I’m sorry for the irregular blogging the last few days. I’m racing — shoveling, hauling, painting, sawing, and prepping — to get house projects done before the rains descend.
The good news on this front is that the kid showed up and put himself to work. The 13-1/2-year-old boy who lives next door spent Monday afternoon leveling dirt and today’s afternoon helping me spread some of the eight yards of gravel delivered this morning.
The gravel arrived this morning when I was only half dressed. After dog-walking, I put on my sweats and heavy gloves and spread rock until and after the kid showed up at noon. I gave him some of the trickier bits to do and by golly, he did them well. Not quickly. Not with the polish The Wandering Monk might have brought to the job. But he worked hard and conscientiously and by the end of the day we were ahead of where I expected to be this year. I was grateful and impressed.
We demolished about four yards between us. The heap you see on the right is the remaining four, which is intended for next spring. But the way we’re going, we might make a good dent in that heap, as well.
I felt fine while I was working. But I’m paying for all that shovel-slinging and raking now — and tomorrow, too, I suspect.
The bad news on the house project front isn’t this little bit of soreness, which actually feels kind of healthy (the fruit of honest labor and all that). It’s that the Monk is once again among the missing. On Monday he came this close to finishing the latest and penultimate phase of summer projects — and that was that. Not a word or an appearance since, despite a promise to keep me posted and to try to return “Wednesday or Thursdayish.” I know he’s busy. But he knows how I feel about reliability.
This summer I became too reliant on him. It was a luxury, and one I owe to you. I loved having him do more of the heavy lifting; he’s way, way better at the hard stuff and the high-up on the roof stuff than I. But perhaps it wasn’t all that smart of me.
I’m now nerving myself to take on some of the tasks I don’t feel quite up to. And racing against the weather. And that’s my excuse for abandoning you to empty blog pages.
Looking good…!
Here I thought it might be the recent earthquake.
Just please be careful. A famous physician, Sir William Osler, said “First, do no harm.”
In trying to look up that quote I came across a number of truly remarkable ones by him, principles lost in the cookie cutter approach to medicine.
https://www.azquotes.com/author/11160-William_Osler
Nice quotations Shel.
Yeah, those are great quotes! Man, imagine how different medicine would be if physicians and other medical personnel actually lived up to them.
And I am trying to be careful, thank you, Shel. I spent a few hours shoveling gravel and setting stepping stones today. But I didn’t push too far. Tomorrow, if it doesn’t rain too hard, I’ll go out and start putting up a couple gutters, which is a not-bad task and one that’s not so hard on the back.