly gray carpet in the aley, then rolling it and taking it upstairs. i can hear cleaning going on, sweepin and shovelling. everything else is gong on inside the building, so i don’t ave any idea, and haven’t taken the tour in order to find out. i don’t like sales pitches. the website with the security camer doesn’t show anything of the theft on tuesday. too damn bad. i’m wondering how i can trash guy’s name in the businessness comunity and the neighborhodd.

friday
rain after noon, butthe watch aea is west and into alabama, damn. took down scafolding along the back today. lots of noise as they dumped it over the wall into the alley.

thursday
the crates have been cleeard oofintth ebuilding. rain in teh afternoon, righ after i wateed the plants in the back.

weednsday
they’ve beennnmoviig pads and carpetting for awhile now, as far as i can tell. could be some other rolled up floor coverring fo all ican tell. sawwhat looked like a transfer of some carpets from one workvan to anotehr, which looked likee larcny to mee. iwonrhow much pilferage goes on routinely on a jobsite.

tuesday
slight rain, loads of clouds, cool in the mornign (75) then up to 90 and damp as hell. big rainstorms in other parts of town, butonlysprinkles heer. a semi was here loading up bits of scaffolding, and i didn’t hear much more all day. but late, aftre 11, guy and his boyfriend came out, pried open a crate, and stole two marble countertops from china. we caleld 911, andk idsat at het window watchhing tem, and the cop was ust at cyde and ahr street when she came out ot tell meeethywr eleaving in the car. wehad figured tehy’d put the stuff in the house, but they removed it from the premisess, mart. so the cop just barely missed them. he told me totell foran tomorrow, and if he wanted to prosecute, he hhad te911 call on tape. he could have goten them for everything from criminal tresspass to theft by taking and cnospiraccy to commit. oh well. ilgghtniinn teh sdistance. i’m waiting up to se if they come back and take more. the cop figurees thy’ll be even moerr geedythan they already are.

monday
rained much of theday on sunday.never got above 80. wonderful.

saturday 7/14
cloudy, and now it’s rainnig, niice andbrskly. cool, too. i love this weather. they’ve taken the scaffolding off theback, and thiismornngearly they were out hteer with the movable crane removing some of the crap collecting in the aley, beams andducts and boaards nd bars and rods and leftover crates from te marble tops. they haven’t finished, but they’re down thee with push brooms. for some reason the scafflding is back up on parrts of the cye strete side. ah, thunder.

friday

thursday

wednesday 7/11
cool all day, rained in the afternoon. wonderful wonderful. out front thestreet was closed for the morning, and the road crew came thru very early, scouringthe street, then using the swepmaster on it, which raised a huge gloud of inpenetrable dust that came toward the house. then the tanker with hot tar dribbbled all over the surface of the street, and then the paveent layer that squoze black tar and gravel out its bottom, and then a big roller with a guy sitting on top of it. they did the work really fast, and by the time we went off to home depot and came back they were done and out of there. it was the same crew that included the woman traffic control person. we waved to her.
the construction site got another load of sand. we saw forman, who said the elevator went in but was done wrong, and is sewed

tuesday 7/10
hot and muggy. dripping with sweat at 11:30. they were stucoing the walls ofthe parking deck, and now they’re taking down the scaffolding along the whole of the parking deck an first residential foor walls. very noisy, very busy. this morning we saw a cr3eww of exican women gonig to work, with their hard hats. they arive in a red pickup and stick together. al the men stop what they’re doing and watch them as they pass.
out front they’re getting ready to fininsh the street. they cleared off the tar filling all the excavations, tamped it down, and then put cement into 4 or 5 different holes on our side of the street. i finally ot to put my symbol in cement, right in front of the house, right after the workers moved off for the day. and then it rained. but still, i finally got to do it. hurray.

monday
cool and cloudy all day. thunderstoms built up somewhere, but not over us. didn’t notice much. mudding and stucoing the back dec sides. removing more scaffolding. noticed the exhaust vent for the restaurant on the roof, but it’s een there several weeks now. saw the completed wood railing for the roof deck, also noticed severl metal railings for the cyde street balconies.

saturday 7/7
cloduy and cool, but no rain wexcept for spits. the mexicans wre there all day, doing scaffolding stuff, spreading stucco and dryvit. looks like they’ve got the elevator in. they’ve got the kitchen exchaust from whatever restaurant they’re going to have, sitting up on top of the elevator shaft. we came by on the evening dog walk and noticed that at leassssst one unit has suspended lights over the kitchen counter, and lots of lights in the ceiling. we can see wooden doors thu the windows. they’re covered the shops along the side with plastic to protect it from either paint or stucco.

Flapjacks

275g Butter

275g Brown Sugar

7 Level tbsp golden syrup

450g Oats

Set the oven to 150 oC (325 oF)

Prepare a 14 ½” by 10 ½“ baking tray by lining it with baking parchment. Alternatively you can grease the tray well but any disaster may result in throwing away said tray!

Melt the butter, sugar and syrup over a gentle heat until melted.

Stir in the oats.

Press into the baking tray.

The trick is in the cooking and knowing your oven. I turned my oven down quite low and baked the flapjacks for 20 minutes even though the recipe states 30 minutes.

The flapjacks should just begin to change colour but will still be moist when they are ready to be taken out of the oven. Do not be tempted to leave them in any longer as they harden considerably as they cool down.

Leave them to cool in the tin for four minutes then cut them into squares.

Leave them in the tin for another 20 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

friday 7/6
cloudy all day, some spits of rain, got up to 86 anyway. they’re tearing down some of the scaffolding along the back, and putting it up on the parking deck. the ex-scaffolding reveals a buff color of stucco. at night we can see lights from the individual units, which i suppose ill be masked by drapes soon.

thusday 7/5
cool in the morning, but sunny, so it’ll get ot. there’s a crate full of expanded metal screens on the alley ceent, erhaps as grilled for the fecing on the basement parkin decl. there’s a black truck parked on nextor’s dirt. it avoided the mud hole. guys are bringigdown boards and stacking them alng the alley, perhaps they’re going to put up scaffolding alongthe parking deck wall, as wel. i see some 6″ pvc pipe coming down also, maybe they’re storing used bits to be carted off and put in somewhere ese.
we talked to a neighbor who had complained to carla smith about a semi parked outside his house for hours and blocking in people who had to make it to the bank before 2. carla’s foice tied her in with forman, andhe complained about the screws that keep puncturing everyone’s tires, as well as the double and triple paring. this morning they’re only double parked, and are finding unusual spots to park, like in front of the chrch, and nextor’s yard. okay.

wednesday 7/4
only teh mexicans woking today, and they put in a full dayl. working on the back mostly. heard scaffolding being taken down, or put up, couldn’t tell. today there’s scaffolding all along the back of the first residential floor private deck space. i guess hey’re still buildi it., the scaffolding. i could hear spanish being spoken all day, without the usual machine and beep beep beep noise. col most of theday, but up to 86 in teh afternoon.

tuesday 7/2
cloudy and cool, wind feeling like it’s coming off the ocean. a lovely stationary front over us for the past several days, butning off in theafternoon, when it skyrockets to 96. right now it’s barely 70.
taking down more scaffolding, a large semi parked on cyde street delivering the last of forman’s interal doors. he’ss till pised off about everything. the owners are having a meeting here today, adn already he hears thru the grrapevine that they’re planning to pull him of and send him to anoter job even before this one is done. he thinks some blonde cute chick in a hardhat who came up to us while we were talking is goin to be assigned to him to run the punch list. he was also takling to teh mexican foreman about some toilet on the first or second resudential foor, cyde street side, that is sitting out in the middle of the bedroom and needs to be installed. he found it on his walk thru today.

monday 7/1
they’re stuccoing the back. not sure if i don’t see green color going on, or that might be the leaves i’m looking thru. several ofthe glass windows and dors are broken, you can see tape on them covering the cracks. they’ve instaled the patio doors on cyde street. they’re still pulling up buckets of stucco onto the floors using a block and tackle on what i now see is a movable framework. i can hear them disassembling the scaffolding off the back end and the back corner.
cool, rainy at times, wonerfully damp. there’s a lake of mud in the neigh bors’ yards, when it dries it’ll be in dinosaur scales.

saturday 6/30

it rained again last night, sower, but almost as long. or so i thought. i went to sleep in the middle of it. today it’s suny and warm again, and it dosn’t look like ain. today they took down more scaffolding on the back end of the building, the part that juts out toward our property line. the scaffolding is mostly off the cyde street side, and still on teh back and front of the building. the movable forklift thingie was busiy taking trash from the parking deck out to the dumpster, including what must have been the world’s largest cardboard box. we speculated on what they must have brought here on teh back of a truck that had to be shielded fom the weather by puttin git into a box.
i’ve got 3 more tomatos on y vine. i only had one, three weeks ago, and now there are more. whoopie.

friday 6/29
it rained last night, ong and hard, several hours. there is lake arh in the neighbors’ bak yards again. everything mushy and soft. shoudl get out there and weed some things.
tehy’re taking down the scaffolding on the cyde street side. guys standing one above the other, reaching down the parts fire brigade style. lots of banging and clinking of pipes. you can se the side of the building now, toward the top. some green bits every few panels, brown, and offwhite.

thursday
creaking noises all day long. like someone on a rusty swingset. it’s somebody out there in the back with a block and tacle, using tehpulley to pull up barels of stucco to the first residential floor, guys carting them off over their shouders to wherever inside. crea creak creak. loads of guys on the back, smothing n stucco or painting, the cream color. on cyde street they’ve got some green panels but everythingelse is cream
hot, no rain.

wednesday
hot, no rain.

tuesday 6/26
they were doing the outside walls green. like the blue side of the building on bissey. coudy in the morning, and cool. then hot.

monday
the building looks white from the dogwalk. the stucco must have dried. cloudy in the morning, een a shoower, but very light. then hot. we’re talking98 in the shade. again. forman says the scaffolding will come down soon, and it’ll look more like a real building.

saturday
saw a new structure up on thr roof, turns out it’s something to do with cutting a hole in the roof for the grease trap for whatever estaurant will be on teh commecial foo. forman had said they’d dithered too much and so he was putting in the roof and would cut it out when the time came.

friday

thursday 6/21
cool in the shade, blisterig hot on the bricks along the sidewalk. again no visible guys, ust the sound of hammers and drills going thru metal studs. some pickups with laddres parked along the alley. but th birds are at it, and the squirrels, and you can barely see the building from our bed. and it blocks the sound of traffic, as well.

wednesday 6/20
much cooler, filmy clouds. rained much of the night last night, hard rain. big pools in the neighbor’s backyards. hammering, screwing into metal, i can see the tops of guys heads on the decks of the first residential floor, the private deck spaces.

tuesday 6/19
cool and cloudy, like it’s uspposed to rain. tho the green mas on the radar was just cool and cloudy. thunderstorms approaching fom the west, however. widespread showers. and in fact it rained last night, briefly, not enough to get wet under the trees. some workman’s car alarm keeps going off, whenever a heavy truckpasses, which is every 4 minutes. they’re working on the back of the building today. i can see thatt he side, on cyde street, is mostly finished with the stuccoo, beecausth still ddampandark gray, it’s smooth. dryvit is what it hink they’re putitng up. but today they’re on the back, preeparing to stuccco that, and they’re all talkinng adshouting, hamemrig and makingo ther noises. it’s nice to see what htey’re up to, even tho all i cans e eis bodies dressed in white. the mexicans wearwhite in ttheeha.the americans wear jeans or cammo pants.

