How to pay tribute to fallen heroes? Hard labor.

Three day weekends are made to work or drink (or I suppose give birth).  Guess which one I did?  This may look familiar to some of you. 

Friday:  Left work early to come home and cut the grass.  Grass is high, so I had to bag it, which makes the job at least 50% more difficult.  Make an apple pie in the evening for Saturday’s picnic.

Saturday:  Wake up at 6:15 am.  6.75 mile run.  Go to Lowes to pick up supplies for Sunday’s project.  I like to have everything on hand the morning when I start something.  That way, I get out of bed, get some coffee, and jump on it.

Saturday afternoon, we head to the inlaws for a cookout.  I was pleasantly surprised that their pool was warm enough to swim in.  Not that it would have stopped the kids.  But when I went in to play with them, I was comfortable too.

Sunday:  3:00 am.  Ben comes into our bedroom.  “Can I sleep here, since I kind of threw up all over my room.”  He was feeling sick on Saturday, and didn’t eat much.  What WAS on his bed and floor was that 10 hours digested, coming from out of the large intestine type of nastiness.  So I spent a half an hour cleaning that up.  Ben slept with me, The Wife slept somewhere else.  She got the better of the exchange. 

Sunday:  I didn’t get out of bed until 9:00 am.  Not that the kids let me sleep that much.  Immediately started on Sunday’s big project:  replacing the shutters.  We have plastic shutters on the front of our house.  The front of the house is part vinyl siding, part stone.  Two stories, seven pairs of shutters total.  I worked from 9:30 to 6:00, with the only two breaks an hour total to drive to Lowes for stuff.

One big problem is that the original builders did not make deep enough holes.  So the shutters were always a little bit loose.  I had to drill deeper holes in the rock.  Also, they never glued or caulked the fasteners into the rock.  I could literally just yank the shutters off the face.  So I fixed that, too. 

I bought an aluminum extension ladder to get the shutters on the second floor.  I’m not  afraid of heights normally.  But when I got half way up the ladder, I was terrified.  I would take a step, stop, breathe for a minute or two, and then take another step.  I eventually pulled it together for the other shutters, but I was really surprised at my reaction. 

Moving an extension ladder by yourself is a chore.  I dropped it on my head once, and dropped it against the siding another time (there is a small mark, but you can only see it from a certain angle).  Once I did not have it anchored properly, and it started to slide while I was on top.    Eventually, the job got done.  Done well, in my opinion.

Monday:  During my shutter work, I had a load of mulch delivered.  So Monday, 8:00 am, I started spreading the 2 cubic yards of mulch.  At about 9:00 am, I had two helpers, which added half an hour to the job. 

When I was done with mulch, I went out and bought flowers to plant.  I planted two flats and about 10 container plants.  

After lunch, I took Ben to the mall to get each of us some summer clothes.  By 4:30 pm, I fired up my grill and had a beer.  The Wife and I still did our regular Monday night yoga after all of that. 

Needless to say, I was not disappointed to return to nice, slow work this morning.  

Comments

[FS]

At about 9:00 am, I had two helpers, which added half an hour to the job.

My life in a nutshell, right there.

[Prurient]

"The Wife and I still did our regular Monday night yoga after all of that. " - I like your euphemism for hitting it.

[buzz]

Ha. Yoga night is about a month/five weeks old. I finished part of our basement to include the weight machine in the living area. So four or five times a week, after the kids are in bed, The Wife and I work out. I lift weights, The Wife uses the Wii Fit. We honestly do yoga for 45 minutes together on Monday nights, using one of the many, many exercise programs available for free on Comcast OnDemand (i.e. most of you could do it, too).

The other thing doesn't take nearly that long, or involve remotely as many positions. The potential of pulling a muscle is about the same, though.