The Nanny Speaks

My nanny job is very consuming. Anya is reaching and touching and investigating as she sits propped up, but unusually cranky these past days. Thank heavens she is sleeping now inspite of the jack hammers outside the front door where they are tearing up the sidewalk thanks to the pleas of some busybody neighbor who talked the city into this project. We have dump truck and back hoe and loader and one jack hammer man, burly, never see his face, perhaps it has been shaken off, bent over his machine making cuts on both sides of the walkway. This is to go on for 10 days--yikes. And I was complaining about the noise on Mass ave. How I could walk down the street and there was always within range, some decibel machine louder than is good for human ears or consciousness. The buses, ambulances, drills, and pumps, the leaf blowers, a particular annoyance to me--I start channeling my father--"too lazy to move a rake back and forth" and just when you think at last there is only the ambient noise of traffic and the city, some bozo comes by with the boom boom ba boom of his car stereo. Now the jack hammers have upped the ante to the point of absurdity and I succumb to the insanity of civilization and take the baby out on the balcony to see the action. One workerman waves at the baby and punches the other to look while they are eating their candy bars and drinking dunking donuts coffee. "Came out to see what all the noise was about" say I. "Lots of noise" he says and punches his fellow workman to see the baby is looking at him. Fellow workman is much more interested in getting sugar into his body and gives a cursory glance up at Anya who is leaning over to see(maybe she can see that far)while drool slimes down her chin onto my hand.