monday 6/18
hot and sultry inside, cool and cloudy outside. random noises oming from the building. i’m losing interest in what’s happening there, because nothing seems to be happening there. still scaffolding everywhere, still doing stucco, still mixing up loads of cement with allll the sand which is there, still marble countertops in crates along teh alley, still doors piled up on teh deck.
at night, the lights in the building are still on, but because of the thickness of our leaves, we don’t see it. and also because they were being consierate when they designed the parking deck lighting, and hooded it so it only shines down onto the deck. thanks, guys.

thursday 6/15
cooler, but stil lin the 80s, fluffy clouds. the grond is still muddy in patches, especially in the dirt backyards of our neighbors. i’m goin to lose all my azaleas in the back, the ones i dug up from the old houses that were goin to be bulldozed, two years ago. oh well.
they’re busy stuccoing the cyde street side of the buildnig. there’s almost nobody on teh back side, but on the cyde street side they’re swarming over the place. foman says the scaffolding should have been gone 4 weeks ago. oh well.
out front they ended up digging along theentire lengt of our property (52′) before discoveringthe sewer conection that some otherr cewhad marked out months before in fading spray paint. i guess i should have mentioned it. they dug way way down and still had trouble findi the connection, and i suppose they made the attachemnt to the new pipes, because they filled in the whole area, using a wacke remote control sheepsfot compression unit and a whole dumptruck or two of gravel and tar fill. and then they called in a couple of trucks with flatbeds agttached and took away themini dozer andthe wacker, and the bulldozer went somewhreee lse.
early this mornnig they started up, out front,by moving the huge steel plates off the road. the bulldozer thumped them and whumped them and crashed them around, first thing, and then they were quiet. but later, when they were fitting a form into our hole, they made loads more noise. the form wasn’t righ, or else they did the work they needed to do so quickly that i dind’tt noie, but a few minutes after fitting it into the hole, they were liftig it back out again. they’d knocked a pier off it in their mahanndling of it, and it was very unsteady and wobbled a whole bunch. when they put it into the street it slid back and frth as if it were gonigto break. and then the dumptruck got up a good speed and wacked right into it to knock it over on its side. which resembled the noises they made this morning. and then he whacked it again. and then he slid it, and then got o the other side and pushe dit, and finally wound up with it against the curb, where they left it. very loud, very violent moveents. i thought he was going to crsh the car parked on the strete beside it. they’re so slapdash, these gys. butt hey’re done now, so i believe. and i guess the next step is to rake out teh fill and put down concrete, ad then pave.
the manhole testing trucks weere here for awhile one is a big cylindrical truck that tests the pressure, i think adn te other was a panel truck tht took measurements, i think. they weer threading a thick hose or cable fromthe cylinder truck, downthe manhole, and thru the pipes underthe street to another manhole halfway into the intersection of cyde and ahr streets, and te guy on ahr street told the guys on cyde street to hold on a minute, because theer was abad smell in the hole. i’d smelled seweage as i walked by, a minute earlier, so i don’t know if he meant that, which seemed to me to be normal, or soe othe bad smell. gas? but they stopped. it seemed to be nothing, the guy in teh truck read some reading and they al stood aound and caced jokes. the whole crew doing this was american (meaning black and white), which has been unusual on this street project, where mostly they’re mexican.

wednesday 5/14
cooler, but no clouds, so back to the same old pattern. really loved the rain. had another storm last nigh, blew in almost black from the northeast. thought the trees wer going to blow down. didn’t last very long, bu tteh ground is still soggy this morning, so great.
out front they’ve started digging in front of the house again. this time it’s the guys who are going to connect the pipes to our sewer outlet in the back fo te house.

tuesday 5/13
rain last night, and most of the night long. heavy thunderstorm around 6, then rain late and into the early morning. the storm blew down a 40′ length of fence in front of e buildng. forman was here and got a bunch of gus to hep drag it out of the street and push it back onto teh property. when we saw it this morning there were a bunch of mexicans tearing it down and digging a trench to stop the mud from flowing al over mi barrito (which is what forman calls mi barrio). it was cool much of the day, but then it got hot, and the thundestorm went west of us, and another one is fixing to go east of us.
out front the survey gys were back. we heard them going down the alley with a measuring tape. 58.5 was the measurement. i’m not sure, but i don’t think that’s how deep our house is, so maybe it was meters, and measured from the street. hard to tell. husband went out to say hi and they went on and on about the art they saw the last time they were here, so mayb he gave them the grand tour

monday 56/10
hot dry no rain. i’ve been gone a week and the only thing i notice is a bnch of dors and doorframes stacked up on the parking deck. there’s now no way to get in the building after the crews have left, everything’s closed and locked, and the parking deck has electric rolling dcors. in my absense they took out al the winter flowers and put in more summery stuff, which still only consists of chard, which is already bolting, so i don’t understand, and a few bushes. too bad. i waned those violets.
out front the surveyors were back, looking to see if we ave enough of a drop to the street so that we won’t need a pump. they’re talking about boring rather than digging thru the front yard; that would be interesting.

wednesday
scaffolding noises are really guys with long metal poles doing soemthing in the basement parking deck. still crates of contetops lined up in the alley. stll mounds of snd and bags of stucco going up and being mixed and stuff.

tuesday
the loud air hammer and the mallet breaking off concrete bitswere preperatory to installig metal bars coming down from tehceiling, about 18″ long.

monday
lots of very loud noise as a gy on a scisors lift shot his air hammer or staple gun or whatever in to the eiling of the comercial floor as close to our windows as he could possibly get. noises of scaffoldingbeing brought down, too, but i don’t know where. nosise ofa compressor all day, as well. and work trucks using the ramp to the aley and speeding going up it. lots of trash being tossed into the waiting lift of the yellow crane, and lots oftrash barrows being rolled up the alley b teams of mexicans.
hot adn dry. up to 89 on the front porch by 5 pm. no rain ever.
it was the fence lining cyde street. they took it down and i heard the clattering of the poles.

saturday
building out the corner where the service elevator was. heard some scaffolding noises but it sonded more like random pounding on pipes. no machinery after 3 each day but still guys inside. just can’t ell, so it looks like they’ve all gone home. very cool at night but very hot in teh day. like living in the desert. no rain, of course.

friday
heard from the city water people. they don’t figure it’s their problem, the leak we had, and said if we want redress we should talk to the contractors, who havee already said it’s not their problem but husband talked to brenda, of some department or other, who said the water people should pay, and someone should pay for the cost of the repairs. but we’re being stuck with them. next it’s call brenda and see who she represents, and then call carla smith, our city counsellor, and see if they can’tcontinue to help us.

thursday 5/17
it was cool last night,even with the flannel sheet on. almost getting cloudy outside, but not liely to rain today. late in the afternoon a bunch of workers came thru the back yard picking up pape that had blown of the construction site into our back yard. they trampled right thru the wildflower bed. of course they didn’t see it. there are ruts in nextor’s and guy’s yards from the rain and tenant and half the workers parking in the yards.

wednesday 5/16
it rained several times dunithe day. a line of nice tunerstorms came from texas but died on teh georgia border, and at fist itwas just couds. but it worked itself up to a rain shower that got ind of heavy, and then later on it rained again and this time it was a fair amount. i was very happy. the moving crane, on balon tires, can stretch al te way yup to the 5th residential foor. there’s gabage – shetroc bits and empty sheetrock mud buckets mostly, piled up on the balconies nearest where the elevator used to run. the crane stretches up and gets all teh trash down. amazing. the dark brown stucco has dried and now is creamy white.

tuesday 5/15
warm but no rain. up into the low 80s in the afternon. still being col enough to wear a sheet and snuggle close at night. guess it’s not summer yet
cement truck, don’t know what he was doing. moving crane taking all sorts of things around, but i can’t see where. the noise of dismantling scaffolding on the front at least of the building.
thunderstorm, well, showers anyway. first time in days. barely wet th ground but i was happy.

monday
all the surfaces are the same dark bown/gray of stuco. there was a breakin at night, a storeroom where there were lots of lasers, saws, power tools. inside job, says forman. there was also a burglar alarm somewhere in that direction, but forman seays his trailer isn’t alarmed, so it must have been the car shop.

saturday 5/12
they worked all day long, until about 3. it rained again in teh early evening, lovely dense thunderstorms with loads of ligtning and thunder an a bunch of rain. nextor got out and wacked his weeds as it got dark, in teh wet grass. what a guy.

friday
finally it rained. a thunderstorm bult up and came across, and tho we had loads of lightning, there was little rain, but wht rain theer was perked everything up. we’ve been in a drought, and this is the start of the summer thunderstorm season.
they took the elevator off, the construction elevator that ran up the corner of the building. now they can finish the corner units. this means they have everything heavy they’re gonig to be taking up there. i wonder ifthat means stoves and refrigerators, or are they going to install the elevator first and then take them up.

thursday 5/10
they’re using a scissos lit to spray paint the first residential floor b wall white. they seem to have put stucco on the back wall next to the alley. it’s suddenly not white but brown gray. some things they do and i just don’t notice, even tho i’m sitting staring out the back window all day.

wednesday

tuesday 5/8
cool in the morning, actally really cold, but in the 80s in the afternoon. all day no clouds, a good stiff breeze. there was a big truck outside on yde street all night, with its motor running. i kept thinking i was hearing a toilet running, but it was this guy who either got here way late or way early to deliver more cabinets. again teh street was blocked most of the day with that truck and anoter one behind him. . therre must hae been more countertops delivered, too because they’re lining the aley. still tehsounds of some air gun making elephant fart sounds. moe sand, a guy runninga 2″ hose from he hydrant across the street, mixing stucco or something.
out font they were in ahr street today, it was closed at both ends, but they didn’ get to our end oft he street untl late. a bulldozer with a forklift attachment came up tote m,etal plate in font of our driveway and lifted it, right into te back of a merceeds. then the guy telling him what to do told himto push it forward instead, ad we saw howthe tar macadam they’d put down ot seal t, came up in a wave of almost liquid. it buckled as he slid the metal plate forward. good thing the mercedes didn’t have a car alarm on. idiots shouldn’t park theyir cars in the street when there’s heavy equipment about, anyway. seves them right. betthey’re wiating fo their cars to be damaged to theycan sue.

monday 5/7
loads of sand, more countertops. the soudn of scaffolding being taken down was the mexican restaurant removing their cinco de mayo tent. loads of big trucks blocking the street. heard some guy saying it’s better to have more than we need than to get there and find we don’t haveenough. no rain in many day. there’s a drought on. 9″ down in lake lanier.

snday 5/6
woking on sunday for the second week in a row. forman must be in a fit to get finished. the rain, or chance thereof, as gone, and now we have blue sies. it’ll get hot and muggy later. they’re hamering and making yelling noises out there, but i don’ se them.

