Bad phone, house repairs, clearing the road

Before I left the office Friday I was getting help with my iPhone from the IT department. Through their help I ended up getting my profile wiped off the phone and they could not get it back before I left the office. That loss does not affect most things on the phone but it did wipe out all my contact information so I could not get numbers for anyone from the lists I normally have and it kept me from getting any email throughout the weekend – which was not necessarily a bad thing. Hopefully, I can get it restored today.

I worked all day Saturday installing ceiling fans. The one in the laundry room was especially difficult because I had to remount the box it would attach to. That required crawling in and out of the attic numerous times to find it, reinforce it and put the insulation and vapor barrier back the way I found it. It took me over three hours to get it done but it turned out nicely once finished. I had to change once I was done because of the amount of insulation that had collected on the very sweaty shirt. The other two ceiling fans that I installed took about an hour each.

I also hung a light for Mama in the front entryway before we left to go to a graduation at the church school. That kept us out until just before dark on Saturday night so as we turned onto our county road we were surprised to see that the roadway was completely blocked by something. That something turned out to be branches from a long dead tree that had fallen and brought the vines attached to them – from both sides of the road – down onto the road.

After studying it for a minute and trying to pull the mass out of the way I pulled enough of the vine cover aside to get the truck on our side of the blockage and we attached a rope o the vines and pulled them with the truck. That did not go as planned. Just as we were making some headway the rope broke and the mass fell back onto the road – a complete curtain of vines across the roadway.

I ended up sending Mama and Victoria to the house for a saw, which they could not find. They brought me a hacksaw. It worked. The vine I identified as the main source of frustration was over an inch thick. It was some type of grape vine but tangled up in the mass was ample poison ivy. Once the main vine was cut we were able to pull the huge mass to one side of the road. At some point in the near future we will have to get the tree taken down and vines it is supporting cleared out. Hopefully, the county road crews will do that for us.

Yesterday Mama and I worked before the rain to move some of the gravel that had washed up on our road. We used the tractor – which I was barely able to get out of the barn across the soft ground – to scoop up the mass of gravel. In all we got five bucket loads from the roadway. That cleared the hump we were driving over and it almost filled the low spots at where our driveway meets the road.

There is still more we can get, but that was a good beginning.