To Whom It May Concern at the ODOT,

I don't know whose hair-brained idea it was to close two of the 5 main roads in my section of town, but whoever the brain child behind that idea was, you need to be flogged with some al dente noodles. 

You see, in my section of town, we have 5 main roads.  Sure, we have a network of secondary and tertiary roads that comprise what we lovingly call "city blocks," but the main roads connect all of that together.  The two main streets that I travel down, one no fewer than twice a day, are both closed.  Those two streets run parallel to each other.  If one had road construction and closures, then we could skip over the 10 blocks and just pick up the other. 

Yup, uh, notsomuch. 

I can say with absolute certainty that a mother was not behind this idea.  If there was a mother involved, she would have had to figure out how the kids were going to get to school, how routes back and forth to child care were involved, the grocery, the place of worship, the postal unit, what was the back-up route, the back-up to the child care, the back-up to the back-up, the route to a store that you could easily get to in the middle of the night if your child had some medical emergency, the route to the doctor, the route to work, route to friends, because Moms still have friends and how all this ties together and despite all of that, how she can get the kids fed and to bed on time.  Did they think of these things?  Um, no.

I have now doubled my travel time to work and have added 6 additional poorly timed stop lights to my trip.  Hubs shoots down miles out of his way (probably 4-5) so that he can come home from his parents from the bottom route.  Think of Willy Wonka.  We have to go forward to go back. 

The most irritating to this road construction problem is that the main road that was closed for 6 1/ 2 months and re-opened in October is now closed again to replace a bridge.  Common sense would tell me that if you have a road closed to completely rip it apart, take it from 4 lanes to 2 with a turn lane from beginning to end, widen tree lawns, rip out and reinstall trees, sidewalks, drops in sidewalks, another blasted stop light, new curbing, storm drains and the like that you are GOING TO REPLACE THE FLIPPIN' BRIDGE AT THE SAME EXACT TIME!!! 

But, that's just me. 

So, if there is anyone at the Ohio Department of Transportation that can MAKE THE MADNESS STOP! I'm sure that the readers would love me to stop screaming at you in caps on my blog. 

Thank you for your time and reconstructed consideration.

Irritatedly yours,

Amy, who's vehicle is a 16 gallon tank with current gas prices of $3.63/gallon

PS  Thankfully, you've added several extra miles to my trip, making the big gas companies so thankful for your poorly timed road closures.