saturday 5/5
there’s now a green awning. we specualte tht if it’s cloth then the wind’ll whip it right into pieces. if it’s plastic then it’ll crack from the sun. supposed to be aining, but justmist. very cool. glass windows and doors going up on the back side now. the corner si covered with plastc where the windows are, ad they’re stuccoing the wals. the side and front are mainly stucoed now. the top has finished with the scaffolding. another truck full of counters and cabinets

friday 5/4
the triangular frame is for an awning at the very top o the building, on the eelvator tower. could rain soon. still cool. a big trailer truck pulled up and blocked the road, with couters and cabinets in it.

thursday 5/3
a pickup with steel frame, triangular, pulles up. i wasn’tsure it was for the jobsite. those countertops from china line the back yards. not sure if the glinting i can see fromthe window is plastic wrap or marble coutner top.

wednesday 5/2
already in the 70s early morning. had the windows open and the fan on last night, and still kicked offthe sheet. another cloudless day not promising rain oh well. they’re taking apart the crates in the back yards, adn i stll don’t know what’s in them.
out front they’re replacing the curbstones on all 4 corners of ahr and cyde streets. they’re such diligent wokers.

tuesday
a big semi came up and unloaded 2 large green forklifts. anoter semi parked on the alleyway ramop and unloaded a dozen or so wooden crates onto the dirt of the neighbors’ yard.

monday
got to 88 on the proch this afternoon. quite hot fo this time of year, just a foreshadowing of what it’s goni to be like in august.

sunday 4/29
they’re orking on sunday.guys shoveling sand, soemthing whiny like a motor, like an air blower but fixed in pitch and position. what the hell are they doing there on sunday?

saaturdy 4/28
they’ve stuccoed the top of the elevator tower, and are preparing to do the rest of the back. cool but sunny , got up to 80. only scam clouds, no rian.

friday 4/26
cooler, bright and sunny. saw more sheetrock being lifted up o the floors by the movable crane. saw more sand being dumped on the side yard (on the street behind the fence). saw more glass being taken in; at least, saw the glass trck with its slanted sidses.hear saws and hamering all the time
out front they’ve moved up anther bock on ahr street, redigging the trenches they dug before and pouring concrete to harden up the fill. husband noted where the milling machine had dug down deep enough o contact the old paving stones in the street up the next block. the machine milled some of the granite. must have worn down a bunch of tips.

thursday 4/25
finallly some rain. we got up just in tmie to take teh dogs for a walk, and by the time we got back it was pissing. still some more coming out of te west, a line of thunderstorms.
out front, they were digging up the trench in front of nextor’s yard. the guy was digging up each paving stone and piling them on the street. i sent husband out there to ask who they weer for, turns out they’re for the inspector, who wants some fo his yard. but he’ll give us the ones he digs up later in front of our yard. he was working in teh rain. we were awakened at 7 by the sounds of a world war 1 tank rolling past the house. i was in the middle of a dream, and rolled back onto sleep anyway, a testament to how much the ear can get used to. the tank was i’m thinking the stret miller, but it ould have just been a treaded bulldozer. i didn’tget up to see.
they said they were going to save us the stones, but tey didn’t. i was working in the bedrom and herd them joking as they piled the stons in the boss’s car, and he must have been watching when they did our patch, because they just dug it up, filled and stomped it with the rooller, and set to it with concrete. i missed another opportunity to get my initials in wet cement (even if it is goingto be covered with tar macadam); they had teir lunch in plain site of the drying cement. oh well. it’s an omen from god.

wednesday 4/24
they pulledin thru the alley from maien steet with a big semi, the flatbed loaded with what looks like landscape timbers. the next thing i know, there’s a stack of plastic wrapped what looks like cement bags. who knows what for. noises coming from the site but nobody i can see woking. they’ve got the windows in at the extreme right side of the bac.
warm, hot in the sun, no rain. no clouds. some clouds, looked like it migh could rain, but they raced by us.

tuesday 4/23
out front, the road crew was back today, after not being anywhre around yesterday, when they were millin hte street. tey madea lot of noise with their big circular saw, digging another trenc across the street, one for each patch. and then they rolled it with the remote control wcker, and after awhile a cement truck came up and upt cement in th patches. i guess because the patching material was too soft and would collase or subside under the new road surface they haent put down yet.
thy delievered the countertops today, or at least that’s what i think is is the big panel truck that pulled up. they delivered moer gypsum on a big flatbed that pulled up into the intersection of ahr and cyde, because ahr was closed on our end, ad a forklift took it off and carried it back tothe site. more hmmering and nailing.
warm and sunny, it hit 80 in teh afternoon bu te moring was delightfully cool. no rain, no sign of rain; blue sky.

monday 4/22
i went for a walk thru the building on sunday. they’re spraying fire retardent on teh beams and cement celingings o ftheparking deck; why i guess so that it won’t collapse thebuilding if a car goes on fire??? the comercial floor is being built out, but is tstll mostly empty. the first residenial floor is just studs, still. teh upper floors are in various states. on one there was just sheetrock up on the inside of the units, and the knee walls (the kitchen counters will go there) are just studs. on the next floor and the upper floors from that, there is yellow insulation all overtheplace and above tht there is sheetrock on both sides, adnthe units are all sheeeetorkced and mudded and taped, adn ready for painting. only teh very top floors re coated with gypsum. it’s not a really good job, and will need some sanding (oh hata mess that’ll be, so dusty), but they’eve smoothed th floors consideably from the lowe floors, where it’s still basic hollow core cement planks filled with cement around the edges. i got to wander thru the units and fantacize about what it would be like to lie there. the spaces are big enough, and the views spectacular. the roof is still needing a deck, but all the air conditioning units ae uot there, like rows of trees.
you can’t see our house from the roof, our trees are too thick. that’s wonderful. we won’tget anyone seeing us untl the winter. and the trees will block alot of sound.

saturday 4/21
earth day celebrations over in grant park; here at the construction site they’re erecting a big tent in the midle of cyde street. forman is pissed. they’respending 30k on a party to attract prospective buyers, and they didn’teven have a topping out party for the constructino. they had oneat his budy’s place in inman park, and he had to go to that one instead same company, no favors for him. he’s supposed to be done in 40 days, but it’ll be mid-august. monday he’s going to get delivery of some cabinets fo som of the floors, and tuesday granite couter tops for some more of the floors. he’s finishin the drywall on several of the foors, he’s got up to the 3rd floor done. he’s going to be gypsuming the floors. we mentioned that we drove by the core slab plant down in joonesboro, andhe complained mightily that the bottoms of the slabs were moer finished than the tops, adn he was assured months ago tht fixing it would not cost his budget any money. turns out it’s going to come to twice the original cost of the slabs to fix tehm, ad his company sure as shit is going to have to pay for it. he was really pissed that they were holding a party while he was supposed to be building out he restaurant space, which is under negotiation by doc chey’s noddle house. but he’s bgot to finish the roof, and it’s only being negotiated for the grease conduit to the roof, so he’s goingto go ahead with the roof, an let someone else knock a hole in it for the conduit. after all, tey may design it differently and not need tito go up 6 stories to reach the outside air they may decide to put it on the wall outside the cmmercial floor, who knows. the architects are still changing their minds. he just got the colors forthe stucco last friday. the punch list i goingto be a bitch, to, like the wals of the paring deck, which we can see are badly sanded, leaving a big long line where the concrete ends and thecinderblock starts. and the architects just approved teh railing for the roof, which takes 4 weeks lead timeto manufacture, never mind installing it.
lovely day. a font came thru, so it’s cool, in the 70s, no clouds, no chance of rain.

friday 4/20
coudy, threatening rain, but it actually dried up and blew away. couds were cming fom the east and i could smell the ocean in tehm. but they were just the aftermath of a cold font, adn had no rain in them.
can’t tell what the hell they’re doing over there.

tursday 4/19
the guys out front started on our sewer connection this morning. we could hear them from the bed, unwrapping chains, warming up the engines, digging up the bricks on the sidewalk. then at 7:30 they began using the mini dozer to dig under the sidewalk. as they got out into the street, they kindly saved me alll the paving stones, and at first built a wall on my driveway, then it must have toppled, because they just pitched them into a pile after that. must be a hundred stones. i’m rich. my back is going to hurt once i move them all just to a storage area. they dug a deep hole in the street. there was what looked like a 12×12 beam under the sidewalk, but they said it was the box forthe phone cable, so i guess it wasn’t wood. the hole is 4′ wide and goes across teh stereet. at the moment they’re putting huge metal forms into the hole, the sound of dragging them aound on teh street, and the sound of the big dozer pounding them into teh holes, is house shaking and teeth-gritting. i’m going to make oatmeal and chocolate chip bars and get husband to give it to them. i’ve already found out that they won’t accept cookies from me, hispanic guys, so maybe they’ll accept them from someone mas macho.
on the site, they’re unloading dumptrucks full ofsand into the cyde street fenced ff area. there are bags of gypsum cement, which i guess is sheetrock mud mix.
beautiful warm day, little fluffy clouds. in the 70s before noon.

wednesday 4/18
warm, cloudy and the radar said it was raining, but no rain. then blue sky as the front passed. i watered the things that came the otehr day.

tuesday 4/17
warmer. deep blue sky, tho. can’t hardly see the building from the houseanymore, yay. they’re sanding the knee (chest) wall on teh paking deck, great clouds ofwhite dust billowing away in the breeze. they’re putting glass on the front of the cyde street side, and we can see whre there’s a shlower installed near the front of ont unit at tehvery top. i had thought they were bathtups. watched a guy climbing a ladder up the back of the building, all the way up. it’s attached to the scaffolding. i almost wanted to climb it myself, but not really. i’d rather take the stairs inside. guess i’m getting old. more sheetrock, can’t hardly see the wooden studs inside anymore. it’s going really quick now they’re done actually putting up the building. at least it seems like it. andon the other hand, nothing seems to be going on bcause i can’tsee what they’re doing inside. time for another jaunt thru the place with my camera. husband saw some local yuppie types, with kids, going thru the building unattended last weekend. no beamcounter there trying to seell them, so maybe they were just local ersidents curious about it. the flag they put up at the top has shredded, and now flies in strips.
nobody is working out front in the street, tho the do not park signs have been up since easter.

monday 4/16
started out cold and ery windy, windy all night. thy finished the repaving of bissey street over the weekend, blacktop in al lanes, lane markings. traffic doesn’t bump or pitch for the fist time in a very long while. can’ tell what they’re doing. machines, like drills, making whiny ‘no’ noises al day long, hammering, but nobody visible.

saturday 4/14
started out beautiful, got progressively warmer, now it’s going to rain real soon now. they woked, but forman wasn’t here. mexicans taking bits of sheetrock off the floors and overloading a dumpster.
put moer monkey grass on the hill,the dirt above the drainpipe that runs under the apron is very badly stabilized, just loose dirt. every time i dug a hole with my hand to put in a piece of monkey grass, dirt cascaded down to th botom of the ditch. had to stop planting about halfway down, the pipe is becoming more exposed. maybe the rain will help stabilize it, adn maybe i’ll have a section of raw pipe to deal with later. removed the orange tape around the wildflower area, theree’s an o bvious path and i’ve told husband to continue to walk around. but we were both getting tired of the tape.
last night the guys in the street with the sewer replacemeent project were on bissey street all nigt long. at fist digging up the street, scrapingthe top 2-3 inches off (and still leaving a worn yelow line in the middle, how do theydo that?) and pouring it into the backs of dumptucks that then came down cyde street and up ahr street to maine street and the highway. we could hear the whistles of the cops directing traffic all night, and in the morning we could smell tar. when we went for the dogwalk we found the enire street closed, and tem laying new asphalt on the far side of the street. they’d dug up the whoel street in teh night and had one lane completely down by 10 am. we could see that traffic was stopped several blocks on either side of the block they wer working on, with a pickup with yelow lights at the head of one blocked up stream of traffic. every now and then he’d lead a bunch of cars and busses all teh way thru, then turn around in the street and led the cars going the other way. i guess they’d get lost trying to figure out which of 3 lanes of cones to follow.

