Neighborhood, Interrupted.

There has been construction on our street for a couple of weeks now by a crew digging a new natural gas line. Then, several days ago, work stopped. The heavy machines sit idle behind enormous orange traffic cones that Sam says would be great for his weekend soccer games. I’m not sure what the holdup is.

Before they aborted their mission, I watched the guys at work. Occasionally they would actually operate the machinery. Other times they would banter with the town cop assigned to park his police cruiser perpendicular to the street and sit, scrolling through his phone. Most of the time, they shouted cheerful profanity-laced insults back and forth at each other and laughed and smoked cigarettes.  

Early spring in Connecticut is unpredictable, with dueling warm and cold fronts. The construction guys didn’t seem to mind; when the weather tanked, they just sat in their trucks, engines running, for hours.

Anyway, the recent stop in any forward progress is a part of the fabric of my life in this moment. Even the birds in the neighborhood have turned skittish. We’re all a little bit on edge.

This, I think, is a microcosm of how the world works: run largely by males in mysterious, ineffectual ways. I am left, all bluster and no bite, willing them to finish, to hurry up and go fucking dig up someone else’s street before I can’t remember how lucky I am, that such small annoyances get to me.