I Heart My Job

It was a rather trying day.  It was exciting to have the big machinery arrive, finally.  The hoe drove to the back and started at the patio -- and that's where the first part turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. There was head scratching; there were various ideas; and eventually the concrete slab came apart, piece by piece to a chorus of "they don't make 'em like that anymore!"
But if the concrete slab was somewhat overbuilt, a peek under what was once the garage wall revealed that the carport/ garage was not. There were no foundations at all. A visit from the structural engineer made things worse still --- we need foundations and lots of them.  While the engineer hummed and hawed, the hoe continued to dig... and dig... and dig.... looking for the essential "hardpack" beneath us which is essentially the starting point for building.  He found it, 4 feet down.
Trucks came and trucks went, and then we waited a long time for them to come back again and what was supposed to be a half-day's work stretched on to quitting time and will continue again today.
The operator left and we stretched snow fence across the gaping hole so no one would accidentally fall into it and parked our vehicle in the driveway for the same reason.  Then I heard the now-familiar rumble of heavy machinery -- the operator was back with a different hoe, his usual machine (the other was a demo), which he decided to park here overnight so he could have an early start the next day. The bumper sticker in the cab window gave me my first smile of the day...