So Half my Driveway is Gone Now.

So today, or well yesterday by the time you read this, was the day that I discovered that most of the driveway was gone. Let me explain. No, no there is to much- let me sum up.

First off I had to get up at 2am in order to go to work. Which was too damn early really. It was when we were pulling out of our primary driveway that we noticed a sign near the secondary drive way (the driveway to the future house site) that said ominously “high water.” So then we went to work and did work things and we got home at about 3pm. Which is when we noticed the road crew out working in front of the second driveway.

Which is when Scott went over to see if our retaining wall had survived the waters. Which is when he discovered this.

 Ha ha ha FUCK.

Then of course he came back to tell me and of course I was busy doing farm things and had cat puke all down my front from Emoticon who is still in the house and very unhappy about that.

Vomitingly unhappy apparently.

So then I walked over chanting my war chant under my breath. Which at the time consisted of me going “it can't be that bad it can't be that bad” until I got there and it was that bad.

 Why god why!?

Then Scott was all like, it was their storm drain that backed up they should give us free gravel. And then I was all like, yeah that could work. Cause after buying fuel oil and paying my property taxes I was the most broke ass girl in Broke Town. So then Scott called up the county and they told him to talk to the foreman of the road crews and he might be able to fill it with some dirt. Except he was out somewhere fixing the roads. Because of course by the time we got back out there the road crew had gone. Timing- we has it.

So then the only thing we could do was hop in the car and start driving down back country lanes looking for those fuckers. Just picture a montage of decaying barns, mobile homes, ATVs and pretend bridges, beautiful mountain forests and rolling country meadows and you'll have it. Well, also there was a house with a full size dumpster outside that they were just filling with trash. So there was that too. Also it looked like the dumpster had been there since the Reagen administration. The trash too. You know, I mean, if you already have the dumpster...

I'm sure it just smelled lovely on hot days.

Combine that with the guy I saw walking alone the road at 3am holding a dead skunk and looking like the back half of the 70s had hit him and you have a pretty accurate picture of what happens when you start driving down back country roads all random like.

Unfortunately we never found the guys. We even drove down to the road service depot thing with the giant hill of gravel in the back and knocked but there was nobody there. My theory is that they were some sort of Kurt Vonnegut road crew and had temporarily slipped into another dimension while we were searching for them.

Because Killgore Trout is a dick like that.

Anyway then there was nothing left to do but return home and stare at our new miniature grand canyon. Of course we then realized that our plan to get more house trees, or hell do anything with the house had come to a screeching halt because the backhoe was down one driveway and the truck down the other.

Ha ha ha of fucking course.

So now we pretty much have a chasm with the backhoe on one side and the truck on the other. Totally like that one part in Land Before Time where the ground just heaved like a motherfucker and Little Foot lost his grandparents and I totally lost my shit and cried like a little girl. Except this time I am totally an adult and I didn't cry because I still might be able to get the county to fill that and my grandparents are not stuck across a chasm next to the promised land.

Despite it all though there was one shinning and glorious piece of good luck, and that was that the retaining wall survived. Despite the fact that a massive shit fuck ton of water was pouring over it.

Boo ya motherfuckers.

 So then we had dinner and I said that I bet that storm drain was all like, “oh you had wants and dreams Holly, well NOT ANY MORE HA HA HA! I had dreams too once and now look at me I am a fucking storm drain. This ain't what mama wanted fer me. Oh if only my mama could see me now it would break her pore ol' heart. That's what it would do.”

And then Scott told me that the stress was probably getting to me and suggested I watch a movie instead. And then I was all like, I should write a movie about a tormented storm drain that was haunted by it's own failure and took it out on everyone and everything around him.

Which probably means that I should go to bed soon.

I would totally name that movie something sweet though. Like, Under a Road Too Far or Tormented Underground or Turbulent Waters of A Damned and Corrugated Soul.

I mean like instant best sellers right? Right?

I mean like the stress totally isn't getting to me.

At all. Nope. Not me.

Oooooh oh! How about, Failure and Rust in the Eye of the Storm? Yeah!? YEAH!?

I'm telling you.

Oscar worthy.

