I believe I mentioned before that I woke up one morning and heard the sounds of a jackhammer in my driveway. A temporary patch was put in place and a few days later that was dug back up and some nice pretty smooth concrete was put in it's place. Seriously it kinda stands out like a sore thumb with the rest of our broken cracked bumpy driveway. Anyway they even fixed the part of the curb that was missing because our driveway is all curvy and so everyone always ends up driving over the curb.
Nice right?
Pretty spiffy!
About a week ago, I had the car for the day and so I took my kids over to a friends house to visit with her kids. We had to drive up over the other curb because of the cones and orange netting stuff at the end of our driveway.
After a lovely visit we arrived home around 1:00pm driving back up over the same opposite curb to avoid the same cones and netting surrounding almost dry brand new smooth concrete.
So very close to being dry.
So close . . .
So close in fact that at 4:30pm when we walked out to get in the car and drive to my husband's work to pick him up it was totally dry.
With one added feature.
Someone had decided share their artistic talent with
us. Right there in the now dry concrete was a lovely picture of a . . . ummm . . . well let's just say boys have one and girls do not. I have a photo but I will spare you. Now, this wasn't a small image. No, not at all. Apparently our artist considered himself to have an enormous talent.
Let's just say my response was not the happy dance of joy.
I had to coral my kids into the car before they could see what mommy was looking at. We drove to pick my husband up as I fumed. I was envisioning my kids growing up with that at the end of our driveway and trying to explain to them why someone would draw a "rocket ship" in the cement. Ugh.
Of course we debated whether the gas company would actually do something about it and if we should call them or the city or what. I even wondered if we should make a police report for vandalism. Mainly because we just wanted it gone. We were giving the gas company the benefit of the doubt since they did still have their cones in place. My husband asked one of the workers if something would be done to fix the "artwork" and his response was that his boss would look at it. Soon after they removed everything except one cone.
Yesterday as I was leaving the house to run some errands I saw my neighbors out looking at their lawn. I haven't run into the neighbors all that often so one or two hello's in the past three years that we've lived here is about the extent of the conversations we have had. I waved and kind of looked over to what they were talking about. They were looking at the grass that had been dug up and then replaced. They were shaking their heads at the poor job that was done. I walked closer to look at it and struck up a little conversation. The pieces of sod had been laid down on top of the dirt and grass. It hadn't been dug in or anything. They had fixed it themselves and made sure to water it well. Other yards in the area have several squares of brown grass lying around.
I asked them if they had noticed our artwork and they shook their heads in shock. Their response was much the same as mine had been. Something would have to be done and since the gas company had laid the cement they should really fix it. However like me they were a bit doubtful that something would actually be done. We all shook our heads and went on our way.
This morning that one remaining cone was gone. The artwork was not.
I was starting to decide my plan of action. I was getting myself worked up for the inevitable phone call which would lead to the inevitable run around and the inevitable "we'll look into it."
I was frustrated.
My husband had taken the kids out to run some errands and I was home waiting for my sis-in-law to pick me up to go out watch my nephew's baseball game when someone rang the doorbell. I figured it was my sis-in-law so I ran to the door ready to leave.
To my surprise I saw my neighbor at the door.
He wanted to let me know that he had taken care of our artwork. It took me a minute to even understand what he was telling me. It turns out he had a concrete tool he had forgotten he even had. When he saw it he thought he would just go on out and sand off the image in our driveway.
Problem solved.
He was almost apologetic that there were a few gouges where the scrape had been deep.
Ha! A few gouges. Instead of a "rocket ship!"
I couldn't even begin to thank him enough. Really, I don't know how to thank him enough.
I have the best neighbors!!!
Of course it is possible that he just didn't want to be the "house next door to the rocket ship house!"
