The Old Man and the Sea (of Mud)

I don’t know if I have told you, but I live in a neighborhood where there is a lot of construction going on. My neighborhood has recently become a very trendy place to live, and the real estate market here is hopping. Prior to this real estate boom, my neighborhood was mostly made up of modest one-story ranch houses with decent-sized yards. Well, in the past few years, these ranch houses have apparently not been what people are looking for. So, contractors buy the smaller houses, tear them down, and rebuild structures that cover roughly the square footage of Versailles. Then, they sell these mini mansions for a price that I may be able to pay after working hard at teaching for approximately 250 years, all while working a side job as “The Living Cave Woman” at the natural history museum. (I will be approximately 4,000 years old by the time I have saved up enough money, so it will be no trouble to pass me off as someone who lived alongside wooly mammoths.)

There are several problems that come with living alongside construction, which I am sure some of you are probably familiar with, particularly if your neighborhood sees as much earth mover traffic as mine does. First, it is loud. The house right next door to me has been under construction since January and, especially in the beginning, they were banging on stuff all the time. It was like a nonstop Riverdance concert, but with all the Riverdancers wearing gigantic iron shoes and dancing on a piece of sheet metal right in front of a large microphone. And, unlike Riverdancers, non of those men responsible for the cacophony travelled a lot on tour and had cute Irish accents (both of which might qualify them as the perfect man for me.)

I could go on and on about the myriad other headaches the construction next door has caused me, but, in the interest of brevity I will, for now, focus on the problem that upsets me the most: the mud. When they started building the fortress next door, they, of course, tore up all of the landscaping from the old house, exposing mountains of lovely Georgia red mud. Now, as if that weren’t enough, they also made the decision to increase the slope of the yard so that, whenever it rains, a monsoon of mud flows down the slope, into my yard, and right onto my driveway where, undoubtedly, I end up stepping in it and getting my pants wet and dirty. Seriously, there is actually so much mud that I have considered starting my own pig farm made up exclusively of little adorable pot bellied pigs that I will outfit in rain boots. There is a lot of mud!

I, in an effort to not come across as bitchy to the contractor, called him and calmly left a message about the mud. A couple of days later a nice man who had been responsible for the demolition of the old house came and rinsed all of the mud off my driveway. He and I had a nice conversation, I thanked him, and all was well.

And then monsoon season started in Atlanta. We have had so much rain here this summer that I have honestly thought about gathering two of every animal and starting my own ark. Of course, the boat would need to be a yacht, and I would collect only cute and fuzzy animals. And then I would need my own Noah. I nominate George Clooney for that job. If I could collect two of him, even better!

Well, after the start of the rainy season, the mud poured down onto my property with the fury of me when I am hungry and you take away my baked Cheetos, except times a thousand. Then I called the contractor and finally got to talk to him in person, but he kind of ignored me. I am not totally sure if the guy I talked to was actually the contractor. He said he was the contractor, but I think he was actually the contractor’s son, because I have only seen this guy out at the house once, and he is considerably younger than the guy I usually see. I think it’s his dad I usually see, but I will get to that in a minute.

Well, after being ignored, I asked my dad to call, because sometimes, in these types of situations, you need to accept that whoever you are talking to is not going to listen to a female, and will respond much better to a voice fueled by testosterone. I pondered smoking 4 boxes of cigars so that I would sound more masculine, and then calling the contractor, but having made it to the age of 35 without smoking is a victory I want to continue to enjoy. So my dad called the contractor, and a couple of days later they put up an extra layer of that little black fence that surrounds the property. The next time it rained no mud drained into my yard—for the first ten minutes of the storm. Then it shot into my yard like Usain Bolt on steroids.

So, understanding that the contractor doesn’t seem to care that much about the mud draining into my yard, I have tried to let it go. When it rains I wear rain boots out to my car. I wipe my dog’s feet after every visit she makes around the side of the house. I have gone to my happy place and tried to take comfort in the fact that this house cannot be under construction forever. (It can’t can it?)

In the meantime, I have witnessed the younger contractor’s father visiting the house quite often. He comes over and always looks a little lost, like I do when I go to the DeKalb Farmer’s Market, only on a property that is probably the size of a quarter of the produce section. He wanders around the property with no apparent rhyme or reason and, to top it all off, he is always wearing loafers with shorts and no socks. It must be nice to be able to walk around in a nice pair of loafers and not end up having them caked in mud. I would love to invite him down next to my driveway, position he and his loafers in the mud river, squirt my hose at him, and watch him dance. But, unfortunately, this is not going to happen.

The guy is tall and thin, and probably somewhere in his sixties. I do not typically consider a man in his sixties to be old, but due to my distaste about the whole situation, I always call him “The Old Man.” My mom just refers to him as “The Geezer.” Whenever we see him over there we mimic his lost look, and the way he wanders around moving his limbs mechanically, like a creature from the Monster Plantation at Six Flags. Making fun of him eases some of the irritation I feel at having my yard and driveway covered in mud.

Today, due to the fact that they graded the yard yesterday and did not adequately replace the little fence, all of my grass was also covered in mud. When I tried to walk in the grass I slipped, but then realized I might be able to use the area for mud baths if I open my own spa, which cheered me up a little. I guess we will have to call the city office and talk to someone there. In the meantime, I will continue to picture my happy place, and just breathe,