Construction!

For as long as I can remember, we've lived near a construction site. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating; this little problem has only plagued us for about five years, but it's been five very long years. About a year into living in Nashville, I went out to the grocery store one day, and came home to find our across-the-street neighbor's house nearly completely demolished. The following day, it came down all the way, and shortly thereafter, the building project began -- a lovely Green Hills-esque duplex! A year or so later, we moved about a mile away within Nashville to a quiet little dead-end street. Construction was near completion on a new mini-mansion across the street (the street we live in on Nashville is full of houses built in the 1930s and 1940s, which, like so many of those homes in Nashville and other cities, are being torn down by people with too much money, so that they can erect gargantuan homes that dwarf houses like ours). We were so happy when the big white house was completed, but dismayed when construction started several months later on a house that was going up on an empty lot. That house was nearly finished when we left for Serbia a year ago.

When we arrived in Serbia, and were whisked to our house in Senjak by the Embassy driver, I was thrilled to find that, once again, we were living on a quiet street with very little traffic. The following day, though, having emerged from my travel fog, I realized that a huge construction project loomed at the end of our road -- just two houses away from us. Banging and much noise ensued for months, ruining, to some extent, our peaceful little existence in our new home.

And then, the piece de resistance: about one day after my Mother arrived last May for a visit, our next-door neighbor started to tear down his POOL HOUSE with a JACK HAMMER. This pool house was so beautiful (Spanish roof tiles and all), but it no longer stands. With jackhammers going morning, noon and night, the summer was NOISY!!!! When it started to get cold in late Fall, though, the trucks went away, and it was quiet again. Ah, what a wonderful thing that was!

And, then, about a week ago, it all started again. The end of our street is full of trucks again, a crane hovers over our neighborhood, and the banging of steel and beeping of trucks seems to never end (in fact, it rarely does end -- these folks work seven days a week, and about 10 hours a day). The workers are erecting a large steel structure, and naturally, we are curious to know what the end result will be. I've asked the neighbors, but no one is sure. And so, we most likely will tough it out through another noisy spring and summer. We'll keep our fingers crossed, however, that when we return to Cantrell Avenue, all of the little houses remain, and that, at least for a little while, we can live in a construction-free zone!!

Happy Tuesday!

Erin