Please, Fence Me In

I thought I was off on a Mohawk Valley adventure on Saturday when I left the house bound for New Hartford, NY. I’m afraid it turned out… not so much. But I will attempt to write about it nevertheless, just to avoid Yet Another Post About Why I Can’t Write a Post.

I was delayed by a minor homeowner’s disaster: a section of my fence was down. A brief explanation about the fence: It’s been pretty crappy since we moved in. We didn’t think it was ours, because the smooth side was in. Turns out the previous homeowner put it up backwards. Ah, the things you learn. A few years ago my father, mother and sister came over and helped us replace one post and nail up some boards which had fallen. I’ve spent every winter since living in fear that it would fall on the one of the neighbors’ cars.

So it was not entirely unexpected that a section was down. But it sure wasn’t what I was in the mood to see. It was dangling, still caught on part of the fence left standing. It obtruded into the neighbors’ driveway in a most inconvenient fashion. I thought I had better do something about it. I tugged and pulled and pulled and tugged. Tried pushing with no more success. At last it fell off the still upright portion. With my meager strength I could not move it further into our yard, but at least the neighbors could drive around it to get in and out of their parking lot. I cravenly went to New Hartford.

I did part of what I set out to do in New Hartford, as I said, nothing very adventurous. I thought I should hurry to be back home by 12:30, when Steven was expected for lunch. I hurried, while still following the posted speed limits. When I got home Steven was already home, pulling at the fallen fence section with more effect than I had. I ran to help and we got the damn thing on our own yard. Phew!

Tune in next week for a riveting blog post on What We Did to Fix the Fence (um, we probably won’t use rivets. I was speaking figuratively).