Our new driveway

Workmen leave things behind. As far as I know the first crew that came out, the crew that dug up the driveway readying it for repaving didn’t leave anything. It was a while ago, at the beginning of the summer. Weeds grew in it, among the stones, while we waited for the city to fix the curb first.

First a guy came by with a drill device and legs to hold his truck study while the drill drilled to drill open the curb so the next group of city guys could drag away the old chunks of cement the next day. They’re the ones that left a pair of gloves on Helen and Oscar’s lawn, our next door neighbours. Helen is very critical of our ability to maintain our property to her standards so the moment we saw what they’d done, leave gloves on her lawn, we quickly removed them. These guys also left a bunch of boards covering the newly dug out section at our driveway’s entrance presumably so no one would fall down inside it, hurt themselves and sue the city for damages.

The city’s sidewalk pouring guys came next. After them the city crew to fill in the road pavement section. They removed the boards that were covering the hole that used to be there before it got paved again and left them in front of Helen and Oscar’s house.

Then the guys we hired to pave the driveway came and paved the driveway and they left behind a rake with black tar on its rake prongs. It’s leaning against the basketball stand.

Perhaps the city guys who did the road part paved after the guys we hired to pave the driveway. I can’t remember which was first.

No one’s come back to get the gloves. No one’s come back to get the rake. No one’s come back to take away the long boards and the short ones still sitting on the road in front of Helen and Oscar’s.

Larry and I are both getting worried about how the boards on the street in front of her house must be making Helen feel. Helen and Oscar are one of the original owners still living on the street. Their across the street neighbours, and ours, who have also lived on the street since the beginning told Larry about all the nice people on the street but Helen wasn’t included. They told Larry she was in an entirely different category. Oscar wasn’t included on the nice list either by virtue of his being with Helen.

Helen goes out everyday in a windbreaker or a winter coat or a coat in between those two, dressed two degrees more protectively than everyone else, always in sunglasses and a suitably protective hat, for a walk for her health. Usually around ten in the morning. When we first moved in she told us that things had been touch and go for her for a while. She had been seeing doctors. Strict adherence to a walking regimen was one of the measures that was going to keep her alive. Then she got used to who we were and the only words she had for us were criticism.