Masterpiece. Master Plan. Master Scam.

For the last two days, the parking scheme at work has been upset. You know what THAT means! Val Thevictorian has been upset.

I usually park at the very end of my section of the facility. Only two spaces from the driveway. Then I walk the length of that end of the building to the door, which is almost directly across the hall from my room. I could park closer, but I choose not to.

For the last two days, I did not have a choice. I found this out Friday, when I came back from my doctor’s appointment to catch up on the day’s grading and pick up The Pony. A colleague told me that the parking lot at our end was being resurfaced, and it would be roped off. So we would have to park at the other end.

Here’s the thing. Our workplace is one long building. An eighth of a mile long, actually, because my best ol’ ex-teaching buddy Mabel measured it when we were doing our hall walks. She’s a mathie, you know, so I’m sure it was accurate. And the time it took us to walk two miles was commensurate with what I did at home, having measured with my pre-T-Hoe vehicle’s odometer.

The long building has a gym and music rooms branching off the back. So you can’t see one parking lot from the other. The one I use is just a regular blacktop parking lot, with yellow spaces painted along the building, and two double rows across the rest of the lot, and an ancillary building down the hill. At the lot on the opposite end of our workplace, most of the parking is dedicated to the students. They have numbers painted on each slot, and assigned spaces. Along the sidewalk by the building is a special strip of spaces utilized by the faculty. It is separated from the student slots by a long gravel island with small trees at regular intervals.

We at my end knew that the resurfacing of our parking lot would cause an issue. There is a whole new school being built down at the far end. The workers use the spots on the student lot that are not being used by students. Though the teachers don’t have assigned slots...just try and claim-jump one of those spaces. You’d have better luck surviving if you squatted on somebody’s gold mine at Sutter’s Mill in 1849. Not that I had any plans to take anybody’s spot. And believe me, I know who parks where. I’ve served parking lot duty once a week, morning and evening, for 20 years.

I told The Pony we needed to get there early on Monday morning so we would have a place to park. I cruised through the gauntlet of construction workers at 7:15, and turned into Teachers’ Row. I backed up to get aligned, and parked T-Hoe on the very end. Where there were no lines, even. Nobody could accuse VAL of taking their spot.

The walk to the end of the building was as long as the walk to my door usually is. Then there was another distance of equal length to the door. And once inside, yet another segment of hallway. So I was walking about three times the usual distance to get to my room. From where, on Monday, I had to turn around and go right back down to that parking lot for duty. I couldn't just wait there, since I get back to my room at the bell, same as the kids. I had to log on fifteen times to get my electronics going for the day. Okay. It’s really only five times. But that’s four too many. Oh, and I had to do the same thing at the end of the day: rush down to the parking lot at final bell, (my trip through the hall with students kind of like the running of the bulls in Pamplona), supervise the mass exit, attend a meeting, then back to my room to shut everything down and prep for the next day, then BACK down the three-times-longer distance to T-Hoe. AND we got news that the resurfacing of our parking lot would take another day.

There was no cheating. Our lot was tied off with yellow STAY-OUT tape. Monday and Tuesday morning dawned cloudy and foggy. You could hardly even see that tape from the road, so it's a good thing I knew not to turn in there. I spent both days dreaming about how smooth our new parking lot would be. And wondering when they would resurface the other end. Because then those folks would be parking with us. Plus the students! Which would probably switch my duty closer.

Yes, I was especially psyched to learn Tuesday afternoon that our parking lot was ready to reopen on Wednesday morning. I told The Pony, "I wonder if they made the new yellow lines in the same place. I have my routine, you know. I don't even have to look when I back into my parking space. I can judge it from the yellow lines in front of me."

"I know." Said The Pony. With about as much enthusiasm as Carrie May in The House Bunny.

Imagine my surprise when we rolled down the drive and onto our lot, and I saw THIS:

That's right. There was no resurfacing! No dark black new blacktop, freshly oiled. No bright new yellow lines. Nope. Just this shoddy patch job in some cracks. And the dumped-in asphalt is not even tamped down. It's raised, like a keloid scar that never met Mederma. (You don't want to ask my BFF Google about keloid scars. Trust me.)

AND in some areas, it seemed as if there was a shortage of fresh asphalt (no doubt because excess was used in the keloid patching), because DIRT looked like it was mixed in as a stretcher. Like soybeans in school hamburger.

I can't believe it took TWO WHOLE DAYS for this resurfacing repair touch-up job. What did they use, a toddler's sand bucket and a Sonic color-changing spoon?

Val Thevictorian thinks somebody got taken for a ride in this parking lot deal.