So I was kind of looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend, and I thought I’d do a couple things around the house. I don’t much like to go out in public (or wilderness) on the big weekends, there’s too many bozos out and you can’t throw a rock without hitting one of them. My todo list wasn’t big, or at least I didn’t perceive it as anything tremendous. I even thought that by hitting the hardware store on Friday night I’d be ahead of the game.
When I got back from Home Depot I scurried up onto the roof and replaced the cooler pads as it was getting dark and I wanted some time to just sit and watch the world go by Monday. I’ve been kind of excited, in a nerdly-homeowner sort of way in that I finally got the swamp cooler thermostat hooked up that Debbie bought me last year. I retired just after midnight with the plans to get the water going up to the cooler before it got hot.
I actually slept a solid night, and that doesn’t happen often. I awoke just after eight and was about to roll over and doze a bit more when I realized I needed to get on the roof before the sun got to blazing. That woke me right up, and kind of disappointed me, but I figured I’d get all my stuff done by lunch and laze around this afternoon. The cooler went pretty slick, and I don’t often have any projects that go off without a hitch, but the only thing this one threw at me was I had to move the hose from the front yard to the back. It seems my back yard is cursed for hoses. A couple summers ago mine got eaten, but I replaced it with one from Debbie’s house. When I went to pick this one up it was split in several places and the casing was falling apart. I guess I should know to get them in, but the last couple winters have snuck up on me so fast that I didn’t get a lot of the winter-prep done.

Finishing up cleaning the roof, I sprayed off a bunch of the debris that came out of the cooler off the roof. Unfortunately, I sprayed most of it on top of Debbie’s car. She’d complained that she needed a car wash anyway, so I figured I’d just do it today, even though the forecast calls for chances of rain through Tuesday. Debbie came out and rinsed her car as I was washing it to help out. She kept asking if she could squirt me. Good for me she resists temptation pretty well.
After the car I tackled the two broken sprinklers next to the sidewalk. When the city replaced the sidewalk two summers ago they broke two sprinklers and when the replaced them, they left them sticking up so high that they got broken off several times by lawnmowers, or people walking down the sidewalk, I guess. I decided I’d lower them instead of just replacing the connectors below the surface, so I ended up digging up a trench for about 9 feet uncovering enough PVC pipe to be able to make the heads nearly flush with the level of the sidewalk. To my surprise the pipe had risen in the middle between the two heads as to be barely below the top of the sod. When the bozos who the city hired for this job replaced what they broke they didn’t bother to measure very close and there was so much pressure from too much pipe that it bowed up several inches. I ended up having to run to the store again to get a connector so I could cut out about 3/8 of an inch of pipe to get it to lay down deep enough to not raise the heads.
I was hankerin’ for some lunch but it looked like it was fixin’ to rain, and I really wanted to get the fertilizer and the new grass seed on the lawn to hopefully green it up and close some of the bald spots. Every year I swear I’m going to re-landscape the yard so it doesn’t have the 12 inch drop off that catches the mower blade as it approaches the sidewalk. So far no dice. Anyway, I got the fertilizer and grass seed on. The grass seed was ‘treated’ and from the sound of the package you needed a hazmat team to clean you up and burn your clothes after just looking at the package. And here I thought grass was almost a weed.
With the lawn done I grabbed a quick lunch and decided to try to get the roof joists for the garage moved into the garage area so I could think about getting the garden in that I should have done a couple weeks ago*. I grabbed Kayla and we went out and began carrying the 22′ 2×8’s awkwardly into the driveway see-saw fashion to get them into the garage. We got almost half of them done when my back screamed for a halt. I hobbled in and got ice and Ibuprofen and laid on the floor for awhile. Debbie, not wanting to be left out of the fun had undertaken a living room shuffle and wall washing event. I crawled into the bedroom and laid on the floor.
While I was trying to get my spine to straighten up and fly right I texted jack and figured I’d take up a couple boxes of mason jars and accoutrements up to his house while letting the Vitamin I do it’s work. I stopped in at a Maverick station to get a Coke refill for the drive and grabbed a handful** of coins out of my ashtray. Walking into the station I was juggling coins, cup and keys trying to put my sunglasses on the neck of my shirt when the coins sprung from my hand like a flock of starlings. I knew I should have eschewed all those nickles, but I was in the mood to lighten my ashtray. As I leaned over to start gathering up my little flock of coins the auditory control team in my subconscious decided I needed a replay of the coins hitting the ground and I thought, “Hey, that’s odd.” I sorted through the coins I’d picked up and there was a 1954 silver quarter that I would have spent on a soda had I not been clumsy***.
After regaling Jack with my prowess at hearing precious metal and meeting his delightful pixie-bob, Hobbes, I made my way back home and once again pressed Kayla into servitude and moved the rest of the joists.**** Unfortunately, by this time I was well into running out of steam. I tried to shovel up some of the gravel that is embedded in the soil where I want to put the garden, but after a couple wheelbarrows half-full I called it quits and came in shaking from fatigue and hunger. Debbie fixed me up good, though with Chinese take-out and now I’m sitting here fatter and happy trying to decide if I can stay awake long enough to watch a DVD***** or if I should just crash.
Ah, the mundanity of my minutia…
* Oh well, who wanted fresh peas anyway.
** Why is it not handfull?
*** Oddly enough, I’ve had a Canadian quarter sitting on my desk here for several weeks that I got as change somewhere too that also seems to be silver by the sound of it. 1962
**** It boggles my mind how if I can catch my back at just the right time and do the right thing I can avoid weeks of walking with a list.
***** I have Gladiator, the extended cut from Netflix sitting here… but if I watch it now I can’t have a movie til Wednesday-the Catch 22 of Netflix******
****** Don’t get Catch 22 from Netflix. It’s a horrid movie–read the book.++