Fixing the Driveway, the Graveling.

Today, oh sweet Jesus, today we re-graveled the driveway. By hand. With a wheelbarrow. Ha ha yeah. Everything is pain now. Anyway after realizing that putting dirt back into the holes was useless, because like yeah, there is no way that filling the ruts with a bunch of dirt after the soil that was there ended up in the fucking creek was a bad idea, Scott went ahead and ordered a bunch of large gravel.

Since you know, all of the small gravel has probably been washed into the next county.

So this morning the truck full of gravel showed up, and of course it was the same driver who had gotten stuck in the driveway the last time he delivered here and seemed to be immensely relieved that he could really only dump at the top. Of course after seeing the fucking canyons the water had etched into the earth I really don't think he will be very keen on driving down the driveway in the future.

Unfortunately with the gravel at the very top and the road looking like a creek bed we had to move the gravel by hand because there was no way to get the backhoe to the pile. Also this was my first time working with large gravel and I learned several key things. One, it hated my fucking shovel. I mean like, really a whole lot hated it. Like all the demons of hate were hating it up in here. With the little gravel it just sort of slides onto your shovel. With the big gravel I would get my shovel a forth of the way into the pile before it would stop dead. Then I would have to do the thing where you shimmy the shovel up and down to get to fill. Of course that may sound okay for the first few times, but around lunch time my body was all like WTF are you doing to me?

The second thing being that you cannot rake large gravel. I mean like, at all. The rake would just, slide over the fucking surface while the gravel laughed at me. Like, 'oh you wanted to level me out!? Well no way motherfucker ha ha ha ha!' The third thing was that the ruts were deeper then they looked and for a while it seemed like I was dumping shit heavy wheelbarrow loads into some sort of interdementional vortex.

Also I had woken up with my back doing that thing where it doesn't hurt exactly, but it sends shooting pains down my right leg. Possibly in an attempt to punish me for my sins.

My back sins.

Anyway after spending all of the morning on this project, and watching the ruts eat gravel like candy, we realized the grim truth. We were going to need another dump truck full of gravel. You know another 200$ dump truck full of gravel. Nothing like eating spaghetti and sandwiches every meal, am I right?

I mean, it's not like we were trying to build a house or anything. You know, it's not like we were trying to get the guys in here to put in a septic system and totally getting and storing logs for the house. I mean it's not like this has all come to a screeching halt during the best weather ever for those projects. I mean it's not like we were planning on digging a foundation or clearing the house site and marking it anytime soon. I mean it's not like I can hear the ticking of that terrible clock counting down the minutes until the icy depths of winter. It's not like I still have to get firewood and go to work or do anything else during this time.

I mean, it's not like I have to spend another day moving gravel around with a motherfucking wheelbarrow and a shovel while watching my other projects sitting around mocking me with there presence.

Ha ha ha no.

It's not like I am bitter that this was as far as 200$ worth of gravel made it and it looks like the rest of the driveway was attacked by a very hungry rockbiter.

 200$ I really can't stress that enough.

So anyway I think I have to stop typing because my hands feel all weird and I think I drank too much caffeine in order to type this even though I still want to lay face down on my floor and close my eyes.

Which is not really how I pictured spending my evening. You know, face down on the carpet like a drunken hobo, but eh I got to roll with the punches.

The floor punches.

So if you need me, you know where to look.

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.

So We Purchased Another Vehicle.

So, as many of you no doubt recall our car died. Well, it didn't exactly die. The engine still worked and it would start up and run and everything electrical would spring to life at our command, it's just that the drivers side wheel bearings are shot. And that is a dealer serviceable only part. Also due to our car being, “one of dem foreign cars” there wasn't a dealership within a two hour drive of my house.

The advice of the dealer was to remove the entire wheel bearing assembly, bring it in, have them fix/replace it and then take the new and improved part back and reattach it to the car. Either that or we could have it towed the two hours or so.

Needless to say that wasn't about to happen.

So we parked it at the top of the driveway, wrote 500$ or best offer on the windshield on it in soap and hopped into our 84 Chevy Truck to go car shopping. After of course we wrestled three separate eye drops into the cats eyeballs because life can never be you know, boring.

So the first place we stopped was the crazy chop shop used car lot that is located in town. Our first mistake was telling them the price range we were looking for. Our second mistake was entering the damn lot in the first place. It wasn't so much the cars, but the lady in charge of selling us shit was seriously creeping me out. First off she was like, meth skinny. Also it looked like at one point in her youth she had used too much tanning solution. Plus, she had this weird habit of taking all her jewelry off and snapping it back on while she was talking to us. So she would be telling us about this wonderful super not put back together after some horrible accident, nope never, car, while her watch would be going, snap, snap, snap. And about how they had just gotten in a little silver car that would be just perfect for us as the little metal beads on her bracelet would be going clink, clink, clink. Overall it was a lot like talking to a mummy someone had unearthed in the desert sands somewhere and taught the fine art of retail to.

