So there I was, mindlessly typing away an e-mail when I hear the sound of a truck out front. Not that unusual, really, but when I started hearing the sound of wood being sawed that got my ear – after all, there’s usually no one around us during the days who would be doing that kind of work. I look out the front window and there’s a guy sawing the two pieces of pressure-treated wood I’ve been using as ramps over the dirt area of my driveway to keep from tracking any more dirt all over the place than there already is. And lo and behold, the truck belongs to a concrete company!

I introduce myself as he’s slaving away on digging away at the dirt, creating another pile on my front lawn, where the concrete forms were going to be placed.

“Gonna be a lot of activity around here come 6 AM tomorrow”, says he. You got a cement mixer coming. I’m here to do the forms, and by Friday you ought to have a real driveway again.”

I’m beside myself with joy. Not at the 6 AM activity – my neighbors will really get a charge out of that – but simply the fact that our five-week sewer pipe replacement nightmare is about to end. Just think: no more pressure-treated board walkways. No more tarps. No more dirt being tracking into the driveway, out into the street, and inside the house. Back to being just another subdivision-dwelling shmoe like everyone else on my street. Anonymity is going to feel so good!

Earlier in the day I had called the landscaping company to ask when we could schedule putting my front yard back whole again. “No one called you?”, says Sherry, the woman who now knows me by my voice and someone whom I’ve had more interaction with over the past month than just about anyone. She’s very nice, but she’s like the dentist – the less interaction the better. She says, “The crew is coming tomorrow, they’ll be there around 8 AM. I hope that’s OK.”

“OK? Why, that’s fantastic! Glad I called.”

So tomorrow I’ve got a cement truck, four tons of rock and 4-5 laborers coming. Serious blue-collar stuff. There’s cement to pour and lay out, dirt to shovel, one watering system to lay down (for the lawn) and another to fix (for the front bushes), brick to lay down and mortar (repairing the front lawn border), and rock to scatter. It promises to be a lot of work, and a busy and noisy (not to mention expensive, but that, of course goes without saying!) day here at the Richard hacienda.

I’m just glad it’s almost over.