friday 4/13
warmer, thereat of rain an empty one. got up to 80s. don’t know what the hell they’re doing bac kthere. transplanted a bunch of monkey grass to the hill leading up to the aley, will have to do it over and over in order to get coverage on the entire hill. may have to dig up some in places wher i actually want them and wait until next year to replenish them. stuff grows like weeds. a guy in scruffy black with short hair and sunglasses came over th fence and sauntered down the alley, dissapearing behind the east wall. he struck me as a graffiti type, checing out the place so he could tag it later. didn’t say a word to me tho he passed within 10 feet.

thursday 4/12
they’re spray painting the back wall, the edges ofthe paring deck. i guess no brick there. one guy is panting with a ong sprayer on a rod, and another guy is rollign it with a long roller on a handle.
it’s cool this morning, very blue sky. constant whine of a saw, thrums ofdrills and screwdrivers. they’re putting black mostirue barriers over the glasrock on parts o the back of the structure now. the cyde steet side is all black, and all the glass is in on the bisey street side.

wednesday 4/11
warmer, but still not above 65. cloudy all day, and it rained drips and drops most of the afternoon. sometime after 9 pm it started raining, and for 10- minutes it was a downpour. very nice. whatever they’re doing in the building is very hard to tell, because there are many construction noises but nothing visible.
the guyss out front have posted no parking on our part of the street, and so it was clear this morning, but they never ame by because it was supposed to rain

tuesday 4/10
the guys out front dug up guy’s sstret to get to his pipes, and maybe they got to nextor’s house. i have to remember to rush out there andask them for the paving stones when they dig up the street in front of our house.
cold. around freezing at night, or so it feels.
planted the delivered things, the sugar cane down teh back, the rain lily not ntil i mow the front yard, the ginger lily along teh side wher there’s lots of sun. i also went to urban gardener and bought an heirloom tomato, since my seedlings didn’t live. it’s a german striped tomato plant. put it into the spare tire i had sitting around back there, filled it full of dit stolen off the construction site (screened for grave) and mixed with home made partially omplete compost. put it in the most sunny spot in the yard, which isn’t saying much more than 4 hours a day. i’ve een tomato plants in the neighborhood, put under shade tres, in yards that have less sun than we do, which is hard to do.

saturday 4/7
easter saturday, and they’re working on the site. just the mexicans, of course, the ones who actually observe easter rituals. poor guys.

friday 4/6
got down to 29 degrees in parts of teh city. didn’t seem to affect any of our plants, tho, so it probably didn’t get that cold in town. had to wrap up in winte clothes, however. teh guys out front didn’t botherworing today, and tey won’tbe working monday eiter.
i got a delivery and had to leave it on the porch while the freezing weather was upon us. a rain lily, some sugar cane, some ginger lilies, and something else, i thought. perhaps not.

thursday 4/5
fucking freezing this moning. in the 40s. cold all day long. last night it was so cold and windy that when i took kid’s dog out for a 5 am walk she shat and peed in record time and then shivered in my arms until i got her back inside to snuggle under kid’s blankets.
they put out what looks like a sisal mat, impregnanted with fescue that’s only supposed to last one season adn not come back. i’ll go plug monkey grass into it next week. what looked likegrowing green things in teh neighbors’ yards is only fallen leaves and catkins. no kudzu as yet. more sheetrock going up to the floors, more whiny hand tools being used. it’s gotten very quiet out theer, and until i go thru there with the camera i’m not going to be able to tell what they’re doing, probably from now on. thy put the fece back up at the end of the new cement alleyway, but thee’s no fence, so anyone at all can dive in from maine street and go around the fence.

wednesday 4/4
it started raining in the middle of the night, a few close stikes oflightning, so i’m glad i unplugged the computers. it rained most of the night. only al ittel erosion i nour new gulley, which teh guy with the shovel spent a couple of days smoothing in preparation for som plastic matting which has yet to godown. the neighbors’ dirt yards showsome signs of green things sprouting on the surface. not grass seed…kudzu buried luxuriously deep and theerfore fortified.
the lengths of scaffolding and boards whic were piled up nextt o the alley are being loaded onto a truck, i’m not sure they ever used them, and now i’m wondering whatt hey’re going to do to the cindeblock knee (chest) walls facing us. in fact, these walls are the only things now visible thru the leaves fom our bed. a nice blue gray contrasting with teh nice yelow greens. the cold font that came hru last night came from the midwest, and caugt up with the stream of wet air fom texas, so instead of being thunderstorms it was hours of rain. and now it’s geting coler outside. it’s in the 50s still this morning.

tuesdddday 4/3′
cloudy, but no rain so far. it’s vvvvery warm and muggy, in the 80s. yesterday when they poured he concrete in the neighbor’s yard, i missed my probably final chanc eto make my mak. i had missed the pouing of my own driveway because of some reason, and then eysterday i was off with kid getting her to work (ru-san’s). but the downstairs cat, monkaey walked thru the cement for me and left nice deep fotpints. she wasn’t very happy getting cement on her feet, but at least she left a mark.
there’s what looks like more scaffolding parked outside on the dirt at the edge of the alley, probably fro the parking deck. the back of the building is al white now, with only shiny metal studs still uncovered on the roofliine. you really can’t see much thru the leaves now that they’re out. i’m so hapy.
the garden contiues to come up. the comfrey i planted in teh fall is up, the foxgloves are ready to bloom, te things in the nursery bed are for the most part sprouting, whre the squirrels didn’t dig them up over the winter. there’s still pollen and catkins everywhre, ad little fire ants making nests in the bricks o the sidewalk.

week
monday 4/2
cloudy, should have rained but didn’t. rained some on sunday. saw crates of heating and air conditioning units on the corner of cyde and bissey, presumably for the roof. they weren’t there later. later the portable crane was lifting stacks of sheetrock up to the floors. they formed up and poured the rest of the driveway into the corner neighbor’s house. forman spent some time yelling atthe cement guy about how he was awaree how the cement guy is used to doin git, but they’re going to do it his way this time. the noies are much reduced. just air hammers and those elephant fart sounding screwgun noises. everyone’s using little hand tools you can buy at home depot now, no more big industrial stuf that makes noise. th trees are al out, you can hardly see thru them to the construction site now. when you look out the window it’s all that wonderful shade of yelow greenn. the pollen all overthe place is a little mitigated by the rain, but the streets are now full of long hairy catkins of some tree. the kid’s dog gets them in her fur. the weather has been cool. in the 70s, up to 80 in eh afternoon. very nice. full spring, i must get pictures o the dogwoods and azaleas tomorrow before they’re past peak.

saturday 3/31

friday 3/30
morefilling of dirt at the edges of the new cement alley and curb cuts. the little dozer carved out some more ground next to my trees, morethan i would have wishes, and didn’t ask permission, but it’s too late now. he extended the dirt into a ramp gonig down into my back yard, and after he left i went and took the excess dirt for my garden. pretty shitty dit, too, loads of gravel. it rained around town, enough to get the green pollen stuff gone everywhre but here and points west and south. gwinnet and dunwoody got hammered, tho. nice for them. cool in the moring, then warm, 85 on the porch, nice day. full spring.

thursday 3/29
bricking up the front of the building on bissey street, on teh comercial floor. al teh cement columns now being brck columnns.piles of green lengths of 2×4 waiting to be put on the flors. it got really cold in teh afternoon and coninued getting cold all evening. we got the quilt back out and shut the windows. in the middle ofthe night there was this big plastic sheet blowing noise. it sounded like pouring a bunch of pebbles into a big plastic contaier.

wedmesday 3/28
they poured this morning, but not as early as they were going to. the roller wen up and back a lot and they filled in the gravel on guy’s curb cut. but they poured, a dcemen truck going slowly down the alley ramp doing the curbs, 3 more cement trucks waiting in guy’s back yard. i missed my chance o put my glyph in the wet cement, didn’t even think about it until husband reminded me on the laate dog walk, hours after it had dried. oh well.
later, noticed that they’ve taken the fence down all along the alley and along the east side, along the 6-story blank wall. now it’s possile to get on the site from multiple places. i guesss they’ll put up a fence iside the alley next. also noticed that they’ve done bick work along the first story (the paring deck ground floor) at th northeast end of the property.
this morning the trees were so green, and the light coming thru them made the whole backyard look green, a nice lght green. it was didfficult to see te building thru the trees, and soon we won’t be able to see it at all.
cool, but in the 80s. very dry, no chance of rain. my tomato seedlings did varey badly today, crisping a litle. i need to water again tomorrow, somethign i said to myself i’d do today. especially the new bushes, the rhododendrons and the kousa dogwood i paid so much for.

tuesday 3/27
big flatbed semi drove up early, before dauwn, loaded the big excavator and left. they’re digging a trench for the forms. the smal dzer planed the neighbor’s yard and did ours, but put a flat surface instead of a ramp. forman got real mad and made them do ti over. forms are up for both the curb and the alley, and they put in forms for all the curb cuts too, so they’lll be doing it all in the morning, accoding to forman. but guy’s form doesn’t have any garavel in it, so who knows. guy wanted the driveway to go all the way into his yard. actually , he sounded to forman like he wanted his foundation for his garage poured. hah.
another warm day, but in the 70’s-80s, and cool eough to hang out outside.
out front, tehy’re gone from our block again, working on the oher side of ahr street across maine. nobody knows if they’e done here, but since all this side has to go around to bac kyards andown 20′, i figure they miht just foget to geta aroud to it.

monday 3/26
cooler today. in the 70s. still no chance of rain, tho there’s something in texas. it’ll probably move up into the midwest instead of coming this way. but at least it’s cool.
they’re digging a trench on the side of the alley from cyde street down the edge of the building, looks like that pipe they were going to install, a 6″ or less diameter pipe. the little dozer was scraping out the ramp next to the street, and forman said tomorrow they were goind to lay the cement. but i told husband that was silly, it’ll be anything but tomorrow, simply because that’s how this project has traditionally worked. the back of the building is turning white as they start to cover all the shiny metal studs. too bad, i liked them. hey clinted.
out front, they’re diggin up the ground in front of the slumlord’s house acoss the street. a great pile of fill and then dirt as the excavator (a tiny little green thing) dug up the street at full extension. husband recalls someonne telling him the pipe is 20′ deep there. i wonder why. the street is closed, but still people come into it. some to park and walk to the diner at the corner of maine street, some just because the think they can somehow get thru and then have to turn around. they left a big dozer’s engine running for a long time while 4 guys stood around watching the excavator digging a hole. kid came out and went to the diner for something to eat, and each one of themstared at her and followed her with their heads and bodies swiveling. she pretended not to notice, but was uncomfortable. i remembered back when i was young and people would whistle at me simply because i was identifiably female, not becuase i dressed provocatively like she does, because i dressed in sacks and floppy t-shirts to avoid attention. it never worked. i hated men at that point, because they were always victimizing me with their eyes, staring at me because i was female and nothing more, making comments, being assholes.
cement truck was here, not sure why. went out back after most of them had gone. they took our fence down today, started puttuing up 2x12s as forms along the sides of the alley. the surface ofthe alley was smooth in places where gravel dust had compacted, flattened gravel in other places. there was a string guide on stakes all tdoen the alley. they’re not ready to do the curb cuts, because there was loads of dirt on our soon to be driveway and our neighbor’s on the corner. there’s an orange mobile crane on site now, lifting bundles of sheetrock up onto the fourth floor.

