Of jack hammers and Easter Bunnies in New Haven

The running peeps of Easter.
Originally uploaded by littlee.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP….

ruuuuuuuuumble ruuuuuuuuumble

CLANK! CRASH!

BEEP beep beep BEEEEEEEP….



For various reasons, including a couple listed above, my blog has had writers’ block in recent months. The problem though isn’t that these noises prevent me from concentrating, quite to the contrary, I find myself indulging in long periods of brooding contemplation.

“Just how many backhoes does it take to move that very small pile of dirt?”

“Why, when they just brought in the super noisy cement truck yesterday to fill in that hole, are they jack hammering it back up this morning?”

“Is it really necessary for them to hold their weekly meeting right below my kitchen window? I don’t think the delivery schedule for I-beams really concerns me…”

No no. My thinker is working just fine, cranking out lists of exasperated gripes about the construction project that surrounds my house on three sides. The problem is that my prose chops are just not what they need to be for me to fully describe what it has been like since last fall to live next to the rapid transformation of the small stand of trees behind my house into a 300 car parking garage.

I know that I’ve mentioned (read: complained) about this little subplot in the past, but I’ve tried to keep it light. Like “Ha ha! Isn’t it funny how I forgot to close my curtains last night and I woke up to find a crane operator ‘inadvertently’ staring at me though my bedroom window? Isn’t that a hoot?” and “It’s so crazy, like, I didn’t think you’d be able to get construction workers on site on Sundays at 7 a.m.!”

Beyond that, I haven’t really wanted to let loose with the full whine. I’ve been concerned that my blog musings would simply decline into a litany of crankiness and as such could hardly capture the surreality of this experience. I’ve started writing a number of times, only to discover that in the absence of uploaded audio and a library of photos and a topographic map of the construction site to accompany my blog, I could never come close to an accurate account.

I will say this, though. Next time I’m in California, I fully intend to bake cookies for the neighbors on Magnolia Avenue who waited helplessly for a year for us to finish ripping down half of a house and building back twice what had been removed. Those people are saints.

(And yes, as I sit type this note in my kitchen, it is only fitting that I am being sarandaded this morning by not one, but two jack hammers and between five and six pieces of earth moving equipment (it’s hard to clearly count over the jack hammering) that seem to have their warning beepers going in both reverse and forward gears. I will make lemonade out of lemons, though. I will tell myself that this particularly robust display of construction is a sort of metal-on-concrete version of Happy Birthday.)



Aside from all that kerflaflfle, this has been a lovely spring so far. There was another Purim costume party extravaganza at Shira and Uri’s a few weeks ago. Feeling less political than last year when I dressed up as a Red State called “Jesusland”, I suited up as the Easter Bunny, though in retrospect, dressing as the American mascot of the most Christian holy day to attend an Israeli Jewish Purim party wasn’t exactly apolitical.

To supplement my rather minimalist get-up of fluffy white ears and tail, I carried a basket full of chocolate eggs for most of the night. Over the course of the evening, my candy basket provided for another in a long series of ‘grad school experiences’ to be cherished for its numerous cultural oxymoronic vignettes. At what other point in my life will a Vietnamese Elvis, an Israeli Scarface, a Russian Jewish immigrant pregnant nun and his Korean fiancé priest, and at least three German men in very successful drag all come to me begging for just one more of the Reese’s Pieces Easter eggs? Or maybe one of those dark chocolate Dove ones if I have any more?

Okay, enough noise for this morning. They’ve started driving more piles for the endless retaining wall and it’s time to flee 79 Mansflield for a quieter location, like, say, an artillery testing ground… or Newport, Rhode Island, where Michelle and I are going to play Friday hooky from lab for my birthday. The bugs are in the bleach and the bosses are out of town. Road trip, ho!