The Rock Saga

Glacial till surrounds me.

After digging up our street for water main breaks a whopping 10 times last winter, the City has decided that it's time to replace the whole main. I'm happy with whatever inconvenience this causes us, if it means that the street doesn't flood again every week next winter.

They're digging up the street slowly (it's been blocked off now for 3 weeks running), replacing the main and replacing sewer lines to individual properties at the same time. And the nice thing is - besides the big machines on the street for Sprout to admire, and the entertainment that having buff young men in hardhats around provides - that they keep digging up lovely big rocks.

I love rocks. I especially love free rocks that I don't have to haul home in my car. I get this rock-love-thing from Aunt Frieda. It's genetic. My sister has it too.

First, we took the hand-truck out there and hauled a few home to put in the garden and the flower beds. Then they dug a few bigger ones up. That made Beans and me drool at the opportunity, and rub our little hands together. One morning, I was at work and my sister phoned me. I answered the phone, and she basically spit into it, "Pay! Dirt! Gwen! Pay-Dirt!" "Umm, I'm in a meeting, can I call you back?", I say, fascinated at what could possibly reduce her to this neanderthal state of speech.

When I called her back, she told me that she had charmed some of the buff young men into dumping a whack of huge rocks in my front yard with their backhoe. It was pretty thrilling, I must say.

When Jim and I got home from work, reality set in a bit. Faster with him than with me - a Schmidt girl doesn't give up easily when it comes to free rocks. Most of the rocks we could move with the hand-truck, but four of them we really couldn't budge. So now we have four big rocks on our boulevard that we either have to move ingeniously, suck up to the buff young men again, or pay someone to haul away. My cute little sister is gone, so the sucking up will probably not happen. As usual she has connections, though, so we have a line on someone with a hand-truck that can actually handle two hundred pounds or whatever that is out there.

The biggest rock is the most beautiful one of all. It's a smooth pink semi-oval. I keep staring at it from the window, and go and touch its flat surface when I think no one is watching.