Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Good soggy morning to you all!  I can't believe the rain we have been having for at least the past month ... probably longer.  I went out in the yard the other day during a rare day of no rain & the ground makes squishing noises when you walk on it!  This can't be good.

Our driveway washes out every time it rains.  It's a nice country gravel driveway when it's in good repair, but right now it's an obstacle course to drive on because of the deep ditches left by the running water.  It was fine when we bought the house.  However, when we came here for closing there had been a heavy rain & it looked as it does now.  Our realtor & her husband, a contractor we hired to do some work for us (& what a nightmare that was), said that it was a very rare thing for it to rain so hard here & it was no wonder the driveway looked the way it did.  The husband said he could get a couple loads of gravel brought in & regrade it himself & it would last for at least 2 years.  Liar, liar, pants on fire.  We told him to go ahead & add this to his work list for us & the first time it rained it started washing out.  Last year we hired an honest man to regrade it & he did a beautiful job but said we would continue to have this problem as long as we had the gravel.  He told us we really needed to have it paved.  We got a couple estimates for blacktopping it ... one was $11,000 & the other was $13,000.  After the shock of those estimates we decided to make do with the gravel.  It is now obvious to us that we can't make do anymore & must use our "fix up the house" money to get the driveway taken care of.  Yesterday I called 3 more contractors to get additional paving estimates.  My hope is that at least one of them will be on the less expensive side.  As you can see in the photo below, there's a lot of driveway to pave.  Sigh!

     
All 3 of the contractors indicated they would try to get out here today to give us their estimates.  I don't know if they can do this in the rain but we shall see.

I am still trying to learn my way around blog land but my BCD (brain cell deficiency) really seems to be at it's peak whenever I attempt something new here!  After finally catching on to how start a blog & follow one, I'm at a total loss on how to send someone a message.  I have discovered a little window that pops up where I have an option to "send an email" but when I click on that I'm told that I need to follow or sign in ... but I'm already signed in & I'm already following!  This is like a joke that Google plays on all the new kids, right?  

I hope that you all have an absolutely wonderful day wherever you are ... rain or no rain.  My plans are up in the air at the moment but I think some de-cluttering is a good idea   : ) 

2 comments:

renee said...

It does that to me too. I don't know why, but I just comply with it, and leave my comment. When you go to the persons' blog, you scroll down to post a comment, and then type your message and hit the "post comment" button. Sometimes, you have to scroll down again because some have word verification, so you have to type that in and then hit "post comment" again and it will show your comment usually.
I hope this helps to a degree.
Hugs,
Renee

Linda ★ Parker's General said...

You usually have to have OUTLOOK to send an email through a blog. On my right sidebar are instructions on how to make your blog easier for you and easier for others to comment. You can have comments sent to your email and respond directly to them ( if they have their email on their profile ). You can almost chat back and forth. Check it out and see what you think. Also, some where back in my posts is a longer, in depth post about blogging. Maybe print it out and read a few times to get a feel for what you want from your blog. Best I got for you.
★Linda★