One day a few years back I scraped my side mirror on the wrought iron frame of the automatic gate spanning my all-too-narrow driveway one too many times. So I drove to Home Depot, rented a small jackhammer intended for horizontal demolition, and brought it home.

It was the hottest day of the Los Angeles summer. I donned white sweats, a long sleeve white t-shirt, a white baseball cap, thick leather gloves, and marched out into the driveway armed with the chipper.

Six hours later the useless 9′ x 2′ x 6″ retaining wall imposing driveway narrowness on my poor, sad, scraped Volvo was gone. A pile of rubble took its place.

What does one do with a pile of rubble?

Why, pile it all in all of our garbage bins, of course.

It was a lot of concrete. But no matter: the wall was gone and I was liberated, running on the pure adrenaline of victory. Unable to feel my blistered palms, numbed by the jackhammer, sunburned, dehydrated, and proud, proud, proud. Take that, evil retaining wall, and good riddance to you. The simple joys of homeownership include the freedom to tear things up at will. It’s a beautiful, albeit exhausting thing.

In hindsight perhaps it was a bit extreme. The tip-off came a few days later, when, subsequent to the garbage truck’s weekly visit, three bins full of rubble still sat curbside. Apparently they were too heavy for the robotic garbage-dumping arm on the truck, too heavy for the garbage engineers to lift, yet somehow not too heavy for me to maneuver down the driveway and to that curb.

They sat, for weeks. Poor Neighbor was bin-less.

I decided to redistribute the rubble a few pieces each week among the neighboring garbage bins under the cover of darkness. An effective, yet far too time-consuming and gradual to be workable plan.

And then one evening, Neighbor pulled up to Campus at around 10:30 while I was out in the street, dress and heels, post-red wine evening with the girls. Somebody had backed into one of the bins and tipped it over. Rubble spilling out, strewn into the street.

A U-Haul pick-up was rented that weekend. I single-handedly transferred rubble from bins to truck bed, and then Neighbor and I drove it out to the dump, gloves and all, prepared to unload rubble one last time.

Laborers were standing by to relieve us of our duties for around $20. Too much of a bargain, I dare say.

We let them keep our gloves.

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Today was an emotional coaster of a day. But in the end I’m feeling more like myself again. It’s good to be back. At least for now. Day, by day, by day.