“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 599 (Friday)

The neighbor house had service on their siding today. This would have gone largely unnoticed if not for a couple things, First, there was the doofus who parked the company van straddling the shared driveway, but mostly on my side of it. Apparently, my driveway had been commandeered as the staging area for the job at the house to the other side of the asphalt. Then, there was the name emblazoned on the van -- Erect Construction and Roofing. The eternal 12-year old inside me took delight in this name.

Um, parked kinda
close, dude.

When Winston needed to go outside, it was an obstacle course to get to my back yard. The van was parked close to my back door landing, and with the back doors open (which they were) there was barely enough room for me to squeeze through. It’s a good thing the pandemic weight hasn’t crept any higher than it already has or I might have been wedged there, helpless, arms flailing. 

Winston tends to take a wide turn at the bottom of our stairs and navigates with his nose to the ground. Even with six months of walking to the back yard without sight, he sometimes walks into the post near the gate. He would have walked into the tire of the van for sure. Once beyond the van, there was a bucket and a ladder and tools along the usual route blocking the access to the gate to my yard. I carried Winston out to spare him injury and my wallet the potential vet bill.

While Winston was doing his business, a workman came to the back of the van. I asked if he would be there long, but it was immediately clear there was a language barrier. There was some gesturing, mostly me pointing at the stuff in front of the gate and then at the gate, and he moved the items and it was fine. Then I picked up Winnie and carried him back inside with fewer obstructions.

There was a small amount of banging and house repair noise but it wasn’t bad and didn’t last long. Soon, the van was packed up and driven away, and I felt kind of like an ass for asking the guy to move the stuff, but it definitely was in the way and was definitely blocking access when I needed to get out to my yard.

But no harm, no foul. Well, except maybe for the birds that have for several years nested in the area of the missing piece of siding just under the roof line at the second floor of the house next door. Now I am filled with questions. Were there nests up there? And what will happen to the avian squatters? Was it the same birds coming there each year? And why did I keep working instead of peeking out the window like a creeper when the work was happening? (Ok, I know the answer to that last one. I was working on articles for the Learning Center of Bank’s website, which is currently my favorite work thing.)

Beyond the small, overdue repair on the house next door that has now possibly displaced a family of birds, the day didn’t hold much that was remarkable. It was coffee for breakfast, work, pizza for lunch (frozen, already paid for), work, soup for supper (homemade), wine and oatmeal cookies for dessert, writing, Netflix (Love Hard and Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It). Overall, it was a decent day. At my house, at least, where no birdies were evicted.