Tuesday mornings at 7:30

My new apartment has great maintenance staff. At to my old place, my landlord couldn't be bothered to change the lightbulbs or put a lock on the front door, thereby turning any nightime trips to my front door into a game of "Open-door-in-dark-really-fast-and-pray-there's-no-one waiting-in-the-stairwell-to-kill-me". It was so bad that I used my cell phone as a light source to find the keyhole. And on nights that my cell phone was dead, well, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
But not at the new place. When the locks need to be changed, the toliet goes on the fritz, the door won't close, etc., it's taken care of by Vic and his merry band of immigrants within hours. It's like we're living at the Plaza.
Except on Tuesday mornings at 7:30. That's when Victor and his elves inevitably decide to do something LOUD- whether it's mowing the lawn right outside my bedroom window (this morning), hammering something down in the yard outside my window(3 weeks ago) or jackhammering in the street (ok, so that was the City, not the maintenance guys, but STILL- it was a TUESDAY morning at 7:30!!).
Now, I understand that most people are awake at 7:30 a.m., in fact, there are some crazies out there that are already gone for work for the day by then. But I am not one of them. I'm a fuss free kind of girl and I have it worked out so that I can get up at 8:10 and still make it to work at 9. Kyle would happliy sleep to 10 every day if he could. Still, we decided not to complain to the landlord lest we look like lazy sleepy people (which we are, but we don't want people to know that) and we don't want to upset the elves, just in case the toliet ever starts acting up again.
But 2 weeks ago the Victor and his merry band of followers crossed the line. At 7:25 we awake to hear loud, cheerful Spainish coming from the grass outside the bedroom. "I can deal with this," I thought. "Sure, I'm awake, but there's no tools making noise and maybe if I fall back to sleep I'll have an exotic dream of being in Mexico." Then suddenly I hear a loud metal thud outside the window and hear "clank-clank-clank". I sit up and look out the window and lock eyes with a small brown man who's head and shoulders are now blocking my view of the pretty elm tree across the street. This is distressing, especially given the level of clothing Kyle and I chose to wear while sleeping. I make a dive for the blankets and force Kyle out of bed to close the curtains. I'm mortified, and very glad that I don't speak Spainish, because otherwise the next time I run into the elves would very uncomfortable. Suddenly jackhammers don't seem so evil after all.