The other day I was reading my journal. Almost every entry started with: well, it's been about a year since my last entry. Maybe I should catch up on my life. Then I'd list all the stressful relationships, school pains, and other drama that happened in my life in the previous year. That's kind of how I feel about this blog. I used to be so faithful at writing a post at least once a month. But then I didn't. SO... Here we go....
Thanksgiving break started this morning for me. But in reality, it's not a break at all. I woke up around 9 this morning (after passing out on the couch around 3) and came home to my parent's house. My goal today, just like every other time I have come home in the last 4 months, was to finish the fence.
In August, my dad hired me to put in 200 feet of vinyl fencing all around the yard. To the unexperienced, this seems like an easy task. Maybe a couple of days of hard labor, and it's done. False. That was totally not the case. First we had to get all the parts ordered. So 2 weeks later, the fencing came. We assembled it and put it in. Easy. Except for it didn't happen like this at all.
Two weeks later, the fencing came. Then we had to dig post holes. One of those gas-powered posthole diggers would work fine, right? Nope. The majority of the posts needed to be put in along a retaining wall. Chances of either drilling into the retaining wall or falling off the wall and dismembering someone were both high. So what did I do? you might ask. I dug them by hand. I got a nice posthole digger from the Home Depot. It was gas powered too. I ate some beans, gas came out (glycolysis, cellular respiration and the citric acid cycle converted the food into CO2 gas). Then there is the soil where my family lives. Horrific. Rocks all over the friggen place. In the process of digging the holes, I'm pretty sure I dug through a total of at least 4 feet of concrete or rocks.
Two weekends later, the postholes were dug. The assembling of the fence began. It went pretty smoothly, but after looking at all our parts, we realized that the chick who helped us order all our parts was definitely not working there because of her IQ. So we ordered more parts, waited 2 more weeks and assembled the rest of that section of fence.
Then there is trying to work with the boss. My mom realized that the fences didn't match exactly. So we had to order more fencing, wait another month, and then we start on the next section of fence. About 2 months into the project, we could see the end. Only 7 more postholes to dig, a gate to put in and then we were done. This was about a month ago. So one Saturday, we got out our gloves and got to work. This should only take a full days work. The full days work came and went. We still had 4 postholes to go.
One of the things that we noticed, is that when you're really close to finishing something, Mother Nature puts her foot down and says: suck on this, moron!!! We had to break through another 5 inches of concrete for one posthole, and the tree that we planned to just miss decided 5 years ago to send its main root straight down where we needed the post to go. So today was going to be the day that we were finally victorious. I grabbed the shovel and started digging around the tree. The chainsaw had a dull chain, so we took all of our tools and got them sharpened. 3 axes, a hatchet, pickaxe... We were either going to get the stupid thing out today, or die trying. After 4 hours, 2 broken chains, the bumper on our truck bent out of shape, a few broken ropes and bloody hands, we got the stupid thing out.
The moral? I'll tell you: things never take the time you estimate them to take. Like graduation. I'm working on year 5. This isn't supposed to take this long. Or getting married. Or making pies. Or cooking a turkey. So on that note: Happy Thanksgiving. Be grateful that you didn't have to pull out a tree today.
