Saturday Work
around the house
Free Monday
Today was a teacher workday, one of three that we are able to take off without worry. Exchange days, they're called. If we've gone to meetings and such after school, we use those hours toward the time we would have ordinarily spent in school. I didn't have those hours, so I took a personal day.
E and I spent the morning working on the large tree that had fallen in the drainage ditch -- which we call a creek -- that runs behind our house. I knew that if we didn't, the first big rain storm would cause flooding.
I didn't realize how much of the tree was under brush and vines that I'm assuming it took down with itself as it fell. We cleared all that away so we could get to the tree, and we cut and removed as much as we could with just two of us.
E is of an age that he actually is starting to be helpful. I can pull on a large tangle of vines and have him cut the critical vines that are keeping everything locked and immobile. He can bring tools to me, help pull things up out of creekbeds, offer helpful commentary on the whole process.
Once we got that done and ate some lunch, we spent the afternoon at Denver Downs -- fun with hay, ropes, and corn...
Sunday
The Boy had been waiting to work on his project.
We'd been waiting for the tree to fall.
Soccer and Painting
Morning: the Boy's team played its second game. Last week, they won 8-0. This week, there was a stronger team on the other end of the field. We won 2-0, and the Boy got one of the two goals: the goalie didn't pick up the ball, and the Boy took advantage of the mistake.
In the afternoon, we worked to do a little painting around Papa's new addition.
A good Saturday, overall.
Tackling the Leylands
Hatchet
It’s all the Boy has been talking about for the last few weeks.
“Daddy, can we get a hatchet?”
He was thinking about buying it with his own money; he was thinking about splitting the cost with us; he was thinking about it, talking about it, probably dreaming about it.
Today, we finally got it. He wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going to pay any of his money for it because he’s got his eye on another Lego set, but when, after buying nails, concrete screws, pegboard hooks, and other things on the list, we finally headed over to the gardening section, his excitement brought a smile to both K and me.
The highlight of the afternoon, then, was teaching him how to use it.
Independence Day 2019
Monday
The day started with a ride back up to the north of the county to pick up my car.
I’d mapped the route on Strava, and it really didn’t seem so bad: 28km with nothing too intimidating in terms of ascents. But I’m not the cyclist I was 15 years ago. My legs aren’t what they used to be; my heart and lungs labor under what would have been the slightest effort at my fittest. And so when I hit the segment some Strava user named “Cleveland St. Climb – West,” it completely kills me.
It’s really pathetic. Look at this thing:
A mere half-kilometer that rises a mere 35-meters, with an average gradient of 8%. I finish in 3:08, with an average speed of 8.7 km/h. Of all the Stava users who have tackled that climb, I am the 386th fastest.
Details from my fitness tracker show just what a trial it was for me:
Ridiculously high pulse for a ridiculously slow speed. But I’m 46; I haven’t done serious exercise in years. I shouldn’t be surprised, and I’m not. But of course, I am.
When I got home, I did to the yellow bell bushes along our driveway what the ride did to me:
Three from Saturday
Friday
In the morning, I took the repairman’s advice from yesterday and started repairing (again) our dishwasher. How many honest repair guys will tell you, “You could fix this yourself and get the part cheaper on Ebay,” after giving you a quote of $354 for the repair? Not many. To be sure, he got his $80 trip/diagnostic fee, but honested himself out of another hundred bucks or so. Or perhaps he honested himself into more, for I’ll certainly never call anyone else .
The discharge pump was faulty, he said, and it came out this morning just as easily as he said it would. “There might be one or two screws down there — I can’t remember,” he said, “but then just rotate it and pull it out.” No screws — just a simple rotation and out it came.
In the afternoon, the neighborhood boys came over, and the Boy’s new Lego set came in, so there was only one thing to do.