saturday 3/24
in the 80s. no rain, loads of green pollen everywhere. they were here, doing things, but i don’t know what. it’s getting harder to tell what they’re doing. the back end uis almost all white now, glasroc and red tape holding the seams together. the next step is the black moisture barrier.

friday 3/23
warm this morning, in the 80s by noon. the excavator digging out more of the alley, the little inidozer scraping dumptrucks full of gravel over the alley. they dug out some 2-3′ of alley and put down black plastic, spread gravel over it. but not all of it. just up near the top of the alley. now the excavator is sfting thru the dirt on nextor’s yard and putting the large rocks into a waiting dumptruck. forman was watching the progress this morning, despite his telling me he couldn’t do anything about the dirt hill on our land. i can’t get a straight answer out of him, yet he does his best to satisfy me. how strange. they’re going to dump dirt on the mosquito breeding declivity on the kids’ house on the corner, which will help.
everything is green, you can barely see the buidling in the morning from our bexdroom. but you sure can hear it. because of the saws and drills and hammers and everything going in the building, that we can’t see, it sounds like we’re next door to the zoo. elephants farting, zebras honking, some bird with wild plumage screeching. almost 90 on teh porch.

thursday 3/22
woke up at 1:30 by the sound of a drawerful of cutlery being spilled onto the floor. it came from the worksite, and we thought for sure it was an entire set of scaffolding collapsing, including bit cans bouncing off the pile. it was a dramatic sound, very loud, lasted a long time, with more bits and pieces falling after that. but forman said nobody had told him about anything like that. at 5:30 husband got up to see guys out there with flashlights doing things in the alley. the pile in nextor’s yard is higher.
pipe spanning the entrance to the lower parking deck, guess they’ve dug it up again. planing more of the alley, putting more dirt on our drieveway. went to talk to forman about whether the survey flags mean the edge of our property or the edge of their driveway, didn’t get a clear answer, told him i needed to know that where our property is there’s no slope, he said i’d have to take it up with someone else, that he thought that’s what our deal was, that we had all our property anyway, that the alley had to be 20′ wide. then complained he never gets to the site because of all the damn reports, gestured at a sheet of paper listing 10 reports they need that instead of being hand written now have to be scanned and faxed because they need something else. he’s not sure if tey’re going to put a garden on the roof or not.
took several wheelbarrows full of dirt from a pile on our pre-driveway to the middle of the top of the back yard. going to put some on the compost pile, turn some into tomato and potato beds.

wednesday 3/21
they delivered a big excavator early tiis morning,and he proceeded to scrape up the alley and ramp and dump it all on nextor’s yard. squeak oftreads like some ww2 battlefield all morning long.the eturn of the huge noises from when they were first digging out the hole. we need to go to forman and make sure he is clear about our property line and the fact that the slope can’t begin on it. more scaffolding. fire control guy, hazmat suits spraying fire retardant that they mix up great gobs of. delivery of loads o fbrickinto the entran e to the lower paring deck. i suppose for thealley side ofthewall.
cyde steet and maine intersection still being worked on, backing traffic up unimaginably.
more green, everywhre. only the oak doesn’t show buds. the pecan is just barely bare still. up to 80 in the daytime, down to 50 at night. wonderful spring.
kid has to go in to aftercare at the hospital once a week. don’t think it’s oing to cost anything. some programs there are 300/day, so that’s dgood because her dad may have cancelled her insurance, or will at least threaten it.

tusday 3/20
black moisture barrier on the cyde street side, almost covered. white glasroc on the back end going up. vast piles of sheetrock in the street. gray container in the street. yellow trash dumpsters in the street outside the fence. two ranks of cars and dtrucks takeing up the whole street. mexican workers using battery powered hotplates to make tortillas and filling for lunch.
thursday
kid moves in after scene with dad where he asks her to get groceries and she’s too tired and busy so he gets them himself and berates her in letter and word.

monday 3/19

saturday 3/17
gotdown in upper 30s, no frost damage to the trees, more green out than yesterday, seeing thru a green haze where we can tell we’e not going to be able to see anything in a few weeks, just a wal of green. they were woking today, don’t know what they were doni. the pitch can, not a can but a huge big barrel with grossly blackened weelbarrows an other equipment – it’s gone now. plastic covers theroof and it flappedd alll night in the wind like somone was out there draagging something heavy across the back yards or the cats were goingnus inthe cat box.

friday 3/16
rained most of hte night, sometimes softly, sometimes hard. then there was a whole lot more color inthe trees. now we look atthe building thru a green haze. there’s visible green in the wildflower pen, adn more irises. bu ttigot colder immediately, and they’re talking about below freezinthis weekend.
out fron there was a vaccuum thing sucking up thegravel they’d put down over the road cuts the last time they worked on the street, down across from guy’s house.
more sawing and air hammering, didn’t build any more scaffolding in the back, but they’re putting up glasroc in the ecesses of the balconies.
it’s very chill, and windy. the sun came out in late afternoon and it’s partly cloudy now.th plastc could be heard fluttering from half a block away, the flag blowing stiffly from the nor northwest.

thursday
60s cloudy, going to rain soon. more air halmers, this tiime every 20 seconds, more muffled. starting not to hear the marta train going by. mobile crane in the alley lifting the scaffolding up to the resiential first floor, starting to put scaffolding on the back side of the building now. more saw sounds, constant metallic, or ceramic whine as some poor guy cut pbrick after brick in half. or so i think. hard to tell. going to have to ask forman when they’re going to change out the winter flowers on the cornner so i can get in there and take it all for my own garden. all those violets, and those bushes with the purple flowers this time of spring.

wednesday
80 debgrees, no rain, little clouds. whiny saw, perhaps brick cutting. truck delivering scaffolding into the alley, parked u on cyde street with a little forklift scyrring down with load after load

tuesday 3/12
air gun every 5 seconds. dogwood, more green all the time. black lady pointing out bradford pears – looks like snow. sanding cement surface on alley wal ls. more pitch, very thick when we got home. is the house burning?

week 44
monday 3/11
bricks, pitch, window glass, light gray stucco maybe first layer, boom pump and private decks. seen a black lady working with them the last few weeks. she’s little, and maybe she operates the big orange forklift.
more green, mid 60s at 9 am, hazy, no rain forecast.
green things coming up in wildflower garden. unidentifiable seedlings. some azaleas beginning to bloom.

saturday 3/10
trucks parked in the alley, and the gates were closed and locked. seems strange. putting up gray stucco on the east end wall. nothing but mexicans there all day, and forman in his trailer. hard to tell what they’re doing all day over there now, now that the outside work is almost done. i guess they’re glassing up the front at this point, but i haven’t been around with the dog to see. they’re putting up glasroc and then a black moisture barrier on the cyde street side of the building now. wonder when they’ll get to the back.
warm, very nice. it started out raining in the morning and was pretty cool until the sun came out, and then it got up into the upper 70s.

friday 3/9
more ditch digging with the little ditch witch early on, and then the cement truck came in and parked at the alley entrance ot the lower parking deck. don’t know if they filled the ditch or not.
the trees are showing signs of green and swollen buds. with every day, even if by only a millimeter, there is less to see of the building because of the budding trees. they stop the eye like little diamonds on the ends of the branches. we have some green out there in one of the trees that i haven’t yet identified. there is green in my wildflower bed, but it’s just grass as far as i can tell. my comfrey is up, and the blueberry is blooming, and al the daffodils, and now the irises are starting to show buds. i love the spring. warm and cloudy, smelling of rain, but when the clouds rolled in in the afternoon it got bitter. and the the sun came out. it’s a stationary front parked on top of us, and it flutters back and forth during the day.

thursday 3/8
ditch witch in back of the building, they’re digging a ditch within a foot or two of the parking deck walls all the way up to the street. it’s for the stream. forman said several months ago that the stream, before they capped it, had undermined the street. and now he’s down there watching them dig both ends out by hand, and the dirt looks wet, so i wonder if they actually contained the stream after all. of course there are springs all over the place here, so it’s likely they didn’t get all of the water into the pipes. they’re going to run a grray 4-6″ pipe all the way up to the street when they’ve finished messing around with it. a uy just put the pipes away where they wouldn’t get crushed by trucks and bulldozers, so it looks like they hit some problem they weren’t anticipating.
the scaffolding on the east side is for putting up moisture barriers, after which, judging by the sacks of stucco piled up on the bissey street side of the east end, they’re going to put up stucco on the wall. it’s te wall they’re eventually going to join to the continuation of the block of buildings, as soon as they buy out the mexican restaurant, the check cashing place, and the glass people. whenever.
very nice out, the thermometer on the porch reads 80. clear skies, no rain in sight. they’re calling for it this weekend. our maple outside put out little helicopter seeds weeks ago, before the hard frost, and now they’re very large and the whole tree is red. we’ve ot a tree out back with little gray green leaves coming out on it. my wildflower bed is still mostly dirt, and what is comin up seems to be native plants. all the daffodils are up, but looks like the forsythia went straight into leaf without putting out flowers first. one of my native azalea babies that i thought was dead has just put out new green shoots, yay. the little dwarf irises are coming up and blooming, and the comfrey is putting out new shoots. the blueberry has put out little red leaves.
the surveyors were out. 2 rows of stakes, one with pink, and one with pink and blue. but the pink ones, that are closer to our property lines, are not even. they zigzag quite a bit along our rear property lines, so i can’t tell what they’re for. forman has to be made aware that he has to get his slope completely down to zero by the time they hit our property line. i’ve ordered sugar cane to go back there, it is supposed to get up to 10x10x12′ eventually. i finished moving all the roses back to around the trees at the back end of the property. let them get thru that…

wednesday 3/7
probation, go see her dad who writes check, not very coherent, not very alive, something wrong with him, a real user and desperate, too. boyfriend won’t let her come stay with me in town, prefers her staying with her dad, who 2 rehabs have advised her not to go back to.
warm, in the upper 70s all day, and clear. it looks like they’re covering up all the shiny metal studs. the noises are much reduced. saw a guy carrying an itty bitty circular saw to his truck. now it’s just the whine of handtools and the pounding of hammers. still the smell of pitch.

tuesday 3/6
visit with kid in new rehab. in the self-pay wing, you can order food, go out to wal-mart, totally different rules from the rest of the hospital. $4900/wk. wants to come stay with me after she gets out. going to boyfriend in 2 months, after he gets his cdl. granny still not approving. that’s okay, her dad doesn’t approve either.
warm, in the upper 60s. i slept all day because of visiting family-lag.

