Stressed Out in #Bloomingdaledc by The Public Works

Detour sign instead of tree

Huge concrete truck lumbers onto quite side street

Large sheets of metal covering up huge holes

Lately, I've been feeling quite stressed out by all the public works in the neighborhood. I can't figure out if it's all the water tunnel dig, or gas pipes being moved, or other utility work, but it's all becoming a bit of a nightmare.  And, it's not just the bright orange and yellow plastic things -- signs, pipes, vehicles, worker jackets but it's all the big lumbering vehicles and the ever-changing lanes and roads and alleys being worked in, or the increase in heavy service trucks.

Steel plates & graffited toilets & orange cones

Huge equipment, mysterious yellow barrels

And for another thing, it seems like every time I leave the house during the day I encounter some kind of blockage:  this might be a slow-down due to having to drive more carefully over the large metal plates that are mysteriously appearing in some alleys and roadways (and what huge holes lurk underneath them); it might be a temporary "road closed" sign forbidding me to enter a street I used to routinely use;  or it might be some giant concrete carrier or truck blocking the road, trying to turn a corner or grinding its gears going over the speed humps of our quiet residential street. Some of them are even 18-wheelers (yes, I've counted them) who seem to have got lost in the "Bryant Street Detour" and are attempting to get somewhere. Who knows what an 18-wheel behemoth is doing driving westbound on Adams Street for instance, or why another two-tonner is attempting a U turn on First street.

 

giant coils of yellow plastic pipe & orange cones

I want to also mention the increasing number of helicopter flights by police, park police, news stations and others (that I have been unable to identify their origin). Their noisy circling over all the development is adding to the nervous tension that I now feel as I try for some peace in the garden or on the deck. I'm sorry to say I just give them the one-finger salute as they disturb the rose pruning.

Diggers and drillers and more ORANGE things

Oh no, another street closed!

Maybe it's also the sight of the large blue toilets that the road crews must have that now also have graffiti on them, or maybe it's all those orange cones and orange nets and signs taped onto trees, but I'm finding it all GETTING ON MY NERVES. Did I mention all the added dust and litter -- since street sweeping has been suspended -- and grit and grime?  Did I mention the 2 a.m. drilling digging sounds from McMillan site?  This Bloomingdale neighborhood is no longer the quiet outpost it used to be. We're living in the middle of a giant department of public works project and it's exhausting.

Cranes looming over

More heavy equipment blocking quite residential street

Workers in orange, yellow with STOP/SLOW signs

Toilets in BloomingdaleDC Alleys

Alley behind First St NW

Alley behind First St NW

Every once in a while I take a walk through the alleys behind our houses in Bloomingdale just to see what there is to see, to avoid traffic and to get a different view of things. Yesterday's walk elicited two toilets.  One seems to be positioned in a back yard where I assume there are people working on the house and the plumbing isn't working  yet. Or maybe -- so my mind rambled -- it's like that situation in the book "The Help" where the householder didn't want to share her toilet with her domestic servants.  I was also fascinated by this standing plastic toilet being red and white and blue. Is there something all American about toilets that I don't know? The other toilet has less to say about itself as it has clearly been abandoned and knocked over, lying in the alley behind a house that may have been renovated recently but I couldn't discern that.  I've seen these thrones kept and used as planters for geraniums but this one's previous owner apparently is not into that type of recycling. You just never know what you are going to see in the alleys behind the houses.