The second place we stopped at had nothing under 6000$. Which when you are poor is like, a million fucking dollars. That guy seemed all right, except he had a big long list with all the prices, because putting the price on the car itself is apparently too damn hard. He was trying to sell us on a Chevy Cobalt but I nixed that one in the bud when I opened the trunk and saw the battery was in there with the spare tire doughnut.

No I am not shitting you. The battery was in the fucking trunk.

Oh but it was totally okay because he assured us “you can still jump the car from the front.” Great. Wonderful. Motherfuckers. It's not like it would be totally inconvenient for me to take all my shit out of the trunk every time I need to disconnect the battery to work on the car. Like ha ha, that would not be shit balls stupid at all.

So at this point we hopped back in the truck, picked a direction and drove in it.

We ended up washing up at a Chevy dealership. We got out of our dingy beat up pickup and walked past all the shiny new cars to the doors. Inside the lobby we were greeted by a very friendly pregnant lady. She asked what we were looking for. Scott started in on the litany, used good gas mileage, not too many miles, but at this point I was sick of it all so I was like just show me something old.

She was like, how old?

I was like, older then 2005.

She told me they had two things. Then she explained that the reason no one else in this entire fucking area would sell old cars was because they couldn't finance them so they shipped them off to a wholesaler. Then I was all like wow it's like this entire society is set up to try to lure me into being in debt. Which is totally fucked up. If by fucked up I secretly mean horrifying and terrible.

Luckily she had two things. A tore up mostly dead Oldsmobile, and a 1999 Toyota Avalon. We poked the Avalon. We looked under the hood. I laid across the seats and took a flashlight to under the dash. Two things became apparent. One it would need some minor work, a tail light was cracked, and the check engine light was on, but over all it looked pretty good.

We asked about price. We made it clear we could fix it ourselves and that they didn't need to do much to it. She quoted us a price. It was below 5000$. Which when you are poor is like winning the car lottery.

We made plans to come back, hook up our neato vehicle code reader to it after they had addressed a few issues and made it pass a WV state inspection.

To make a long story short, we went to work, came home from work at 3am, got up drove to the bank, drove to the dealership, gave the car one final inspection and bought it.

Because fuck you financing.

It still needs some work, as in replacing the oxygen sensors and a motor mount, and new tires, but overall it's a great old car and I feel pretty good about all this. It's also a Platinum Luxury Car. Which in 1999 speak means there is a CD player in the trunk.

Ha ha retro.

I think I am a hipster now.

A car hipster.

Clearly.

Life is kicking my ass.

So in addition my husband almost dying, and then him breaking a rib, our car decided to die on the way to work today. 

We were driving down a mountain behind the most redneck truck I had ever seen. It was a matte black ford ranger with these huge jacked up tires. It looked like they had painted it with spray paint and to add the icing on the hillbilly cake was the three guys crammed into the tiny cab. They slowed down to turn and about that point our car began to make a sound I like to call 'screaming in pain'. 

I don't speak car very well, but I'm pretty sure it was saying something along the lines of “OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS BURNS LIKE LIQIUD FIRE!” We pulled over immanently and got out of the car. The first thing we noticed (and by we I mean Scott) was that the brake rotors on the rear tires were incredibly hot. And by that I don't mean that they were terribly sexy. 

There is a certain sinking feeling one experiences when standing next to the highly advanced machine that you were relying on completely to take you places, that for whatever reason is not working. We looked at the car, and then we looked at the huge mountain we had driven down.* 

“Do you think we can make it home with no breaks?” I asked Scott, trying not to think about how much a tow would cost. 

“Sure,” He said simply. “It's all up hill from here.” 

Of course it wasn't but we ignored that fact. The sound had stopped because the broken thing was now broken and did not see a point in continuing to scream about it. On the way it dawned on us that we had to call the office. Having backed out of several jobs due to illness, I felt terrible about telling Boss Man that we weren't coming in today. 

Boss Man understood completely that this was in no way our fault, and told us just to worry about Scott's stress test tomorrow and to fix our car. He did reveal that the client had wanted to add an extra person, but that he couldn't find anybody, and now he had three slots to fill, which may or may not happen. I felt awful, but even though we still had my Dad's old car there was no way we could drive all the way home, switch cars and then get to work on time. Plus my Dad's car, which is now my car, well lets just say that I'm not sure that it will make the three hour drive to DC and back without dying. 

So now I'm at home. We have already made one trip to the Advance Auto Parts store, replaced some parts, and ordered more parts. Called relatives who know cars and gotten idea of the problem. 

It's gonna cost us.

If my blog was wildly popular I would offer to draw/paint you any goddamn thing you wanted if you gave me ten bucks, and email you the JPG. But nobody reads this blog yet. Yet. Someday. So I dunno. It's a catch 22. My husband is broken, my car is broken, and I can't go to work until both of those things unbroken themselves. 

Pity Party Tonight! BYOB! I'm going to start drinking now. 

* I know if you live near the Rocky's you will claim that our mountains are really glorified foot hills and that you don't know what we are complaining about, first of all fuck you, and second my state does not believe in guards rails or switch backs so why don't you try driving down a mountain with no rear brakes here and see what the fuck happens to you.