Love it when things work out

Here you can see the truck we were blessed with after Cherie's car died. It's backed up to where we unloaded the railroad ties from it.


3/22/09 Sunday
Yesterday was a real busy day and I got a lot done. Cherie’s ankle is still pretty bad so I did what I could to keep her off her feet. That’s hard to do. What I heard repeatedly was “But I have so much to do”. “Ask your husband, Cherie. If you need anything call me.” I replied. That didn’t make much of a difference. She did ask me to do a few things but not many. I went and did some needed shopping and she said “I probably should go with you” as I headed out the door. My response was “Sure, and we can get one of those ride around handicap carts for you to drive in” pointing out how much walking is required in a big store like Sam’s and Wallfart. She figured it out.

At 11:00 I met Tommie and Jamie to pick up the railroad ties they had agreed to help me get. Railroad ties are heavy, real heavy. I worked right along side of them and of course am paying the price this morning. Part of the pain is muscle soreness from the workout of loading and unloading some sixty ties, half of which came here to the farm and the other they kept as their payment for the help. The muscle pain I don’t have a problem with as it’s a sign of a good workout and means my muscles will be stronger for it. It’s the back pain that gets me. Finding a position to sleep that didn’t hurt to bad was tough but I managed to doze off about midnight. Cherie was out like a light much earlier in the day and barely moved when I came to bed. She got a good nights rest.

The railroad ties I’ll use to make raised garden beds, particularly along the strawberries to keep the dogs from digging any more tunnels. Raising the garden beds will make it much easier on me to weed and care for plants as I won’t have to bend over as much. Over the course of time I hope to gradually increase the number of raised beds in the garden farm.

At the end of the day I decided to work on Paco, the wood sculpture that the old man asked me to fix. He’s (Paco) in bad shape to say the least. After carefully examining him I saw that I needed to take the guy apart in order to do a good job. I could have just filled in the holes and forced glue into the joints but that wouldn’t stand the test of time. The old man has, and is, being real good to us so I want to do an excellent job to show my appreciation.

I’d forgotten just how good it is to do the work I love in the shop. It’s quiet and peaceful in the garage as I focused on the tasks before me. I had to go real slow as Paco’s wood is so dry rotted that in some places it would just crumble. There’s some stuff I saw at Lowe’s that you soak dry rotted wood in and it helps restore it. It’s not cheap but I’m not interested in doing a cheap job. I’ll try to remember and pick some up after we go to church today. I thought it would be interesting for my readers to see a pictorial record of this restoration project so took these pictures.

Cherie finished doing our income taxes yesterday. She had set up an appointment with our bank to take advantage of their offer to do them for free but the lady they had doing them got lost on a simple question so Cherie did them online with Turbotax. Looks like we’ll owe a little over three hundred dollars. Not bad but we were hoping to get money back. It’s a sure bet that I’ll lose the disability but we’ve been trying to prepare for that contingency by getting this farm going.

I keep meaning to call Tonya, the lady who has the tractor for sale, to assure her we are still interested and see if it’s still available. But I keep forgetting as I’m prone to do. I know she looked at the blog at least once so hopefully she’s aware that the “Check’s in the mail” so to speak and not worried. Being two hundred miles away I haven’t looked at it but if it’s in good shape it looks like a good deal.
It amazed me how Paco was put together. So may pieces and lots of nails, it's apparent that he was mass produced. When I put him back together I'll use wooden dowels in place of the nails and a good waterproof polyurethane glue so he'll be better than when new.

While Tommy and Jamie helped load railroad ties I learned that Jamie’s car is on it’s last legs. I told them about Cherie’s car, that it might be available. That possibility excited them so I called Cherie to see what she thought. We had intended to fix it but the reality is I’ve proven I’m not that good at fixing it and don’t really have the time. Tommy’s a good mechanic so putting in a new steering column would be no problem. With no credit they would have a hard time buying a car so our willingness to work with them on that is a good thing. Tommy asked “How much” and I told him “Cheap, we’ll look up the value and sell it for much less”. “Besides” I said “you can work off the price because I could use some help around here”. I had been intending to pay them for work out of that pipeline check so this works out. We can get rid of the car without fixing it and help someone at the same time. Plus I can get some of the help I badly need to get things planted and going for this year’s crop. Love it when things work out.

We’ve got to get ready for church so that’s it for now. See ya next time.