In November of last year, we had a water main break on our street. It just so happened that the break was right under part of our sidewalk. They came and tore up our sidewalk, as well as part of the street, to fix the leak. We were left with a hole in the road and no sidewalk for two months. Our Christmas decorations were outshone by the blinking yellow lights on top of the construction horses.
They came to fix our sidewalk a little earlier than expected. I can remember the exact day they came. It was Jocelyn's birthday, January 8. I didn't think they would lay a new sidewalk until the weather got warmer, but I was obviously wrong. What do I know about pouring concrete?? It was REALLY cold that day. The high temperature was 28 degrees and the low was 21. I'm pretty sure it was also snowing.
They covered the sidewalk for a couple days and then came back, uncovered it and left it to our care taking. No special instructions were left behind.
It snowed.
We salted it.
Little did we know that you aren't supposed to salt a new walk for at least a year after it had been laid. Well, we only salted it once before I came to the conclusion that we shouldn't do that again. The sidewalk looked horrible. It was chipping up, and looked like it had dried, melted salt running all over it. This didn't wash away with the rain.
We knew the condition of the sidewalk would only get worse with time. We were afraid to call and tell the water company that the new sidewalk was horrible. We thought they would know as soon as they saw it that we caused the problem.
After months of feeling sick that we had a brand new sidewalk and ruined it ourselves, I decided that the worst the water company could say was, "No, we aren't laying a new sidewalk at our cost when YOU screwed it up." So I sent an e-mail, someone came out and looked at it, and I received a call that we would have a new one put in within 2 weeks. Woo Hoo!! Thank goodness.
Well, this morning at 6:50am we were awakened by the joyous sound of jackhammers. The funniest part of the timing is that Jocelyn had been waking up at 6:30am for the past 4 days. Today she was still sleeping. I thought the double jackhammering going on right outside her window would surely wake her up. Nope. She slept right through the entire thing. Me, on the other hand, not so much. The one morning I could have slept in later than 6:30 and there are jack hammers pounding outside! I guess I asked for it, right??
The best part of the whole deal was that when Todd left for work, the guys working out there asked him who laid the sidewalk that was there. Todd told him that he wasn't sure. The guy asked when they did it. Todd responded with January. The guy said, "Yep. That will do it. It's way too cold to lay a sidewalk in January." So, maybe it wasn't our fault? Maybe it was a combination of the salt and the cold weather? We will never know, but we won't be putting salt on this new sidewalk for a while, that's for sure.
Now, at 1:00pm, Jocelyn is down for her nap and the crews have just resurfaced to pour our new sidewalk. I'm guessing she will sleep well. At least I wasn't trying to take a nap!!
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