My Blog! My Blog!

I realized today that I haven't posted in awhile, and now it's March.

My life has been very monotonous the last few weeks since my surgery. I do my therapeutic exercises three times a day (total time, about one hour) and go to therapy three times a week (total per session, an hour-and-a-half). The rest of the time is divided up among eating, sleeping, and trying to concentrate on work assignments or reading.

Mostly, I feel exhausted. On the plus side, though, I have gotten a lot of motion back, and my doctor and therapists think my recovery is going well. And although it's been nice being home more, and I've been too tired to be bored very often, I really want the rest of my life back.

I finally did get Contractor Guy to visit, and look at my basement.

He thinks that it may be possible to solve our problem with a combination of gutter replacement/repair (to keep the runoff from the roof from landing so close to the house) and grading of the soil near the house (to keep the water that sinks into the ground from seeping straight down to the foundations).

Since I need the gutter work done anyway, and this will be cheaper than having one of those Basement Dry Guys rip apart our built-in wall units to rebuild things, I agreed. The estimated work will be about $1,800, about 40% of which is the gutter-related stuff that I knew I needed in any case. Here's hoping it cures the basement problem too!

Meanwhile, shortly after my conversation with Contractor Guy, another guy (this one a stranger to me) rang my doorbell. This one said he's an asphalt-laying contractor who's doing work in the area on people's driveways, and would I let him do mine? Since he was there already, he was prepared to give me a price break of $100 or so on labor, and would only charge me about $900.

I *do* need the driveway redone, but I need the gutter and grading work done more, and in any event I don't like to make snap decisions about spending that much money when I'm not feeling quite well. So I told him to leave his card and/or come back later.

He came back the next day. I had esrblog take his business card and send him away. I will eventually get back to him--after the more urgent work is paid for and when I'm feeling more up to making decisions.

House=money pit. Even a good, solidly built house like mine. Sigh.