Pave Paradise to Put Up a Parking Lot

My reality started this morning at 7:15 am as the heavy equipment started their work on the land across the street from my house. Unfortunately this was not the first time I had been awakened by the thump of the dump trucks and the beep beep beep of the backhoe. I don't know if those are even the right terms for the machinery but I do know they are big, they are loud, and they start too darn early in the morning for a residential neighborhood.

I'm pretty sure we have a noise ordinance from 10 pm to 8 am but the city officials apparantly are exempt. This was the case through most of the summer. I'm obviously not a morning person by nature and so these noises would typically wake me up. Not being a morning person, I also tend to be a little grumpy in the morning--so their schedule and mine were not a good combination.

To top it all off, they're turning the green space across the street into a parking lot. Granted the building that used to be there before they bulldozed them down (that was a pleasant two weeks of 7:15 am noise!) were too delapidated. In fact local hulligans had thrown rocks threw most of the windows. That's not a pleasant site to look at and it certainly doesn't help the look of the neighborhood. However, watching the trees be plowed over and hauled out and watching the green grass get dug up and leveled out made me a bit sad. It made me think of that song Amy Grant used to sing (although I think it was a remake)that had the line "pave paradise to put up a parking lot." Granted, I don't live in paradise, but it still bums me out to lose the green space. And that's my reality for today.

Photo note: This picture was taken in the afternoon. I know that is not a dump truck nor a backhoe--but they were there earlier. This is the only photo I took.