Making Do

A couple of days ago Jason started cleaning out and organizing one of the sheds were equipment, tools and junk all accumulate. I thought this odd. I’m the organizer in the family and generally Jason gets quite upset if I “organize” anything. Because he knew exactly where everything was in the giant mess and now I have ruined his life by cleaning it up and organizing it. Apparently it doesn’t even help when I organize things onto shelves and into totes with labels and everything. Read the labels Jason, it’s all there.

I was doing one of my own projects where I was relabeling halters without nameplates (bless all of you who send a halter WITH a nameplate), updating feed charts, and generally making sure everything was current. I can count on one hand, in fact I think one finger, the number of times Jason and I have been doing organizational type projects at the same time. Yet there we both were, organizing away. I knew something was up. He had an extra spring in his step that is not normally present for such an unsavory task as cleaning and organizing.

Apparently it was the happiness of anticipation, or something like that. The next day the gravel trucks started rolling in. And rolling in. And rolling in. Six of them found their way to the farm. We all know Jason gets very OCD-ish about the driveway. Every fall – every, single fall – Jason adds at least a couple of truckloads of gravel to the driveway. This year it got four of the six loads. I was down with the six loads of gravel, but putting most of them on the driveway would not have been my placement of choice. But nobody asked me, undoubtedly on purpose, so our driveway is now brimming with gravel.

Except Jason thinks it’s not enough and the driveway could use another load or two. Ummm, ok. While Jason was on the tractor smoothing out a couple of patches of his new gravel with the box blade I walked over and asked him if he was happy. I was fully expecting to hear yes. Six loads of gravel, four of them on the freaking driveway? I had better hear some happiness. Instead I heard that it wasn’t enough and he was simply going to have to “make do.” As he looked wistfully at the driveway I am almost positive I saw a tiny tear gently slide down his gravel dust coated face. He was putting on his brave face and “making do.”

As if suffering with the indignity of a gravel poor driveway isn’t enough, our spare gravel pile is almost depleted. No more filling in tiny potholes by filling up the front end loader with gravel. Undoubtedly Jason’s dreams, or should I say nightmares, will be full of potholes that he cannot fill. Since our driveway is almost a mile long there is ample opportunity for this to happen. The horrors.

we had lots of gravel truck sightings yesterday

Trooper and Bella kept an eye on all of the trucks

one small section of the driveway that is “acceptable” per Jason’s standards

Our almost depleted extra gravel pile. I think a small piece of Jason’s soul dies every time he looks at our now almost depleted pile.

at least some of the gravel didn’t go on the driveway

but most of it did

This shed went from being overflowing to having lots of open space. I pointed out there still isn’t enough room for the manure spreader, the big bushhog, or the two tractors. I’m nice like that.