Racing Stripes and Body Parts

Well, I am alive. Barely. There are parts of me I had forgotten about that are reminding me of their existence tonight. I have some bruises I don’t remember receiving. I have a nice racing strip on my head. But…I am alive.

When I got to the place to work with my dad this morning, only he was there. The one guy who had shown up…my sister was absent…had fallen from my dad’s idea of scaffolding…some questionable ancient boards eight feet from the ground apparently held in place by a wish and since my mom was there, possibly a prayer, I added my own silent hope, and they seemed to hold…the guy had sprained his ankle and gone to the hospital. It was just me and my dad. He wanted it done today, so the race was on.

It took ten hours in the sun with great amounts of effort and sometimes some severe cursing to finish it. My dad has been known for his…well, the best description is abuse of his vehicles. He is a carpenter. He has used several types of passenger cars for work trucks in the past. Now he has a real truck. A Chevy ( do not mistake me for a Chevy fan, I simply am glad his latest truck has a bed rather than a back seat and a trunk). As with all his vehicles, however, he has added his own…touch. It has a crane. Yes, a crane. Something like fifteen feet tall, or more. It looks a little like a demented insect, with wheels.

It turned out to be extremely useful, though. He used it to move the tin up to the roof…that is a nice change from the back-breaking one at a time action we used to use. It took all of three hours to finish that 50X22 foot shed in tin. The down side was we had to put the rest of the rafters up first. Then the pearlings. That made the top of the building a lattice of wood, with 2 foot squares of open air between them. Add the fact that we were fifteen feet above ground level, there was a changing breeze, and that by mid-day we were both a little shaky from exhaustion and lack of food, it is surprising we did not end up large blobs of Huffman goo on the ground.

The sun shown down with a smile and smote my face. I was wearing a hat and sun glasses. The sun glasses make a nice white stripe on a now mostly red face. The bright side? We lived through it and my dad got his job done.

Where was Cora during all this? Off shopping with her sister…well, it sounds like they tried to make some tortilla chips from tortillas…but apparently that did not turn out well. It sounds like they enjoyed themselves, though. Now, I need to find a better position…one that does not require me to experience gravity.

Oh, and no one has stepped forward with pictures of me in womens shoes, so it obviously never happened.