Monday, Jul. 19, 2004
Dear Diary:

Sometimes the man gets, uh, notions.

You know, a few months ago I thought that by this point in the summer we would be well on the way to finishing the wraparound porches we're adding to our home.

Foolish, foolish me.

Our house is still surrounded by huge trenches, cement forms and convoluted bracing. What used to be our yard is a huge, soul suckingly ugly pile of dirt and rocks waiting to be pushed back in around the house.

That's right, the cement hasn't even been poured yet, never mind actual construction begun.

The weather has been a huge factor in this, of course. The summer we decide to start a major project that relies on good weather is The Summer of the Never Ending Rain. We have lived in this house 27 years now and have never, ever seen a summer this wet.

We're not getting quiet, sedate little rains, either. Monsoons. We are getting monsoons, which at one point led me to make a moat joke. Then I noticed the muscles rippling in the spousal unit's jaw and the way he was grinding his teeth.

"Don't even joke about that," he hissed tensely. Why? Well, apparently if the drains the spousal unit has installed by the cement forms block up and the trenches around our home actually do fill with water, the odds are good our house foundation will take major damage. Whatever money we have saved for the porch would have to be spent fixing the foundation, torpedoing the porch project.

*Insert loud intake of breath as full horror of that scenario registers.* Needless to say, it has not been a happy summer so far.

And then, like I said, he got a notion.

The basement below our house is basically a glorified crawl space with a dirt floor. There's nothing down there beside the hot water heater and a heater to keep the basement from freezing.

The spousal unit decided that we should dig it out deeper before the new porch (and modified basement entrance it would require) went on the house.

Did he decide this before the heavy digging equipment came so machines could do part of this work?

No, no he did not.

Did he decide this before huge trenches were dug around the house, trenches that would make it very difficult to get earth out of the basement?

No, no he did not.

No, he decided this when the only way it could be done would be to do it with shovels, pick axes, wheelbarrows and ramps.

There are times when I can reason with the man and there are times when he gets a notion so firmly fixed in his head that there's no budging it. The rest of the porch project wouldn't go forward until the basement was dug out. Five hundred square feet of basement, hard pan clay mixed with rock, dug down eight inches.

I loved Fraggle Rock, oh yes I did.Yes, apparently the man has a deep and abiding need to explore his Inner Doozer. Yes, apparently Fraggle Rock is not an imaginary place�it's in my basement.

We all know my stance about hard physical labour. My pretty little gym muscles are only to be used to heave around heavy bits of well designed metal in the comfort of an air-conditioned gym. They are show muscles not meant to do hard, physical labour.

Ever.

But if the basement is not dug out, then the rest of the project does not move forward. Summer is half way over now. Tick tock tick tock. So, with much heavy sighing and eye rolling, I have been helping the spousal unit to dig down the basement--ground so hard that a shovel can't pierce it, ground so hard that it has to be first broken with a pick axe.

Each shovel full, each wheelbarrow full, all of it moved by hand.

You can well imagine my horror.

It's been a veritable party in a can, and a very, uh, special way for two people to spend parts of their evenings and weekends. We finished it yesterday.

Never ever let it be said that we don't know how to put the sweat into sweat equity.

The guy from the cement company came up to look over the project late last week. He gave the spousal unit extra bracing tips for some of the more complicated bits of the porch foundation. If the rain ever lets up, we should be good to go in the next two weeks.

If the rain ever lets up. The forecast so far this week is for three straight days of rain. The long term weather map doesn't look too promising, either.

I plan to be as far, far away from the cement pouring as possible since I'm pretty much positive that sort of work would involve the use of my pretty little gym muscles for, you know, actual physical labour. The spousal unit's brother has already volunteered, and a teenage boy has also been hired.

Let them explore their Inner Doozers all they want. I already know mine far, far more intimately that I want to, eh.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 567.28 miles. Ten percent there rubber duck.Ten percent there rubber duck. 25 per cent thereTen percent there rubber duck.Ten percent there rubber duck.
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers

Going Nowhere Collaboration

.:Comments (6 so far):.

Old Drivel - New Drivel


Subscribe with Bloglines


Want to delve into my sordid past?
She's mellllllllllllllting - Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012 - Back off, Buble - Monday, Dec. 19, 2011 - Dispersed - Monday, Nov. 28, 2011 - Nothing comes for free - Monday, Nov. 21, 2011 - None of her business - Friday, Nov. 04, 2011 -


.:Cast:. .:Diaryland Notes:. .:Comments (6 so far):. .:E-mail:.
.:Adventures In Oz:.
.:12% Beer:. .:Links:. .:Host:. .:Archives:.

Cavort, cavort, my kingdom for a cavort Globe of Blogs 12 Per Cent Beer my partners in crime


A button for random, senseless, drive-by linkings:
Blogroll Me!


< ? blogs by women # >
Bloggers over forty + ?
<< | BlogCanada | >>
[ << ? Verbosity # >> ]
<< x Blog x Philes x >>


This template is a riff on a design by the truly talented Quinn. Because I'm a html 'tard, I got alot of pity coding to modify it from Ms. Kittay, a woman who can make html roll over, beg, and bring her her slippers. The logo goodness comes from the God of Graphics, the Fuhrer of Fonts, the one, the only El Presidente. I smooch you all. The background image is part of a painting called Higher Calling by Carter Goodrich which graced the cover of the Aug. 3, 1998 issue of The New Yorker Magazine.

Kids, don't try viewing this at home without Netscape 6 or IE 4.5+, a screen resolution of 800 X 600 and the font Mead Bold firmly ensconced on your hard drive.

�2000, 2001, 2002 Marn. This is me, dagnabbit. You be you.