vulgarweed | The Russians are coming!

No, actually, they were already here. My landlord's work crew, to fix the two (2!) separate leaks in my apartment. (One over the bathtub that dripped when the upstairs neighbors took a shower and one in the front room that dripped when it rained.) OK guys, worked fast, got the new drywall up and it looks pretty much the same (to my jaded eye that has no particular concern for interior visuals).

The one who spoke a little English was even a cat lover and bonded with Madimi, so I knew he wouldn't be reckless about letting her out. For her part, for the first half hour she was all like, "Who's that! What's that noise!" doing her little meerkat pose. Then she went to sleep.

For my part, I bristle cause I'm territorial and don't like strange men in my very small living space, but the worst part was the timing.

8:00 in the goddamn morning? Is that shit really necessary? Why are construction workers so obsessed with the crack of dawn? (Insert "carpenter crack" joke here.)

I'm tempted to study the trades just so I can show up to work during my own peak hours of alertness and talent and the hours of most of my work for pay: roughly 10 PM to 3 AM. Hey, it's just a belt sander, don't mind me. Just gotta knock out this moldy drywall, just go about your business! What, you're asleep? In your jammies at this hour? You're wasting the best part of the day! **disapproving look, subtle implication that you must not have to really work for a living.**

They were nice guys. I'd drink vodka with 'em any day. But I'm discovering tonight that two of my windows leak too, and I'm not going to tell my landlord for another month or two. I need to recover.

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I *still* tell the story about the time that our Polish-speaking handyman tried to install a new dryer in the basement and ended up ripping a giant hole in our wall with the gas line. If you didn't actually twist his ear and lead him up the stairs to our apartment, it sure as heck seemed like you did. :)

That was one of the most surreal things I have ever seen, to this day. That swelling bulge in the wall with the scraping noise, and then that mechanical arm of pipe PUNCHING THROUGH! Maybe I've read too many post-Lovecraft stories about monsters in the walls but DAMN that was bad-trippy!

They really had no fucking clue. They acted like I had two heads until I SHOWED THEM the havoc they were wreaking.

I remember that you and I were in different rooms and that you became aware of what was happening because a poster on the living room wall leapt to life.

I believe this was the same handyman for whom I had to mime "thing broken" over and over again so that he'd fix the hole in the gas line to the stove so that we wouldn't die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

I even had a flashback to that last year when one of my big bay windows blew right into my living room in a storm - didn't break, just popped right out of the frame and let all the wind and rain come rushing in.

There was a work crew rehabbing the apartment upstairs (and that was lots and lots of "dawn chorus" noise for a few months, too) so I ran up to get them, thinking they'd be able to help, right?

Wrong. They just stood there staring and scratching their heads until my neighbor across the hall came running in cause she'd heard the noise and suggested I get our DOWNSTAIRS neighbor, Phil, who's like the unofficial building handyman. He took a look, came back with some screws and brackets and fixed it in like 30 seconds and then started yelling at the construction crew in Spanish (which is what they spoke) for, presumably, being so useless.

I have a feeling those were the guys who did the shoddy rehab work in the first place.

The Russians are coming!

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