The truth about in ground trampolines.

Two and a half years ago, we finally (drumroll) bought a house after five years of renter/landlord hell. I am literally incapable of resisting trampolines, call it a childhood nostalgia, a weakness, an addiction I don't know. So we bought one. A terrible little thing that barely bounced. It felt like whiplash every time I tried to jump on it. On top of that, it was wedged onto our inherited homemade paver patio converting a natural eyesore into a veritable piece of visual pollution. Yes, my yard was abysmal.

 A scant month later, a straight line wind blew the crappy trampoline into the side of our neighbors house causing extensive damage and trauma to the inhabitants. Apparently it's really loud and scary when a trampoline is slammed into the second story of your home making giant holes in the siding. It happened on the one night of summer we were not home. The neighbors piled mangled pieces back over the fence and we shoved the trampoline parts into our garage until we "dug a hole". 

I always talked about when we were going to recess the trampoline with a casual air. As though one day it might strike my fancy and I might whip a hole out and set it up that day... Which interestingly never struck my fancy. And so two years went by. 

People asked about our trampoline status and I would shrug and make a vague reference to digging a hole which would cause Jody to frown at me and then I would frown back. I varied my strategies with him, sometimes I might raphsodize and bat my eyelashes others I might make wild claims about the foolishness of every other alternative. Regardless of my approach, Jody would either redirect conversation or become engrossed with TV. I considered it progress. Always progress. 

This spring I got a wild hair and became hell bent on the sorry state of our back yard. We sat sipping beverages one Saturday morning and I commented that I would like to destroy our strange patio with an even stranger reputation (my neighbors have scary nicknames and scandalizing stories about the previous owner and his many girlfriends and the building of the paver patio) and dig the trampoline hole. Jody nodded and continued sipping his beverage. I led him outside to try to inspire vision but I perceived a weak response. He returned indoors and proceeded to puruse his IPad. I trailed him like any self respecting wife and exploded that it appeared we were never going to do anything about the back yard. He looked at me like I was insane and asked if I wanted to demo the patio right that minute and I said that yes I did. 

I would like to point out that he did not explain to me why he thought I was insane but by the same token I did not ask. So, we went out to the patio with a sledge hammer and started to demo a weird little wall built around it.

Now this picture was actually after we knocked down the wall with the sledge hammer. Yes, I was awesome. Nobody takes videos of me like I do with the kids. Sigh.
That was spring...
It is now July. I cannot say exactly what I had planned or how we were to execute our project when I grabbed the sledge hammer.  Only that it was rather dreamy and fairy godmotherish. After the sledge hammer stage I unsurprisingly became languid and disinterested. Everything started to look hard and time consuming and... expensive.
That is the fabulous thing about my marriage though. Well, at least I think it's fabulous. When I lose momentum, Jody gains it. The next thing I knew, Jody was designing a new patio and putting our yard into auto cad. He was asking me to get concrete bids. I got excited.
All I had to do was remove the pavers, then someone would come make our patio. It sounded "easy". I have no earthly idea why I'm a Pollyanna or how I came to be this way. I had a tougher childhood 'work sweat and tears wise' than any of my peers.I have been unwed and pregnant, my husband has had cancer, barely survived while floating an underwater house for five years flipping furniture to make the payments, made it through Jodys brief unemployment, supported him in the hardest subsequent choices he ever made and have four kids which oddly people have the most respect for me for. I have not lived a charmed life of ease and leisure but it's like I'm a rainbow chaser "this will be easy" always pops into my head. Every single time. Ask Jody. The worst part is... I REALLY BELIEVE me... and so I got ideas and told Jody how nice it would be to have a high patio without a back step. He furrowed his brow and reworked it out and warned me it would take extra concrete...(first warning sign). I told him the plans looked lovely. He has a soft spot for me. I'm not gonna lie. Then the concrete guys started telling us prices for dirt because after all we would need yards and yards of dirt for a base under a high patio. Brilliant me, I asked Jody if we could use all the sand from the old patio and dig the trampoline hole and use that dirt.
"Well... of course" he said "theoretically".
Something very key to understand about Jody is to pay attention to every word he says. Dissect it, psychoanalyse it and for sweet pity's sake, don't discount it. I did pull up about half of the pavers and got them out of the way... then I left for a three day field trip to Estes Park with Eden which turned out to be Jody's three day window to fill the patio forms with soil before the concrete truck came. And so... Jody dug... And dug... And dug. I am dropping my head in shame remembering this. He shoveled like a maniac. When I left it was like this:

When I returned it was like this:

Note how he relocated ALL of that sod so carefully.

