I work twelve hour shifts, so that doesn't leave much time after work to do anything but wait for bedtime. I'm working my four day shifts from six in the morning until six at night and I'm tired. I've just gotten home from work and fed the puppies when Brent rolls in fresh from working at the beach.
Pouring a glass of wine we walk out and sit on the new flagstone patio. The chair cushions are soft and I pop my feet up on the glass table and listen to the bullfrogs croak. The noise reminds me of a sound machine of the forest I used to have as a kid: birds singing, frogs croaking and a gentle breeze rustling the newly opened leaves on the trees.
We sip our wine and talk about our day and what we'd like to do next. We discuss decorating the barn with an old sign and old dangerous farming tools that have been kicking around the farm for a hundred years. Literally, the house was originally built in 1880. There's more blast rock that needs to moved into place, tables to be painted and lots and lots of clean up.
We continue sipping our wine and warming our feet on the sun baked flagstone while playing a continous game of fetch with Poco. Gizmo wanders over and lays like a starfish on the patio, panting. Life feels pretty good.
Staring at our empty wine glasses we realize it's time, either we go to bed at seven or we get a few hours of work in while the sun is still shining. Typically we don't go inside in the summer until dark-time and it feels wrong to go inside with this beautiful day drawing to a close. We cling, often with desperation, to the sunshine.
We decide to do a bit of clean up and start throwing broken cement into the ruts that were made by the backhoe in the backyard durning the creation of the patio. There's two piles of wood and burnables that must be moved as well, so we start up the backhoe.
Just doing a little after work work.
One load of burnables heads to the burn pile and I spy a sappling I've been meaning to cut down so I can properly lay the last patio stone around the bunny pen that keeps the dogs out and bunnies inside. Both dogs and bunnies will dig if given the chance. They will dig towards each other thinking the grass is greener and the bunnies are tastier on the other side.
I head to the barn and grab the reciprocating saw and plug it into a nearby extention cord. No power. I need to replace a fuse before I have power to the back garage. I run into the house and grab the old fashioned fuses and run out the garage to install it into the panel. By the time I run back and plug in the saw with power Brent is back with the backhoe looking for more work.
He asks if I want to pull the tree out with the backhoe, but I've already invested too much time into getting the saw to work to let that be the easy way out. Disappointed he climbs into the backhoe and starts leveling out the ruts as I cut the tree down.
Once down and pulled away I can properly place the patio stone, but I notice the stone beside it is a little wobbley. That isn't right, so I pull out the entire side of patio stones, remove a six foot piece of wood that is making the patio stones unstable and then start to back fill with dirt.
Brent wanders over after leveling ruts and starts bringing over shovels of dirt. We alternate laying stone and leveling until we notice it's getting dark.
How exactly did it get to be nine o'clock? I declare that I'm done and we head back to the patio and the half finished bottle of wine.
Sitting on the patio we chat about the things we meant to do rather than the clean up we ended up doing. At least it's getting done. When will we have time to build twenty picnic tables?
As we wander into the house for dinner I wonder what we'll manage to squeeze in tomorrow night after work, then I remember it's baseball night tomorrow.
As I lay in bed exhausted listening to the bull frogs and petting a sleeping Super Taz I plan tomorrow morning: up, shower, coffee, feed pups, feed farm animals, feed bunnies, pack lunch and get my motorcycle gear together because I'm riding my bike in the morning to work. Simple pleasures.
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