Driveway OCD

We all have our idiosyncrasies and things we worry over that are really important to us but not so much to someone else. One of Jason’s things happens to be the driveway, and I have to say that driveway worries him to death. Add into the equation that the driveway is almost a mile long and Jason could (and sometimes does) drive himself crazy trying to keep it in perfect shape. Although he denies it I am pretty convinced that he sometimes lays in bed at night, wide awake, worrying about the driveway.

Personally I think it is Jason’s goal in life to spend our life savings on the driveway. In the month of November alone he had two more loads of gravel dumped on the driveway. I don’t know how many loads of gravel we put on the driveway in 2013 but I do know the number was definitely higher than two. And of course this wasn’t enough. After the second load of gravel was spread on the driveway a couple of weeks ago Jason’s comment was “it could really use another two loads.” Much to his chagrin I refused to go along with this plan and said no. His response to that was probably similar to that of a junkie being cut off from his heroin supply.

Since I was a big meanie and said no to more gravel on the driveway Jason instead spent an afternoon working on random uneven spots in the driveway. First he used the box blade on the tractor up and down the driveway to level things out and fill in any holes that had started. Then he moved on to the hard part. Jason would use the front end loader on the tractor to move a load of gravel from the extra gravel pile we always keep around. Then he would meticulously fill in small holes and level up uneven spots using a shovel. For the final touch he would then use the front end loader to further smooth and level the area he had been working on.

He spent a few hours doing this then he gave me a tour of our newly improved driveway.. I tried to ooh and aah appropriately over the driveway but I think he could tell it was forced. It looked pretty much the same to me. (and I’m sure a little piece of his soul just died upon reading that.)

Unfortunately for Jason we have the wrong driveway for someone who gets all OCD about such things. It is long, it gets a lot of traffic, and much of that traffic tends to be really heavy trucks like feed delivery trucks and such. Combine all that with good topsoil that likes to eat gravel and you do wind up with a rather high maintenance driveway. Jason is currently contemplating the merits of putting down geotextile fabric along the driveway and then putting gravel on top of that. Whenever we have these discussions I now know exactly how he feels when we discuss my horse expenses. All I hear is ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching or blah, blah, blah, it just kind of depends on my mood at the moment.

Who knew that a driveway could be worthy of so much time, work, money and worry – five paragraphs worth?! Apparently our driveway is worth all of this angst . . .

ca-ching