The retaining wall. Oh god the retaining wall.

Either I have gotten out of shape, or I have forgotten just how much pain I can be in after moving giant ass rocks all day.

We rebuilt a whole bunch of it today.

What we did was pull rocks off the top and then place them at the bottom to form a new bottom layer which we slowly integrated back up into the existing wall. I had, in a fit of planning collected rocks to be used in the rebuild. I had spent four fucking days doing nothing but collecting rock. I thought we would have enough.

We didn't.

It was handy to have them all there, as we had already moved them to the site, but there was still a lot of cursing and pain and sadness.

About halfway through the day I was alternately making a sort of whimpering sound that was also mixed with the grunt growl that people make when they are moving something heavy.

I'm pretty sure I sounded like a killer whale giving birth.

It was also as humid as the inside of a sauna. A sauna that is also filled with insects that will bite me even though I have two different kinds of bug spray on and really WTF nature?

Also at one point during this epic battle of wills between me and a slope I was ferrying rocks around in my tank top.

I'll explain.

We needed some smaller rocks, but of course we had already used up all of the one's around the wall, so I went off in search of more rocks. Except now the meadows have sprang up so I ended up having to go farther and farther into the woods for rocks and then of course I can only carry so many at a time. So I just flipped my tank top bottom over to make a sort of pouch and shoved rocks in there because none of the buckets were anywhere near where I was working. As in I would have had to have walked back down the driveway, through the yard, past the rabbit hutches and past the chicken coup to get one.

Of course I think I'm out a tank top now.

Anyway it was 'the terrible picking up the heavy rocks but now I have to throw them down to bottom of the retaining wall with out falling over the edge and dieing' edition.

So now I feel like my body has been pummeled and I find myself kinda zoning out while I am looking at the screen.

Wha?

Oh yeah. The blog.

I think I should just go to bed now.

Zzzzzzzzzzz.

The Great Retaining Wall Tragedy of O'12

Do you know the feeling where you spend a month and a half on one project and you give it everything you have and then some just so you can finally step back and say with satisfaction that it is done and you made it?

And then do you know the feeling where life shows up and destroys that project?

Yeah.

So it rained like a bitch shit ton, and guess what happens when you take really, really dry ground and then wet really quickly. You get this.

I was walking the dog, trying not to get wet by skirting the mud puddles. It of course had been raining like a crazy demon the past two days and the dog was happy to be outside sniffing things. Well we walked up the driveway and turned off into the wood, and that's when I saw it.

There was the initial flood of despair, followed by a rather rational discussion in the back of my mind if I could just deny this had happened for a while.

It decided no.

So I walked, blank and zombie like, back up to the house. Scott was working by the sheds, trying to fix the weed eater. His back was to me, and I had to cross the lawn to reach him. I had this sense that I was about to ruin his day. Ruin it hard core. That with every heavy step I was taking across the waterlogged grass I was one step closer to taking his happiness and smashing it on the ground.

I reached him and took a deep breath.

Then I smashed his happiness all over the ground. After that brief moment where his brain decided if it could deny this problem, we walked back down the drive and looked at it.

Scott was more optimistic then me. Pointing out that wall had stayed together all the way down and that we should be able to just add more rocks on top of it.

Oh fucking boy.

Well at this point, drinking was right out, because I had to work the next day. I went inside and did the only thing I could do. I took a motherfucking nap and prayed to god that things would be better when I woke up.

It wasn't.

So now I need more rocks.

You know, maybe it's not too late to deny it after all.

What were we talking about?

The Retaining Wall is Done. It's Over.

Gaze upon it's magnificence. Gaze until your eyeballs hurt. 

Well I didn't die.

But it wasn't from lack of trying. Since Scott hurt his wrist, I had collected the last two loads of stone by myself . Optimistically, I had ventured out on a cool day, ready to collect the shit out of some rocks. Only to  find there was a problem. The nice rock bar location I had been getting rocks from, aka it's all downhill to the truck from here so I can use the wagon if I want, was pretty much tapped out of the size rocks I needed in areas I could get to with out breaking my ankles. So I was left with one other option, the other side of the rock bar. Which was of course, on the other side of the road, and also downhill from it. Downhill, you guys.