week 43
monday 3/5
beep beep beep, hammer, and saw, but the whine of the screwdrivers is minimal as they put 2x4s down and screw them into the shiny metal studs. looks like we’re not going to have shiny metal studs when they get thru, which is too bad, because i like them. early on there was a big dumptruck on the street with what looked like sand to dump, but when we went out later there was no sign of it. the smell of heating asphalt all day as they puped it up to the roof. the guys on the scaffolding bricking up the cinderblock east wall. cool, but it got up to 60 today. sunny all day. the guy grading the ramp and alley all day. evidently we can expect the surveyors out here tomorrow or the next day to mark property corners and other things forman needs being done, and they’ll pur cement a few days after that. my best chance to put my symbol into wet cement. scaffflding stacked up back on the alley, waiting i guess to do the parking deck walls. hey, i thought they were all gone because it’s quiet out there, but there’s a guy scaling the scaffolding on teh east side, so i guess they’re still there. there is some gladss already installed on the front side, sliding doors or floor to ceiling doors, whatever.

sunday 3/4
we got back from our trip to dc to find it fairly cold, in the 50s, and clear. i noticed after awhile that they’d graded our soon to be driveway while we’d gone, which forman said he would do and we thought he was joking, but i put up caution tape around my wildflower bed and hsband staked out how we wanted the driveway. so now the fence is cut, there’s a pipe running under our new driveway to be, the neighbor’s driveway runs right beside ours and the pipe goes thru both of them, and he had someone dig out the drain pipe in nextor’s yard so there’s now a path running down the hill for drainage. we’ll see how well that works. we took the opportunity with our fence down, to go over there and take loads of pictures. they’ve mostly got the framing donw, and they’ve mostly got the glasroc sheetrock on the outside of the buidlling in the front and side. there’s scaffolding up on the east side where tehre’s been a 6-story cinderblock wall until now, i assume they’re putting up bick. they have gridded and plasticked the new private decks on teh first residential floor ready for concrete. they’ve got fuseboxes in lots of theunits, you can see them thru the studding, and there are some standpipes for the water in what will be the bathrooms. the residential floors are laid out on top of the hollow core planks, they didn’t pour concrete on top of them like they did on the decks. the roof has tar and gravel-cloth coating on it, and there are metal posts for a wooden deck around the elevator shaft. the roof is covered with cans of pitch ad rolls of insulation and portable asphalt heaters and wheelbarrows covered in pitch.

week 42
sometime last week 2/28 or so
it started out dry. a trash hauler came by early, about 6:30, and moved around a heavy container full of broken up cement that they’d poured and then had to dig up. they moved it a little, ignoring what forman said about moving it onto the gravel, and then went off to do something else. by the time they came back, around 9:30, they’d had a deluge, and the whole place was mud. so they tried to take it anyway, and got mired. it was so bad that the trash hauler ended up with its front wheels suspended in the air. they were 6″ from the edge of his buidling, fortunately on the other side of our tree, which they would have slid down the embankment and killed it. but they were studck over by the building,and forman had to call one of those massive tow trucks that can haul a semi. it took tem 4 hours to get the truck unstuck and out of there.

saturday 2/24
seems they’ve been building cinderblock walls to separate the first residential floor. they put in the chest wall, 6 conderblocks high (the parking deck wall is 7) and then built perpendicular walls all the way to the ceiling, every two bays. so it looks like 3 private decks being built. this would explain why there are no shiny metal studs on the face of the first residential floor. with all the cinderblock walls, it’s kind of less obtrusive from the back yard and the windows than i would have thought. and once the leaves come out, it’ll be a wall o’green except for a few spots. and 20 years from now the trees i’ll be planting will hide much of it. like i’ll be around to see it. but that’s not important.

friday 2/23
don’t even know what went on today, more of the same. beep beep beep. warmer yet. planted burning bushes in nursery bed.

thursday 2/22
kid went to doctors, just had a talk w/midwife and got all sorts of commercial offerings. oh boy. then dad panicked out because it’s an open ended thing, rehab, and he can’t do it if it’s not closed ended. i fussed at him, told him to go to assessment himself.
warm, sunny later on, loads of hammering and pounding and beep beep beep. the forklift keeps lifting cement up to the first residential floor.
received 10 burning bush 2-yr seedlings for the front of the house, wrapped up bare roots.

wednesday 2/21
rained all night and most of the day. lovely light to drenching rain. don’t think it washed away many of my seeds. it’s the kind of rain that seeds love. the water still pools in the midst of the neighbors’ yards, even with the regrading. pops and sawing and dropping rebar into the dumpsters all day. loads of noise.
the road crew wasn’t on maine street today, but it’s been there all week and last week too. loads of dumptrucks line up on our block waiting for whatever, but i’m not sure what it is they’re waiting for, because they’re not reynolds dumptrucks but random ones, so they must be for the construction site.

tuesday 2/20
warm all day, cloudy. got even warmer as the day went on. could see the sun onlythru the clouds. waiting for rain, but it doesn’t come. evidently all day yesterday the minidozer was out there raking the neighbors’ yards, first with rows one way, and then today with rows the other way. i heard the creaking of the treads like some ancient ww2 tank, all day long, but must have never looked out the back. strange.

week 41
monday 2/19
warmer, cloudless and still cold in the morning, but when the sun comes out it goes right up to 55 on the poorch. saw foran out first thing this morning, supervising a very squeaky mini dozer who was taking gravel from a newly poured pile at the end of the alley (very loud delivery of same, with the tailgate of the dumptruck delivering it extremely loud and clanging. ) and putting it on the ramp. we went out with thd dog to ask him what was going on. i went inside the conscturction fence up on the street when i saw him and he came running out to chase me out of there, saying osha could shut him down if he let me back there. suggested i come in with simon one sunday, as he’s bringing people around all the time, pre selling. i asked if simon was the one throwing beer bottles off the top. said someone had called the inspectors on friday about dirt in the street, and he’d been red-tagged, even tho the guy is supposed to warn him before doing so. said somebody (the city?) fired the inspector assigned to him because he was too lax, and we both wondered, because he picks up anything that’s wrong. the guy doesn’t want him washing the dirt off the road into the sewers, becuase it’s pollustion, but that’s where stuff goes, and that’s what they do with the road work is bring around a water truck to wash the dirt into the storm sewer. doesn’t make sense. he hired the street washer to clear off the dirt from when he had to move his hill o’dirt from the fenced in yard down bissey street, and he was given three days to do it, and it cost him 20,k in bulldozer and dumptruck rentals to move it. then the supervisor came back and noticed the sstreet washer over the re and asked why, and the guy almost got fired, got 3 days off with no pay.
the forklift is taking buckets of cement and lifting them to the first residential floor, down the ramp in the back. the scaffolding is all in place around the building front and side. the putzmeister was here to take cement from four lined up trucks and pump it thru big tubes into the little cinderblock room they made on our end of the building. don’t know what’s in the building. never noticed it before, but there’s a door into it.
the sides of the building are being covered in something called glasroc, some sort of tyvek kind of thing, i suppose. the asphalt machine is gone, there are loads of asphalt barrels wrapped in whte plastic, waiting either to be picked up or to be used.

saturday 2/17

friday 2/16
finally better. a funny taste in the back of my throat from whatever is still solidifying in my nose, but no more feer, no more soreness. the itchy spots are less. had a good long shit when i got out of bed to start my day. i don’t dare cough, and the lung jelly is brown, and i tire easily. but i was able to do a day’s work yesterday, and today i get to try to get into my daughter’s trunk which has been welded shut since the accident that totalled the car she then bought without making them fix the trunk first. those as is laws, i swear. dreams having to do with housing, a usual topic.
fucking freezing outside. 11 am and it’s not even above freezing. clear as a bell. there’s an arctic mass barrelling down at us out of the midwest, maybe we’ll get something of it before it turns north. brrr, and i’m supposed to go down to my mechanic buddy’s to get help fixing the trunk.

thursday 2/15
the shit was short, hard and lumpy, and turned as it came out, like a baby crowning. fever 101. itchy. walked the dog, and feeling better, i managed to put in a full day of work quilting and cutting my cape. i was proud of myself. didn’t sleep very much at night even tho i was exhusted by the work. dreams were ore like dreams.
cold and bitter, could see my breath on the dog walks. passed the guys cranking up the pitch to go on the roof, it let off evil thick brown clouds of smoke that obscured the air all thru the back yard and down to the road construction on maine street, which i mistook for fog when i first came out of the house. unloading more scaffolding, finished the chest wall around the first residential floor in the back. grinding and sawing and nailing all day. there are more and more construction guys’ ctrucks parked on cyde street every day, and now they park farther down cyde and up ahr street as well. poor fuckers exposed to all that wind. brr.
beancounter was called back, said that frman threw up his hands when asked about the driveways, so it’s not going to happen for a few weeks, which means nothing. we’re going away in a few weeks, and i know they’ll come down ahr street with the csewer construction and they’ll put in our driveway in the back while we’re gone. of course.

wednesday 2/14
102. bones don’t hurt anymore, but skin is painful to touch. itchy. sinus headache, getting lots of clear liquid out of my sinuses, every time i turn my head to a different angle more comes pouring out. until i found a silk handkercheif i had quite a pile of used paper tissues by the bed. slept all day long, ate soup, ice cream, cereal for breakfast. walked the dog with husband and then went straight back to bed, exhausted. tossed and turned most of the night, but the dreams were not dreams at all but rather vigilant consciousness, all focused on how y head was laying on the pillow and depending on this, trying to locate the person in charge of my illness. the last person was a french woman who would say, ‘l’etat c’est moi’, the others were versinf of me.

tuesday 2/13
fever of 102, shivering, buried in the covers all day. called dad and told him i wouldn’t be able to take kid for her probation on wednesday. stayed in bed and staed in bed. ate soup for dinner. bones hurt, skin hurt, sinus headache. in the middle fo the night felt nauseous and got up to go to the bathroom. very unsteady on my feet. felt bad. sat on the toilet and had an attack of cold and hot sweat, where i didn’t mind that the air was frigid, just sat there and sweated, peed and began to shit, fecal matter that had been weighing there at the bottom of my rectum for two days, but it wouldn’t come any farther out without great effort, and finally i took some toilet paper and pried some of it out. the spell slowly passed ad the urge to vomit also, and finally when i started feeling the coldness of the air again, i went back to bed and shivered until i fell asleep. rain, in the evening. i’d seen it coming in the morning, but it never got here until later, and then the thunderstorms we were supposed to get were faded when they got here (except for a maybe tornatdo around macon). a nice soaking rain, no runoff thru my wildflower bed. beancounter called and left a message to say that they were ready to build the curb cuts, and i realized they were going to put heavy equipment thru my wildflower bed no matter what i had to say about it. maybe next year on that, then.

week 40
monday 2/12
the boom pump was here before dawn and poured thru midmorning. now tere are guys with a shovel and wheelbarrow picking up the loose cement. they poured into the parking deck. the little baby cozer is scraping the ramp, too. it’s warmer by far, but still clear and no rain.
a soreness in the back of my throat that i was conscious of all night.

saaturdy 2/10
warmer in the sun, still blue skies and no chance of rain. i planted the fern and the solomon’s seal i got a week ago on the side of the house, and put the gardenia bush mty sister sent me in the place where the tea olive was (steps down to the studio) before i moved it to the back steps.
they worked inside, didn’t see much of them outside, and they went home before too long.

