Driveway

 

We have a very long drive way.  Well, almost this long.  My castle isn't quite that large.

 Every year the vagrant black top guys come by and they ALWAYS have just enough left over for my driveway.  I don't pay any attention anymore to oil-based, tar-based, water-based, squeegied, brushed, poured, sprayed. I only care about the $$ and  I want it to look nice for a year and a half.  We fall for their sales spiel every two years.  The truth is, we would never think of it at all if one of these itinerants did not knock. 

This year, August!  So hopefully it won't all be stuck to the bottom of the snow when we shovel as did the October job.  One year it disppeared so fast that I went on line and did research.  There is supposedly some stuff in the UK called some kind of paint that lasts forever, but I couldn't find it over here.  One person snidely offered that if I wanted it done right I would dig it out and put in four inches of gravel over three inches of sand covered with three inches of bitumin-something.  Okay.  He is probably the same guy that answered when I wanted a quick fix for the downstairs shower.  If I want it done right, I will dig out to the studs and put up cement board and copper pipes and such a kind of tile with such a kind of base.  Instead I chose to epoxy it which almost killed me with the fumes and peeled in three months.  So yeah.  Now we are going down to the studs anyway.

One year we tried to coat the driveway ourselves.  We got one sixteenth done and it was about ten buckets of the "airport" quality gunk.  But now that I recall, runways are concrete.  At least they used to be when we lived next door to that hoodlum in Oak Park that had the O'Hare contract.

And these two guys with nice trucks that will probably re-poed in November, are the biggest babies.  They have knocked on the door six times.  "Where's my son?"  I should have told him he was in the sack with the widow next door.  "Can I have  a bottle of water?  I need to take my meds."  That's a new one.  Then dad wants a bottle of water.  "We didn't even take time for lunch or dinner."  "No.  I am not giving you dinner."  "We have to go get gas for our machine."  "There's gas under the porch for the lawnmower."  "No.  We need special such and such."  I think they went to Oklahoma for it.  They just got back and the motor is running, but one guy is screaming at the other.  I wonder what they do, besides flee, if they accidentally spray my lovely siding with gunk. 

The perils of home ownership.  We are too old for this.  We should go live in one of those senior high-rises, but I love my yard.  And Louie has been away so long, it seems like I have to make too many decisions by myself.  Oh, wait a minute.  He has never talked to a driveway guy, or a pool guy, or a siding guy, or a roofing guy, or a window guy, anyway. 

So, my brand new uVerse system doesn't work which is the second chapter in the cable saga.  My neighbor came over to chat about it.  Apparently they decided to install it, fiber optic cable or no.  The service man admitted to my neighbor the wiring in this neighborhood was inadequate.  What is wrong with people?  Let's fight this war even though the bullets haven't arrived yet.  Maybe if we pretend to shoot it will work for awhile anyway.

And then I notified the notorious nationally known Twinkie Police force of Lindenhurst that I  had to leave my cars in the street and she wouldn't take the report because I didn't have the license numbers. Yes, old lady that cannot walk on the sticky new driveway, get your flashlight and stumble across a hummocky acre of grass in the pitch dark to get the plate numbers so we can distinguish your cars from the other two thousand parked in the street illegally on the 1800 block of Hazelwood.  So I said just give me the tickets, biting off the "fucking" part as a descriptor, and I commented on how cooperative (fucking cooperative) they are every time (every fucking time) I have to call (I have to fucking call) them.  My daughter's brother in law is the Lindenhurst attorney, so bring it on, Twinkie Police.  I should have said, (Yeah, we always think of this too late) "you will know right away.  It is the driveway lined with Twinkies."