I spent a few moments debating what I should do. Should I take the wagon down there with me? There was a nice sized, but rather lumpy field off to right I could park the wagon in, but I did not think I wanted to pull the wagon all the way back up to the road. Of course this left me with only one option. Carrying the rocks up the hill through the rock bar.

Well fuck.

So that is what I did. Rock by painful motherfucking rock. Some rocks were so big I had to stop two or three times on the way up. I also realized that the trees were smaller and closer together here, meaning there was no easy clear path back up, epically if the rock was wide. But, hey no problem, as I worked my way back into the bar I thought, hey I'll just cut up through the meadow.

That was my second mistake. (The first was thinking this project was a good idea in the first place.)

Well I picked up a rock, and managed to sort of side step my way into the meadow. It rolled out green and level before me, the grasses rippling attractively in the wind. Energized by my path I boldly started out. Or as boldly as anybody waddling along carrying a rock the size of a dead baby sheep could waddle. It was about halfway through that my tired body registered that something was wrong. I was starting to sink.

Oh double fuck.

I had, at that moment, three options. One, I could drop the rock where it would surely sink in some and get super muddy and I just knew I would have to pick it back up at some point anyway cause I would be damned if I was letting this meadow take this from me. Two, I could try to cut back into the woods and hope that I didn't get a tree branch to the eye. Or three, I could go even faster and hopefully I would get clear of the sticky patch.

And by 'get clear' I obviously meant 'get all the way to the road.'

So that's what I did.

It was one of those sheer efforts of will where your whole world narrows down to the rock in your hands and the heavy pull on your shoulders, the dull squishy thud of each boot as it disappears down beneath the grasses, the overly loud whooshing of your breath. The road inching closer and closer with each step.

I don't quite remember getting the rock to the pile, but I do remember setting it down, going straight back into the house, making myself a thermos of the most caffeinated tea* I could find and then going and sitting on the wagon and not moving until I had drank the whole goddamned thing. I sat there on my ass feeling like I had just been kicked in the back a few good times, and thought about it all.

About the fact that I moved out here, from the city. I had lived in one city or another for my entire adult life prior to coming here. And I had had enough of it. I thought about how as a child in the suburbs I had laid on the floor of my room and read the countryside magnetizes my father had bought and fantasized about living out here. About having my own creek and covered bridges and meeting a cow and playing in the woods all day.

Somehow, I had never fantasized about having to build a retaining wall out of giant ass rocks because the driveway was falling into the creek, or that when I met my first cow I would be in a car and it would be in the road around a blind corner. Or that playing in the woods all day would come to mean things like getting kindling. I had never thought that living my dream would mean being completely and utterly exhausted, sitting on a rusty ass wagon in the middle of a field drinking caffeine like it was my last tie to life.

And then I realized something.

I was loving every minute of it. The sun was out, the birds were singing their love songs in the trees, the chickens were wandering up along the road trying to see what I was up to, and white silkily clouds were running across the sky. This was my land. And my rocks and my trees and demon meadow of treachery. And that this was worth more to me that anything in the whole world**

So I drug myself up and got the rest of the rocks. And over the next few days I loaded the fill and dumped it in the hole and we were done. Granted we may add few more capping stones here and there as we find them, but it doesn't need them.

This project took everything I had and then some. It took us an entire month of working on it almost exclusively but we did it. And it looks amazing. It looks like something that has been there for years and year and years.

So to celebrate, and to stop the terrible pains in my back and legs, I did what anybody in my situation would do. I got drunk. Really super sweet Jesus drunk. And then I had a hangover that lasted all of the next day because I really did try to poison my body with alcohol.

I'm sorry liver.

I'm really fucking sorry about that one.

Really.

* I can't drink coffee, if you were wondering.

** Sorry Scott, but you're a close second.


Confused? Here's part one. 

The Retaining Wall is Trying to Kill Me.

The Retaining Wall is Trying to Kill Me.

Yes. Yes it is. During this stretch we put in the drainage ditch along the driveway that we sorely needed in order to get more fill. We ran out of fill. But it seems we may never run out of rocks.