friday 2/9
her old rehab has a part day program at night, but the guy didn’t think they’d want her because of how she was discharged, ama.
cloudy and only sort of warm. guys taking sheets of flexible wire grid and laying them out on the upper parking deck, so they’re going to be cementing that, too. stacks of scaffolding structures waiting on the back end of the deck, i guess tey’re going to rick up the back and w e won’t see the cinderblock.
the smell, oh god it’s impossible to get away from. how can they avoid coming down with lung and liver cancer every day? you don’t see any old men laying tar, do you?
i can see the scaffolding on the north side, the big blank wall, beginning to grow. they’ve put the insulation over the side of the elevator shaft at the top.
light rain washing my seeds deeper in to the dirt. what we don’t need is a downpour. it showed up as snow on the radar, but only made it as rain. good, i was out with it, taking kid to anchor hospital, where they’re crazier than at ridgeview, more low rent, more black faces, tho the majority is white, because guess who’s got the insurance. the assessent person didn’t listen to anything kid had to say, and i found myself speaking slowly and repeating myself to make her understand the pont. according to her preliminary check of benefits, they cover treatment at all levels at 100%, just like they told us at ridgeview. and we saw some guy in the waiting room being told that his insurance had run out that morning, and he wanted to know why nobody had told him before, or warned him, and what waws he going to do now that they were just going to boot him out on the street. got the baby books for both kid and boyfriend.

thursday 2/8
cloudy as the day goes on. less warm than yesterday, aybe a spit of rain.
took kid for her ultrasound, they say she’s 7 weeks and 4 days, that the kid is 13 mm, the size of a peanut. she heard the heartbeat, 150 per minute, and almost cried. says she’s due sept 22, right after her insurance expires. if we tell them too soon they’ll scedule a c-section for their money.
more tar on the roof, cement trucks pouring the floor in the commercial space, running it thru a putzmeister and along the ground thru a 4″ pipe. the tar onf the roof is going up via a thick black hose, only 2″ thick. 2x4s on the fifth floor now, tey’ve finished the chest wall around the parking deck, there’s a yellow dumpster and a few parked cars where the crane was yesterday. sthey left the crane parked on the courner of ahr and cyde streets last night, and it’s gone now, presumably driven out. huge tractor trailers have been stopping and unloading something or other all day, and cement trucks. it’s been very busy on cyde street, and there are now 3 lanes of parked cars and a semi, so everyone has to wait their turn to go out into oncoming traffic to pass them.
they’re putting scaffolding up on the front, all the way to the top, and they’re going to do the same on the side, and on the cinderblock side. 3 sides. they’re not putting it up on the back side, i talked to the guy unloading. it’s for stucco and brick, and the windows. it’ll be up for any weeks. they’re anchoring it to the outside walls with lenghts of pipe, there’s at least 4′ between the scaffolding and the walls. the busiest i’ve seen the place yet, everywhere a head salking by in a helmet, saws, hammers, more saws, pounding, the stench of tar, guys on scizzors lifts going way ouside the building to nail up shiny metal things.
cinderblocks and a plumb line on top f the commercial floor, where there’s a section of open space before the building starts.
kid’s dad wants me scrambling to deal with getng her another rehab, doesn’t seem to think his precipitous actions were what got her taken out of rehab perhaps prematurely, and wants e to be just as anxious about what’s going to happen to her.

wednesday2/7
took kid to doctor, tey did bloodwork and tld her to come back tomorrow for an ultrasound. she went to probation meeting with all sorts of paperwork, including someting from the insurance company to explain why they cut her off (she doesn’t need that level of care), and notes from a new doctor who specializes in drug stuff, and a meeting card for the counselling center she’s going to be going to instead. so far the probation foficer says it’s not a violation, but she’s going to let her supervisor review it and decide whether to ring her back to court or not.
very warm this morning, 55 at 9 am. bright blue skies, tho. they spent all morning disassembling the crane, and in the afternoon the first we realized it we saw two sections of boom go by on a truck. the terex is back to load everything onto flatbeds, and the remaining boom and jib are on top of the commercial level waiting to be put on a truck. the guys came down and took all sorts of parts off the crane, dropping them unexpectedly like a bunch of idiots. funny, it was a white crew in charge of disassembling the crane, but a black operator, who wasn’t there, and a black and mexican crew. the last thing they did was to take ne of the counterweights off the crane body and swing it around in back, and then back up the hill, having to go up and back several times to avoid all the rebar on the side of the ramp. at the moment they’re trying to load the pieces of counterweights onto a flatbed.
despite the smoke in the yard and the neighborhood all day from tarring the roof, i raked off all the gravel i could off the wildflower bed to be, mixed a lot of dirt in the bag with all the seeds i’ve savee and bought this year, and started scattering them. unfortunately, i used up half the bag on the first few square feet, and so the coverage is not ideal. then i raked them in, and then stomped them in with my feet. i did that while they were taking the crane thru its fnal stages. i asked the leader if i could have some of those landscaping timbers they stabilized the crane with, and he competely ignored me, so i kept talking to him, finally thanking him anyway. he never looked at me besiede the first time, when i told him i’d take that, just pitch it over the fence. asshoel.

tuesday 2/6
the finance person at rehab couldn’t tell me anything yet, i have to wait until this afternoon. kid’s dad has already been onto her lawyer who said she’s to go straight into another rehab and get a doctor to sign off on her ability to be at home while this is occuring. it’s too stressful for me.
it’s cold and a little cloudy. htey’re building the retaining wall and sawing etal things.

week 39
monday 2/5
there are cinderblocks lining the second level of the deck. darker band of cement on the edge, perhaps they poured a lip on the deck, or maybe they went ahead and filled the whole thing, it’s hard to tell because of the angle, but it looks like they might have poured on top of the deck when i wasn’t looking. i guess they’re going to build a retaining wall for the parking deck. i can see the top of some guy’s head and shoulders up on the roof, pushing something with a broom or other handle. maybe they’re putting down the asphalt already, which means they’d already have put down the insulation. or maybe they’re just sweeping the roof so they can get to it. there are stacks of sheetrock on most floors. it looks like they’re trying to keep all the floors in the same stage of finish. ex ept for the top floor, which is still relatively unstudded. and the addition, and even in te new wing they’ve got the shiny stuff fcing us, but not on the top floor. the surveyors are out for some reason, hanging out on the deck and up on the roof. it’s very cold out, few clouds. there’s rolls of metal grid on the deck, waiting to go down somewhere beforethe pour. the next pour. i don’t think they’re going to cement all the residential floors on top of te hollow core, becase they’ave already got the studs up and theyl’ll be putting in the plumbing fixtures soon. surely they would have cemented first if they wre going to.
the steel guys were here long enough tofill up a flatbed trailer with ecess steel pieces and parts, loaded y the crane, and hauled off to the next job. the crane has otherwise been loading lots of pallets of wood or sheetrock or other things up onto the residential floors. they’ve made a good start on the cincderblock wall around the parking deck, and now at 4 they’re mostly gone.
lots of trouble with kid. rehab financial person called us to say the insurance was reviewing the case and that she might be kicked out of the program tomorrow, which means back to jail for her. they were calling to tell us this even tho there was nothign we could do about it, and in most cases it’s routine and nothing comes of it, but did we have the money to pay for her reatment ourselves, 300+ a day. her dad had a fit and worried all day and night about what they told him was open ended treatment that he’d be responsible for and it would bankrupt him. it was a day of facing your worst fears.

saturda 2/3
they’ ve put up some sort of boards inside the parapet thing on the roof. not all the way across, there are gaps where the decorative stuff runs vertically. there are boxes piled high on the first residential floor near the construction elevator, one box was torn away to reveal bathtubs. there are white plastic covered bboxes or pallets of something on nearly every floor and nearly in every section. cold but kind of okay in the sun.

friday 2/2
ground hog day. no shadows. that means it’s spring. but everyone is talking about we’re going to get snow and ice soon. only 40 and still damp. thry’e loading polyiso insulation by firestone up onto the roof. many semis with big boxy looking white plastic coated pallets of insulation. to be followed b trucks with barrelsa of asphalt to go up on the roof. and we told the truck driver about the green roof they may or ay not be planning, and he said then rubber sheeting and then pipes to ake sure the plants don’t flood, and all that weight. and then are they going to walk their dogs up there? i’ve got a $100 gift certificate for the landscape place across the street, and today i’ going to take advantage of their 25% off sale on perrenials. whee. i got two native azaleas that will grow to 10-12′, a fern that does well in dry shade, and an evergreen solomon’s seal that self seeds. they’re under leaves in the back; i won’t plant them again until it’s warmer.
they loaded stuff onto the roof all day. they also continued cinderblocking up the end of the extension nearest us, on the commercial floor. some weeks ago they put down grids on the cement planks on the commercial floor, but have not yet poured concrete on top of the concrete. today they put forms up around the top level of the prking deck and put down grids, so they’ll be pouring that soon. otherswise, they continued nailing studs and shiny metal up, and quit at 4.

thursday 2/1
nobody’s working today, at least nobody’s making any noise. the gates areopen and there are a handful of trucks parked otside, but no forman, and no noises, and no crane. puddles of red mud, however. it only sleeted briefly at 3 am and ten it turned to rain and we’ve had enough to leave a pond in our back yard. going to continue raining for awhile, as well, and they’re calling for more in the evening.

wednesday 1/31
i have no idea. i was gone all day helping husband’s kid move house, and then we got a flat on ga 400 and sat there in the freezing cold for an hour waiting. winter storm warning tonight, ice and snow moving in from the south.

tuesday 1/30
cold, warmed up some in the sun. the steel guy were there, waiting to install something up on the roof but he’s got to wait, and if it’s not ready by thursday he’s off to another job. they’re putting up steel shiny things on the extension, they’ve got wood going up on the fifth floor, the crane is dragging cement up to the floors.

week 38
monday 1/29
took kid tothe doctor, we were early and still had to wait until 45 minutes past the appointment time to be seen, even tho we were the only ones in the wiating room and all the examination rooms were empty. then they told us there were no sonograms done on monday, which was why we made the appointment. and they’re full up on wednesday which is when they do sonograms, so come back in 2 weeks. they did palpate and determine that she’s 6 weeks, which was mid-december. but what a waste of time. and then i had to make my way back from rehab in rush hour traffic. i was tired and cranky.
the steel guys are still here. i saw them loitering outside forman’s trailer when i left with kid to go back to rehab. the crane guy did something milk with his toy today, maybe lifting a few bucketloads of cement up to the parking deck, where guys were sawing cement and kicking things off the edges. more sawing and hammering. they’re putting the shiny metal trim on the outside of the extension today.
these days the street is filled wth trucks. they’re parked double and sometimes triple down the block. it sounds like there are a hundred men nailing up studs.
freezing cold. it dropped well below freezing (the warning was for 18 degrees). it was 31 when we went out to walk the dog. clearas a bell, of course. my pansies were frozen stiff.

saturday 1/27
cold, clear. they hammered and sawed half the day. the wood is going up inside on all floors now.

