baking blueberry tarts during a stinky earthquake...

The house is from 1865 and the road out front is a state highway.  Our front door sits just a few feet from the road, as houses did then, and the level is a couple of feet lower than the road bed.  It is now 2 inches lower than this time yesterday….because every ten years or so, apparently, they resurface the road…never scraping anything off, just ADDING couple of inches.  One of our driveways is fairly level but the other has an absurd upward angle (just try it in winter!) which is now slightly MORE absurd.

Last week, fast moving traffic be damned, a guy with a spray can goes down the middle of the road painting numbers.  Should have tipped me off.  But I have always imagined that before road work a state engineer would knock on the door with his clipboard, and tell me when work starts, and I could tell HIM the state owes me a damn level driveway, so you better bring a few extra truck loads of gravel….but there was no warning and no there was no state engineer.  Just several truckloads of guys and their hellacious equipment and stinky tarmac….it was awful.  I am sorry, I don't like to complain too much, but it was such a BAD day.  The machinery ensured a constant noise and vibration like an earthquake, 7am-7pm, with this foul, smoking paving material, RIGHT OUTSIDE the window….the cat is pretty bold, but he his under the couch.  The dog barked at it….I felt messed up.


SO I baked a blueberry tart.  When I was little my mo would give me the end of the pie crust dough to make a little jam tart, so I made that too….it was all I could do :)