Under Construction

Right now I’m on spring break, so the only sounds in the background are the growls and thumps of video games, but for the last month or two most of my life has revolved around the sound of construction. Last year the apartment building next to mine burned down, and so I’ve been woken up every morning at 7:15 with the sound of nail guns outside my window. Now, for those of you responsible adults who are thinking “big deal,” let me remind you that I am a crazy college student, who, for various reasons (none involving partying) stays up rather late—“rather” being in comparison to those I know who stay up until 4 or 5 am. In any case, for the first two weeks of this torture, I walked around like a zombie, muttering dark curses on construction workers. Then, it started following me around. There is tons of construction on campus, and some of it is happening right outside one of my classes. It gets so loud that we can’t even hear whoever is speaking. In the meantime, the apartment complex apparently was forced by the state to put in more fire hydrants, a process that involved sectioning off most of out already limited parking, and digging a ridiculously deep trench right the in middle of our roadway. Most of it is now filled in with gravel, but on each end it is merely covered over with huge metal squares, with sound like thunder every time a car runs over them. We’re gotten used to it, but it always freaks visitors out (what was that?!!!).
One side effect of all of this is the dirt, which, you guessed it, turned to a greater amount of mud with every torrential rain we’ve had the last few weeks. At one point, I was running late to bring the car to Lukas, so I only slipped on my boots but didn’t bother to zip them up. Well, I make it down the steps, step into the muddy parking lot, and one of them flaps down into the mud. Just great, I think. As I bend down to zip it up, my new expensive purse slips into the mud. Fabulous. As I try to brush it off, Lukas calls, and I try to get my cell phone out of my pocket with my now-muddy hands.
Actually, I’ve been wondering how some people manage to make it to class still looking like something other than a drowned sewer rat. After twenty minutes in the pouring rain, my jeans were soaked up three-quarters of the way, rain had seeped into my boots (which were tucked into my jeans and came to my knees) and socks, and so much water collected on my backpack that it seeped all the way through to the bottom, ruining the bottom lines of my notes, and dripping down the back of my pants. And all this is with an umbrella, a raincoat, and a sweater! I’ve decided that I need to invest in one of those huge, ten-person umbrellas; forget the small individual sized ones, they just don’t cut it. I’ve felt superior in the past for using the small umbrellas that don’t take up the entire sidewalk, but forget that; desperate times call for desperate measures.
But back to my point. All this is, when put into perspective, merely irritating. But lately some tarps and window coverings on the new building haven’t been tied down well, and they make ghostly noises flapping, flapping (or perhaps “rapping, rapping”) at my windowpane. But these noises aren’t even regular, so I will be trying to fall asleep when a haunting whisper whips me back into awakeness. “’Tis the wind and nothing more,” or so I tell myself, but it is still dang distracting, especially when I’m reading a literary horror novel called House of Leaves.
As I left for break, my nostalgia made me feel like saying farewell even to those dastardly tarps, but I’m not sure how long that will last once I come back from break. Maybe the construction will be over. Or maybe I’ll find a raven at my window. Both probabilities are equally likely.