I thought that nothing was going to capture the sheer scale of this thing unless I took it upon myself. So I climbed down in front of this monstrosity. Yes, I am normal sized. Yes the wall is that motherfucking huge.

Here is a close up. But not of my face.

Because I don't want to get murdered- me to the entire Internet.

Yeah. You can really see the difference between the regular sized rock I am holding and the demon behemoths behind me.

So far we have been grinding along on this project pretty well. It has been a repetitive dance of adding more rocks to the wall, and then adding more fill and then more rocks and more fill until our bodies give out.

It doesn't help though that each trip requires me to go farther for rocks as the wall becomes higher, or that the chickens demand to be in the center of things when we are moving earth around because oh my god earth worms. But these are things I knew would happen. Except for the part where I nearly brained a chicken with my shovel because she snuck into the back of the pick up. Or when I freaked out because I stepped on my prize roosters toes (he was fine) because he had to see what I was doing. Or the part where we broke down and started moving huge rocks with the back hoe because we couldn't pick them up anymore.

The highlight of the day was when two of my hens decided to have a knock down drag out fight over the dirt pile because they both wanted a dust bath at the same time. A speckled hen and gray started yelling obsinites before launching themselves at each other. For a few rounds they bobbed and cursed and shrieked. I don't know if you've ever seen chickens fight but they sort of jump up, flap there wings madly and bite and claw at each other. Well on the third round the Speckle decided that she had had enough of this shit. Instead of jumping all the way, she jumped and ducked her head under the Gray's and grabbed a beak full of her check feathers.

I am not doing this move justice here. It was like chicken kung foo. She was all like SHAZAM! (Insert kill bill music here)

So she grabs Grays head and proceeded to drag here around face first in the dirt for one whole big circle before letting her go. I could almost hear her shouting shit through her mouth full of feathers like 'you like that bitch? Uh huh! Mmmm dirts tastes good don't it!?' At this point Drumstick, the head rooster ran over and broke up the fight, leaving the looser to stagger away dizzily and the victor to take the best goddamned dust bath in the history of dust baths.

Which means that I pretty much to finish this retaining wall as soon as possible.

It's tearing us apart around here.

Literally.

Want more retaining wall adventure? Here's the final installment. 

The Retaining Wall is Slowly Murdering Me.

We had to stop working on it. Our bodies gave out. I hit that point where I had to give myself a pep talk every single time I went to pick up a rock. You know, the heaviest rocks I can conceivably lift. Those rocks*. I mean just look at the amount of work we got done.

Yes, that is a full scale lawn chair. In case you were wondering. Also, at some point during this ordeal Scott did some more math and figured out that we did not have enough weight. Do you know how you add weight to the wall? More rocks, Ha ha ha, how ever did you guess?

So I'm a little bitter.

I never thought that I would find myself identifying with Boxer from animal farm and his 'I will work harder' mantra. But this retaining wall is taking everything I've got and then some. I hit some sort of wall yesterday where we both decided that we couldn't do this anymore. 

Glamor shot!

With the wall growing in height, it became impossible to use creekside rocks, which meant only one thing, we were headed for the rock bar. For those of you that don't know, a rock bar is a big strip of rocks that lay on the surface. They can be treacherous to walk in because most of the rocks are huge and the smaller rocks are kind of wedged between them. So we had the fun take of grabbing these motherfucking huge ass rocks and waddling through possibly shifting footing to the pickup. Yay.

For every two or three rock trips we would alternate with a fill load of dirt that King (the backhoe) had dug up for us 'cause he's cool like that. Because there is nothing better for your back then lifting heavy shit and then digging a whole bunch.

Kill me.

Any who, I feel like I have been fighting the landscape. And that the landscape was fighting dirty by slapping us with 80 degree temperatures in motherfucking March. WTF Nature?

Seriously WTF?

Nature was all like, 'oh you want to work outside all day? Well fuck that shit, BAM eighty degrees bitches, take that cocksuckers!'

And then we were all 'why nature, what have we ever done to you?'

And then nature flipped us off.

Yeah that's pretty much how it went down.

* I can not stress this enough.

Want more retaining wall adventure? Here's part three.