Some time ago, our back-yard neighbors undertook a singularly poorly thought-out home improvement plan. First they knocked down our privacy fence, so I could have a prime view of the proceedings from my office window. Then they took all of the bricks from their 'patio,' an entity that had until then occupied the entire yard, and created a large pile of bricks in one corner. Then there were mysterious proceedings involving a very small but vociferous piece of earth-moving machinery, which had no net effect to the visible eye. And last but by no means least, the house itself was stripped of siding and insulation from about the middle of the first-floor windows down, with no replacement.
This transformative process began nearly a year and a half ago and was completed by early in the spring. Since then, the house has squatted there, looking like nothing so much as an irritable and rather large old man dressed only in an undershirt and his tightie whities. Weeks passed, and this metaphor worked its way progressivley deeper into my psyche.
Today, presumably because of the menacing onset of winter, this process of home improvement resumed. Over the course of the day, more layers of white siding have peeled away, with all of the, shall we say, unsettling accompanying imagery in my personal subconscious.
I just wish, after all of this, that I had some small degree of confidence that that the project would actually be completed sometime before next summer.
Posted by andrea at November 10, 2005 05:08 PM