So I dug with him. We did a lot of digging then God did a lot of raining. Soon we had a lovely mud pit for Stella. 

In the meantime they poured our new patio.

And I thought of a new project to go with the patio since we had extra bricks:

A flower bed. I wanted to build it and he tried to teach me but ultimately I did not meet his standards and my work had to be scrapped and redone. It was sad. I wasted five hours of sweating in the pouring heat. He also ripped out all of the ugly gray wiring for the previous owners infamous hot tub. Yes, infamous. Everything about him was infamous. He took living in a fishbowl literally. Our yard is roughly the size of a postage stamp so people love to call where all of the neighbors yards join "a fishbowl". He swam and frolicked in the fishbowl for all to see with all of his lovers. Don't judge me for gossiping. He clearly wanted to leave a legacy. Now his legacy is recorded for all posterity.  All that grass on the right half of the picture was from the trampoline hole. Jody saved it and moved it which will come up again later in this tale of woe. See my despicable ugly tan and brown house? That will also come up later in this tale of woe.

Jody had dug that hole for weeks. Men stopped him in church to talk about it, others stood in our yard with their mouths agape and they all said the same things. Big men, little men, tall men, short men.. It was always "you dug that by hand? With a shovel?" It's a small town, so I know it doesn't mean as much as say in New York City but he's kind of revered and pitied as the man who loved his wife too much around here. I developed a bit of a stoop from curling in shame so frequently. I avoided talking about the pit because well I felt like an idiot. That stupid little chirpy voice in my head mocked me "it will be so easy" became nightmarish with a fast forward chipmunk voice and never stopped playing. Jody would come home day after day discovering I hadn't dug much again and put on dirty clothes and dig like a beaten man. His wrists became numb at night and he could not sleep due to the pain in his wrists and hands. For real. Stella would dig extra holes in the side of the hole. Not kidding. Then Jody announced we had reached 3 feet on the high side and could dig a sump in the center. He is an engineer who designs drainage and retention ponds and such for a living.  I am me which is less valuable in this endeavor than a 14 year old boy. I ineptly followed directions and asked lots of annoying questions. We dug a center hole deeper and used a level to completely level the peremiter then we sloped it towards the hole in the center and filled the sump with river rock. After that, we covered it in landscape fabric. Then we covered the whole pit with river rock to repel weeds. I was tired that day and like I said, Jody would have been way better off with a paid laborer or even an Amazonian wife. 

Then we ordered the expensive trampoline that he now blames me for... a Magic Circle. We went ahead and bought 300 pounds of sandbags to anchor it "just in case"

Jody explained to me how we would build a berm around the circumference to direct water away from the hole. We used concrete siding as a form and we bermed and bermed and bermed. By this point I felt like a fool ten times over for even tackling something so complicated, labor intensive and just plain out stressful.  It was around this time that I had house painters paint my house a color unapproved by the HOA. Lovely isn't it? I needed that stress. Another Pollyanna move. "It's beautiful! the whole neighborhood will be knocking on my door to ask what that lovely color is." Nope, try the neighborhood will go into an uproar and report you and you will get a call after its 90% done to cease painting from the HOA. As a side note, farm girls don't really understand the whole HOA thing. It's foreign. 

I'm still waiting to find out if I will have to pay to have it repainted. $$$$$$$$$$!

Then the sprinkler guy Russ came. He and Jody had to dig up the whole F@&$?$@ yard again to move and redirect sprinklers.

See our berm? I won't go into details about a delivery man being greeted by me in a swimsuit when I had some supplies delivered and then having it referenced to clarify who I was by the store owner when I called back for more the next week. Mortifying. I'm too old for this. 

I am here to tell you the berming was a nightmare and we still have one trouble spot.

My house was a never ending mud pit. Dirt and sand everywhere. 

See where we removed all that sod Jody tried to save? Yeah we had to so we could slope the ground for drainage. The sod had already completely taken root because of all of the rain. That was awful and redundant. Jody does not like redundant. 

Then we finally ordered the sod. When that sod came it was like Christmas in July. We were so sick of mud! The whole family laid the sod hours after it was delivered. It required more shoveling and leveling but we were maniacs.  I think it was because we thought we were crossing the finish line of the worst home project ever.

I so wish I could say "happily ever after" at this point in the story but today...

We had to install a French drain across half of our yard.

Because our trampoline had impeded the yard drainage and we had a stinky muddy sod mess going on. That's the truth about putting in an in ground trampoline. I'm sure you are waiting for the part about how I made it all up to Jody... Stay tuned. I'm going to do my very best. Right now I'm just focusing on getting this giant fountain installed in the corner of my yard. Jody said no... But I think it will be "really easy" and I have the perfect spot.