Big Changes Afoot

This is my front yard. While it's been a crappy year for gardening, and my plants are definitely scragglier than most summers, it's still pretty, no? Restful, peaceful, and very quiet. We spend a lot of time on the patio located just left of this photo.

I stood on the far side of my driveway to shoot this. I took it for reasons of comparison. I want you to fix this image in your mind. Got it?

Now this shot was taken from the exact same spot, after I made a ninety-degree turn to my left. And ... huh, weird. There appear to be giant tire tracks in the grass. And they're disturbingly close to the hosta bed that runs alongside the garage. Let's walk a little farther and see where they lead.
As I round the corner of the garage, I see ... HOLY SHIT. (Which were, coincidentally, the exact words out of my mouth when I got home from an all-day shopping trip with the girls, and the workmen led me around the house to show me their progress). I mean, there was a yard back there just eight hours before.
Let me explain. One of the reasons blogging has been light around here lately (aside from the fact that my kids are home for the summer and seem to be under the delusion that my express purpose is to provide them with The Super Funtime Entertainment Rodeo), is that we've been in the process (the long, looooong, loooooooooooong process) of having an addition built onto our house.

And by process, I don't even mean the actual building part. No, I mean picking a contractor, drawing up plans, drawing up more plans, applying for a loan, waiting for the appraiser to come, waiting, waiting, still more waiting, waiting for the bank to validate (or something?) the appraisal, waiting for the code enforcement officer to get back from vacation (and how dare he take a vacation when we NEED him to issue our building permit?), waiting for the bank for close the loan, waaaaaaaiting, and then finally closing the loan three months after we started the process. I had a three month long stomachache. (Which you would think would be an effective weight loss incentive, but you would be wrong).

And then the loan closed, and Mr. Awesome Contractor was all, let's build this thing. And Tom and I were all, sure, but kind of privately laughing because we figured it would be months before any actual construction started. Damned if the excavators didn't show up two days later and now we have a crater in our backyard.

But it's the prettiest crater I've ever seen because it means that someday in the not-too-far future, I'm going to have a bathroom of my own. And hardwood floors.

In the meantime, I have a teeny-tiny concern. Did you spot it in the photo above? Here, let me point it out:
Yeah, that's our septic pipe. Septic as in sewage. And it appears to be casually balanced on Tinker-Toys. Tom informs me that they're actually two-by-sixes, which doesn't console me at all because they still appear to be stuck in the mud like chopsticks holding up the septic pipe. The potential for several very specific disaster scenarios (all of them involving sewage spewing across my yard) plays an active role in my anxieties (previously occupied by Swine Flu) right now.

Here's a different view. I find it equally alarming.

I'll be spending a lot of time in my happy place until the full foundation is poured, and that pipe has a permanent home.