The Good Humor truck song. Music to the ears of every hungry child in the 60’s and 70’s.
I grew up in suburban New Jersey and every summer we had a special bowl filled with change by the back door. When you heard the first far away strains of that distinctive little ditty? You grabbed a handful and ran outside.
My preferred treat?
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The toasted almond bar.
To this day, I crave them… which is a tragedy.
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Sometimes life just isn’t fair. No more toasted almond goodness. Though I discovered I could buy this on eBay….
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But if my favorite treat isn’t available, why bother?
How about you…
What sound from your childhood don’t you hear anymore?
While we really like our contractor, I have to admit he’s not the fastest worker we’ve ever seen. His motto is do it once, do it right… which is great in theory… but I have a feeling it’s going to be hard on the check book.
After three days of work….
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We have perfectly level framing (which was already there, he just sanded the boards) …
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And rubber sealant tape.
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And one loose laid picture frame board.
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And rain.
Yes, we had that as well.
It rained so hard the contractor gave up and left, which was fine. Until we realized he didn’t take down his tent.
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An hour later tent drainage surgery had to be performed.
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And there was a lot to drain.
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Water is heavy.
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Which is why the husband performed the surgery and I documented the procedure.
Three days.
16 billable hours at $55 and hour.
$880… for prep work and some rubber tape. This is going to be one very expensive deck.
The contractor set up a tent to beat the heat of the baking sun.
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He started work on the framing.
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And then my husband went out to talk.
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And talk, and talk, and talk.
At the $55 an hour we’re paying this guy, I could do with a little more work and a lot less talk so I hauled the husband inside and got him busy organizing some of his old magazines and newspapers.
Bad idea. Very bad.
Because as soon as he found some interesting ones?
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He took them out to show the contractor.
And then he talked, and talked, and talked.
Jesus wept…we’ll have to remortgage the house before this is through.
And if Jesus weeping wasn’t bad enough?
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The heavens decided to weep that afternoon as well.
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Torrential rain, heavy downpours and big mud puddles.
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Left us with very little progress.
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But there is a great big tool trailer parked on the lawn.
The day my husband had been waiting for finally arrived. The top road engineer from the State (and two support staff for backup) were here. Outnumbered and surrounded, my husband was undeterred and ready to discuss the ditch from Hell in great detail.
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He explained how repeated snow plow drivers and mailman had driven on the edge and ruined the structural integrity.
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He explained how the sides have been caving in and filling the ditch with dirt, sand, gravel and chunks of road tar.
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He complained about the town scraping off all his hard won grass that helped the erosion.
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He told them he wanted to install .. at our expense…a perforated drainage pipe and fill in the ditch to bring a level lawn out to the road … like our neighbors on both sides and across the street.
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And that’s when things got tense. Because no matter how many reasons my husband gave, the head engineer would not be swayed.
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He kept repeating the ditch was necessary for proper road drainage. Which is odd, because it was the previous owner who (illegally) dug the ditch to begin with.
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Nothing my husband said… and believe me over the course of an hour he said a lot…. could sway the official.
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The end result?
Before the state paves the entire road, which will happen in the next few weeks, a crew will arrive to completely dig out and shore up the sides of our ditch. They will lay new dirt on the sides and scatter grass seed.
Big whoop.
To me this will be even worse than what we have now. It will be steeper… and harder to mow and weed whack than ever. Grass seed? Useless, it will just wash away into the ditch.
And before you say we should have just filled it in ourselves and not told them? The official told us if we did that we’d be given a huge fine and forced to dig it back out again… and if we didn’t? They’d come dig it out themselves and charge us for doing it.
They say you can’t fight city hall. Apparently you can’t fight the Maine DOT either.
We’ve been having a lot of hot summer weather lately and with that comes late afternoon thunderstorms. With late afternoon thunderstorms comes high winds. With high winds comes the possibility of power outages… and that’s what happened recently just as I was sitting down to read. Not wanting to give up my book, I grabbed a large battery operated lantern and propped it up behind me on the couch.
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Lord Dudley Mountcatten was not pleased.
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Something new and strange had been added to his world.
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And had to be thoroughly investigated.
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After a full five minutes of stalking, sniffing and batting…
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His Lordship made peace with the temporary lighting device.
For those of you not lucky enough to live in my beautiful state, here’s a peek at what you might see on any given day.
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Lobster. It’s everywhere.
Even at the gas station.
When you live on an island like I did, you party near the water on beaches, near the water on piers, and sometimes…
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On the water itself.
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These are pictures from a friend of mine who’s in a local band.
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The concert was staged on a float….
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Which means concert goers had to float as well.
And finally… I doubt there’s anything more iconic about Maine than a traditional lobster bake. If you’ve never attended one, you should. There’s nothing quite like it.
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The food… lobster, clams, potatoes, corn, onions and eggs are all covered with seaweed and burlap and set to steam over a wood fire.
This is our little kitchen porch, which is really just a covered landing.
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In the corner there’s a stand on which I place potted plants every year. It’s usually well balanced with one begonia on the top and one begonia on the bottom. Until the woodchucks discovered the bottom flower and started nibbling…
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Bottom flower was then moved to the middle shelf and middle shelf decorations were moved to the bottom.
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Which was fine…
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Until a chipmunk found the bird’s nest and decided he needed to deconstruct it.
And if that’s not bad enough?
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Something has started using our man cave/Barn Mahal porch as a toilet.
One afternoon, when the temperature was near 90 and the humidity level was almost as high, my husband decided it would be a good time to start ripping up the old deck. You know, the one we hired a contractor to rip up and rebuild.
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It was hard, heavy, hot work. Which is why we’re paying someone else to do it.
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An hour or so into the demolition, said contractor showed up…
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And was a little surprised the husband had already started the project for which we’d hired him.
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But they worked side by side, in the heat…
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Because no one told him husbands who are bored with retirement need to keep busy.
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In less than three hours…
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All the rotted old wood planks had been ripped up…
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And hauled to my husband’s truck…
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Because yes, he would dispose of them as well.
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Remind me again why we hired a contractor….?
🥴
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Where there's only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
River's world..... 