friday 1/26
we sat in bed looking at the morning sun hitting the top of the bulding. the perspective of the extension coming toward us is dizzying, impossibly steep.
clear as a bell, warm in the sun, cool in teh shade. there’s wooden studding up to the fourth residential floor now. they put in all the rest of the cement planking on the parking deck, and loaded a bunch of red iron on it. it’s slim iron, , rather than heavy structural, and there’s a bunch of rebar on the ramp.
the cinderblocked up the corner of the commercial floor of the bulding facing cyde street and abutting onto the alley, then they started on the alley side. looks like the commercial floor at least will be solid wall where it faces us. good, it means no lights.
the crane guy qui around 3, after loading a bunch of rebar on the trailer of a pickup parked out behind the crane for the last while. it extended way over the edge of the trailer. the boston guy tried to drive out, but the truck dug itself deeper into the ruts that have been developing during the last few rains while the trailer has been there. he dug himself deep ruts, so four guys got out with shovels, and they tried again, and tried again, the wheels spinning and casting up white smoke. then after half an hour of this, they unhitched their other truck, tha thad been attached to a trailer full of tools, and tied a tow rope from it to the truck, and the both of them spun their wheels and kicked up white smoke and shimmied around until finally they moved free of the ruts. then the guys had to tie down the rebar into some place in the bed of the pickup. it took four of them sitting and boundcing on it to get te frnt end of te rebar bundle low enough to tie down, and before they got it attached, the least movement slewed the trailer around dangerously. finally they tied a flimsy yellow ribbon on tihe end of it and droce away, and i think that’s the last we’ll see of the steel guys.
i planted the kousa dogwood i bought at home depot for $50 this morning. yesterday we went and got it, i picked the tallest, heaviest one and we were sorry, but i’d rather start with the largest one i could fine. we loaded it into the truck and brought it around back, driving thru the neighbors’ yards, and put it into a wheelbarrow for the rest of the way. husband got the pick and i toodk a shovel and we made quick work of a large hole at the edge of the wildflower patch and beyond where i’m going to put a lot of bushes, on the left side of the back yard. it will help block the building from ground lefvel during the summer. watered it with 5 gallons and some fertilizer, even tho it’s still dormant.
kid. she called att 8 this morning, saying she was out of jail and was going to walk to her dad’s. he’d left word that i was supposed to call before coming over with her so he could be out of there, and so i called, but of course he was sound asleep and didn’t answer. husband and i went down to get her, she was upset that we came into the house. i drove her back here and fed her, and then we went to target to get her some loose fitting sweatclothes because her monitor had been yelling at her about wearing tight pants and being pregnant. as if she’s even showing yet. she’s worried because she doesn’t know how she’s going to pay her monthly probation fine of $200, and i suggested she iehter make it up with her father or getboyfriend to pay it. we have no money to pay her fine, and i suppose she should have thought about that when she spent half of it on a hotel room and the other half on clothes last month. i took her back to rehab, and we had some good conversaton, for a change. she spent the night in the infirmary because she told htem she has enemies in jail because she used to go out and capture peopppppple who had skipped bail. she read hamlet all night.

thursday 1/25
court. the lawyer is a happy looking woman somewhat younger than i am. se was telling us how one of her clients, in jail for consensual oral sex with a 15 year old (he was 17), which got him 10 years. he’s spent 2 in jail already. she put a petition on espn and thousands of people have signed it, the blogs are covering it, and the new york times did a story. this morning 3 senators were going to visit him in jail. she’s never been so happy to be swamped with emails in her life.
i got up at 4:30 to go up to rehab and get her at 6, and she slept most of the way down there. we got there at 7 and i set the alarm on my celphne for half an hour before court. and then i couldn’t sleep so i watched the sky grow light and the clouds pass over, dropping rain that evaporated on the way down. the boyfriend called several times. sweet nothings. she appeared before the judge, and her lawyer said she’d tested negative twice in rehab, gave over a statement by the rehab people to say she was cooperating and doing well and was willing to do 3/4 hose after this if necessary. he looked ather and said that with a stroke of his pen he could put her in jail for 231 days (she’d have the baby in jail), an did she know the penalty for possession of coke – 15 years. she admitted she hadn’t thought about that. he sentenced her to another 48 hours in jail starting immediately aafter which she would go straight back to rehab. she turned and walked to the door without looking at me, head held high. the lawyer walked me out and we talked about how she needed to really take hold of her life and turn it around, especially now.
out back they’re puttig on the roof planking on the 4th floor extension. they’re putting more parapet on the roof, a steal beam maybe 4′ high and steel studs every 18″ or so. they’ve put 2x4s up on the third residential floor now, and it seems like they built the cinderblock elevator shaft to the roof yesterday, because i didnt’ notice it until this morning. that’s why, we can’t see it from the house, but only out on the street. it looks like they’ve already started installing hardware in the elevatoror shaft.
it’s warm in the sun, but the skies cleared at dawn this morning and the wind kicked up, so it’ll freeze again tonight, not that it probably hasn’t been freezing this whole week.

wednesday 1/24
cool and cloudy, humid but no rain. more cinderblock delivered, much more 2×4. the blocks of wood line the street and appear on all the floors. all the crane did today was load buckets of cement up to the 3rd residential floor extension. the parapet looking steel things are going around both sides of the outside of the top of the building now. wonder if they’re going to put them on the back side as well. i guess tomorrow they’ll resume with the planking of the parking deck and the 4th residential floor roof. kid’s dad wrote several nasty, bitter emails about how badly she’s ruined her life. i’ll quote them here later.

tuesday 1/23
city was out to fix the meter.
woken up by a god awful clanging noise made by the steel guys and the crane. thought something was going to explode.
the steel guys put up steel on the rest of the parking deck’s second floor. they’ve unloaded loads more cinderblock and 2x4s. i can see lots of wood on the second residential floor. they’re welding in the red iron pieces on the parking deck now. and then it’ll just be more planks, and i think that’s it. they still need to plank the roof, and they’re not yet thru putting up steel on the 4th residential roof, and then they have to plank that.
went up to rehab with husband, and we sat thru orientation, and then attended a 12 step meeting with my kid and all the other young adults in the place, about a dozen. bunches of family were there. it was very subdued. but the one black kid who was there announced he had 4 days clean, and his parents were there as well, pissed off, aggravated they said. so the meeting focused on them. the kid was there for te second time. he got out with 63 days clean and then had a beer on friday night after work, and got drunk. he didn’t even like being drunk. his drug of choice is coke, which he’s been doing since he was 13, but if he couldn’t have coke he could have booze. the next morning he told hiss paents, who brougt him right back to rehab, and they were pissed. they were both college educated and by the cut of their clothes they were prosperous and proud of it. it was apparent that they’d bth worked themselves up, had gone to college and were very happy to have risen beyond their parents’ stattions in life. and there was their kid, 23, dropped out of college, wearing gangster clothes and using rap hand movements. the facilitator asked the dad why he was here, and he said, for my son, and efveryone in the room knew that was the wrong answer, so they spent mos tof the time teling the parents that they needed alanon as much as the kid needed rehab. they were resistant, of course. kid sat there the wholet ime and cross-talked, which was not allowed, and didn’t volunteer anything. i spoke up and said what i’d gotten out of 12-step meetings when her dad was in rehab, which was a whole bunch of tips for dealing with y addict, and a sense of not being alone, a sense of understanding and clarity, and an end to all the confusion. because when he was in rehab, the counsellors only tried to scare us – your husband is probably going to die – and that left me more anious than his drug problem. kid said that she was in group this afternoon and they picked on her for being so on to of it, so competent and umotionally over it. i didn’t tell her she was in the throes of denial, because i’m pretty sure she’ll break down at some point. but she could skate right thru this thinking she’s got a andle on it, and discover when someone hands her a spoon that she doesn’t. she’s in there solely to avoid jail, and so she’s got the wrong attitude fromthe beginning, and i know where that’s going. i’m going to be confronting her in family meetings, because i’ve seen this before. i think she’s got the counsellors snowed too. she’s been cramping a bit, her ovaries are hurting. the ovary pain is normal for early pregnancy, the cramping is not. i warned her she might start bleeding, and tht would mean she wasn’t ready, but it would also be proof she could get pregnant.

week 37
monday 1/22
rained all night, still some rain coming in but the main part is over. the crane is putting planks down on the 3rd floor extension. they’ve planked over the 2-story column, perhaps even on the first residential floor, but certainly the commercial floor. they’re starting to putlumber up on the second residential floor. they had clear plastic over the newly poured cement lower parking deck, perhaps to guard from the rain. this morning they began hammering out the pins that hold the forms on and knocking them off. the echoes were very piercing, but now there’s a parking deck entrance and a solid beam going along the alley. there are rut marks everywhere in the neighbors’ yards, and a little mud at the bottom of ours. i’ll go down later and seee where the water channel runs thru the wildflower bed to be. a cment truck is up on cyd street, don’t know where the load is going. there are trucks lined up down the block with hollow core planks.
kid called from rehab. she’s pregnant. they took blood on friday and told her. she didn’t want me telling her dad. boyfriend is delighted, they’ll be getting married.
thecoreslab guys are all black, all american. the steel guys are mostly mexican except for the boston guy and the onely black guy on the crew. he says they’re prejudiced and it’s hard to work with them. the plank guys say they’ll be here thru this week, and then that’s it.
they put planks down on the floor of the decking around the first residential floor.

sunday 1/21
somebody was here on sunday. a black truck parked on the ramp and husband counted 6 hardhatted guys cruising around with clipboards. some sort of inspection perhaps. it started raining this morning, light and then heavy. tere’s soe accumulation in the back. now that i’ve got gravel on the pathway, i’m waiting to see what kinds of channelsthe rain cuts thru the wildflower bed, so i can fix tat bevfore putting down seed. the daffodils are up, and we’ve got a couple of them and a few crocuses blooming. the japanceese magnolias and some of the cherry trees are blooming.
went and saw kid in rehab. she was spotty in the face, hormonal looking. just out of a meeting, she didn’t want me to eat with her because i suppose she didn’t want others to see me. the counsellors and staff all like her, so she hasn’t pissed off anyone yet. i brought her a shopping list of food, half junk, half real, all she’s got is a microwave. she didn’t want me to stay very longg, so after a big hug i left.

saturday1`/20
thesteel guys stayed home, but the crane operator is here lifting buckets of cement up to the new floors. the first residentialfloor, at the back, lacks the shiny steel stuff they’re utting up on all the other floors. wonder why. forman went home at lunchtime, but the inside guys, i guess the drywall guys, stayed on. coudy and going to rain one of these days. the first warm day in awhile. got up to 60 something. but i stayed inside all day.

friday1/19/7
cold,butnotaas bad.they were outtherepouring first thing this morning. put up moreuprights on the4th floor, more 2x4s, saw guys carrying large pvc pipes on their shoulders. another cement truck appeared at the top of the ramp and filled a bunch of pyramid cement carriers that were then lifted by the crane. they’ve put lights along the ceiling on the new floors. they’ve built the cinderblock end wall up past the roofline, making i suppose some sort of wall on the roof to match whatever they’re putting on the front. they lifted a giant pedestal looking thing in a wooden crate down to the lower parking deck. don’t know what was in it. i guess i might figure it out the next time i go for a walk in there. they put grids up over the place where the fence came down when tey chopped the pecan branches, as much to keep me out as to repair their security. i’m not a security risk…the steel guys were gone early. tomorrow i guess they’ll put in the floor of the 4th floor, and then all that’s left for them is roofing the extension, and theyl’ll move on. there are sitill guys out there, but i think the cement’s too hard by now anyway. going down below freezing again tonight.