Right at Home...Depot

Saturday felt like a normal weekend in Michigan as I helplessly followed Michael around his favorite store, Home Depot. His eyes glimmer with little boy excitement the minute those big doors slide open to reveal an enchanted land of lumber, electrical wires, plumbing supplies and power toys that can stop a grown man in his tracks and hold him in a trance for hours. We paraded down aisle after aisle, Michael sticking his hand out to touch everything he saw and me just trying to keep up, weaving around men speaking words I did not understand in an excited male Home Depot language I knew all too well.

We were there to purchase supplies for the dog cage we are trying to build at our new house. We are hoping to get a fence up before we settle in. This proved to be much more difficult than anticipated. We spent the better part of the day drilling four large poles into a small cement area on the side of our house. The first pole went well. The second did not follow suit. Once the pole was in, Michael gave it a little shake and the whole pole was uprooted, concrete and all. We discovered that the cement was very unstable to say the least. Very thin and very brittle with a lot of cracks. So we began our brief stint as archaeologists, sweeping off the dirt, searching for the least amount of cracks, tapping here, tapping there.... until we found the most stable areas in the unstable ground. We set off to work, placing the remaining three poles in the ground. When we were finished we had a dog cage that would raise eyebrows due to it's very interesting shape. The Mexicans - who think we are crazy to cage our dogs in the first place - will now have something else to wonder about.

Once the poles were finally in place, we began to wrap the fencing around them. We were almost finished when Michael gave his end a strong "Michael tug" which promptly sent one of the poles flying - a small square piece of cement still clinging to the bottom.

We stood there in silence for quite a while just staring at the situation. This clearly was not working.

The man who takes care of the horses had been helping us earlier in the day. He returned to find our predicament. He offered to put forms around the poles and pour cement to secure it better. Yesterday, that is what we did.

Hopefully this works. Otherwise, it's on to Plan B. Not sure what that is yet, but I'm certain it will require another visit to the wonderful world of home improvements.

Broken cement where a pole once stood

Now what?

Hopefully this will work