Happiness is....

....a brand new driveway!  YAY!  Looking back at the whole house buying thing, it's kind of funny what you don't pay a whole lot of attention to at the time.  I don't think we realized just how bad the driveway was when we bought our house.   That first winter, we definitely knew.  Chunks of pavement would come up each time we used the snowblower.  The driveway was at least 50 years old.  At some point, as pavement does in the Northeast, it heaved.  The heave was in the center.  Some prior owner attempted to correct the situation by paving along the sides of the section that had heaved.  Yeah.  That was a smart move.  Guess which part was destined to break up first!  This winter, after I did a lot of the snowblowing, chunks were flying in to the yard, against the house, once almost taking out a window.  I told A it was time.  Let's get it done.  I told him that I didn't care if we needed to use the money we had been saving for a trip to celebrate my 50th.  The driveway needed doing.  Well, we had a good tax year, some nice year end overtime and had plenty of funds.  They started last Wednesday tearing it up and by the end of the day Thursday, I not only had a new driveway, but it was edged in belgian block.  So lovely!!  So smooth!!  And the enterprising contractors picked up two other jobs in our neighborhood as a result of the work they were doing for us.  Happiness all around!