Catpaw - diary of an angry cat

I’ve been quite negligent in my writing the past few days. Blame it on the bizarre weather here in Toronto. We seem to ricochet from one extreme to another. It was a glorious weekend - sunshine and unseasonably warm. Where was I? In bed with a migraine that wouldn’t stop. Finally lifted yesterday. Today? Wet, chilly and miserable out there. You guessed it! No migraine. There is no justice in this world! I lost what might be the last good weekend before winter takes hold. I’m going to mutter about that all day.

To make matters worse, there is all this construction going on in the neigbourhood. Endless jackhammers and trucks. They start, in theory, at 8am. In practice they sometimes start as early as 7am. Even on Saturday I can hear them banging away.

First it was road repairs, then one new condo just down the street. They did beautiful job on the building and it adds a nice element to the area. I like it a lot.

Then just as that condo development settled down, a new one started up - and these are the cheapest, ugliest townhouse/condo’s I’ve ever seen. I watched as they were built and can’t believe how crappy the job has been. Each condo has been sold for over 1/2 a million dollars. I read their brochure and figured anyone buying these condos were being taken for a ride by the developer. The back of each condo faces right smack into an apartment building on the same lot. Each morning you can throw back your curtains and look straight into someone’s apartment. Nice. Know what rates as a technology feature? “white toggle switches and matching  plugs”. Sorry folks, the basic light switches and wall plugs, in plain white, are not technology features. They are required. Seriously, when was the last time you moved into a place and had to ask for the light switches and plugs to be installed because they were a “feature”. No, not a feature, a standard required item here in Canada.  As the summer progressed, I watched in utter horror, as the construction crew put up boards that were crooked - the outside walls showed gaps of up to 3 - 4 inches between the boards and the outer frames. It looked like some of the boards were nailed to the insulation. And when we had rain, the warping on the same walls was shocking. If I can see this from the sidewalk, how bad is it really? Latter the workers came along, threw up some pieces of wood to fill the cracks and then put some bricking over wall. Can’t you just see the problems in a few years?

That entertainment is nearly over, they are just about ready for occupation.

While this was going on, subway repairs were carried out. The huge trench is still out there. The repairs that were supposed to take a few months have now dragged into over a year. Every once in awhile someone comes along to pump water out of the trench. Usually a some ungodly hour, with a very noisy truck.

Oh and the city is ripping up the newly repaired road again. Nearly 2 weeks of jackhammering, pounding and grating. Keep in mind this is a major road here in the city. As a result, drivers are impatient and all we hear from 8am to 10am and 4pm to 6:30pm are horns and screeching brakes.

I forgot, the city has been tearing up the sidewalks in the area as well. Oh.. and the street car rails have been torn out and put in twice in less than a year - the noise from that was unbearable.

I guess I’m being cranky today.  It was a bad weekend. Now I have to go out into the rain and cold. Could be worse. I could have to do this with a migraine. Guess I should consider myself lucky. I’d rather be crabby.

Stumble it!