Walled off and Beer Fairies

Modeling Some New boots

I’m back to building walls, just not the one I planned on in the back yard, but that story can wait before I acknowledge the absolute supremacy of my wife who has shown up for consecutive First Friday celebrations. Since I’m the boss I don’t always get the proper ribbing at these events but her attendance certainly removes that prohibition. It’s just a lot of fun to have her come and share in the fellowship.

First Friday Partners in Crime

Yesterday was consumed with the aforementioned wall building. My intent was to finally get started on the big and final terrace in the back yard. I was accompanied by the above praised spouse for the procurement of supplies since she finally, somewhat trepidation-ally, made a decision on the first floor wall paint. She was still bouncing back and forth between colors right up to the last moment. I think the act of making an actual decision sapped her strength because she was down with some mysterious malady for the rest of the day. We had planned on going out dancing last night so I know the pain was real because she vetoed that idea as well.

The Almost Finished Front Yard Wall

She had mentioned she wanted a small wall in the front yard to protect one of her new gardens from washing away. I figured I could make short work of that and get to my big project. I laboriously moved the entire load of bricks to the backyard. I moved Buddy to the front yard so he could supervise and provided sheltered company from the garage as I knocked out the small wall out front. Since it was going downhill I arranged the bricks in a series of levels, keeping it one brick above ground level. When I was done my Favorite Panamanian was summoned and really liked the wall but thought it would be better if I raised it all to the level of the highest brick.

From Downhill With My Supervisor on Site

Of course she was right, something I realized as soon as I explained it was an option. Of course this called for a lot more bricks and I spent the next hour shuttling the bricks from the back yard to the front where they’d started the day. I used all the bricks I had and still need to get a few more as well as cap stones but it did come out pretty well. My body, that’s another story. I’m so glad she canceled the dancing last night. I took her out to dinner because a huge mug of ice cold draft beer is just about the best medicine for a middle aged body ravaged by a day of wall building.  

Dinner Last Night

Mid-way through the project we received a FaceTime call from New Jersey. Wingman is out of town this weekend but the ladies still had a full dance card of visiting friends. My granddaughter learned a new phrase which she uttered when my daughter was putting her down for her mid-day nap. “I don’t want to!” We all agreed this was not the last time my daughter would be hearing this phrase from her. She was her usual entertaining self but I found myself nodding off being back in the warm house after the hours spent in the cold and clammy outside. My wife continued the call while I returned to the wall since it was not going to finish itself. (that’s called being haunted by my own mother)

Beer Fairy Residue

I found this morning that overnight we’d been visited by the beer fairy (didn’t even know they existed). There was a case of Heineken beer on the back deck with no explanation. My wife eventually got a text from the next door neighbors who dropped the beer off to thank me for the snow blowing help over the past winter. My Charlton neighbors used to give me chocolate chip cookies. I must be pretty shallow that neighbors are so well aware of my personal kryptonites, I’m not complaining. Well, today it’s back to brick buying and finally, hopefully the last terrace.

She Loves Spinach Pasta

And Ketchup!

And Charming Wingman Out of his Food

Front Yard Plotting

Practicing Silly looks with mom Last night

I’ve already written about the fun and games at yesterday’s board meeting. I was surprised that our little event even made the Boston television news. Who knew they cared about good ole Worcester? I got to work yesterday breaking down the needed changes to enforce the modifications voted on yesterday. I went old school and had dozens of schedules and rosters spread out on my conference room table. It really felt like a round of jigsaw puzzle work – probably why I enjoyed it, a little.

The Two Combatants

The Red Sox further boosted morale as I had their afternoon game on the television in my office and they scored an extra inning win after wasting a nearly perfect pitching performance by Chris Sale who looks to be the real thing. The best morale boost though awaited me at home – some actual, honest to God physical labor. I know that sounds weird, but there you have it – guilty.

The Pile we Accumulated

My wife has been laboring all week cleaning up the former areas of the front lawn that I rototilled into submission this past weekend. It was a lot of work extricating the torn up sod and ubiquitous rocks but she’s always determined when it comes to gardening. She was obviously running on fumes when I got home. I spent the next couple of hours transporting the huge piles of sod and rocks she’d accumulated into the back yard where they’ll serve as excellent filler for the final terrace I’ll be starting this weekend. Buddy helped by urinating on each subsequent wheelbarrow load since I was dropping them off in what he considers his constitutional grounds.

Caught int he Act of Being Cute

We caught the First Blog Reader at dinner again which was every bit as entertaining as anticipated. She really seems to relish the opportunity to demonstrate her growing vocabulary and silly looks. Wingman is a little exasperated with us since we laugh at the looks she uses to mess with him. They’ve established a real bond with the extended time they spend with each other daily. After this we retired to the Man Cave where we’re deep into the fourth season of Parenthood on Netflix, we are truly addicted to the Braverman clan. In the immortal paraphrased words of Rod Tidwell, “They’re all heart!” Morale should continue to advance today since it is the First Friday of the Week and will be properly and less than solemnly marked with a bout of camaraderie at Brew City.

Needed Peaking

Dinner Last Night

Keene Friend rode to the rescue last night and he didn’t even know he was doing it. Since he is feeling much better but the doctors won’t let him return to work he decided to spread some largesse our way in the form of his company. He drove down and arrived just after I returned home from work. It was good to see him in obviously better health and sounding so much more like his normal, inimitable self. We scored a FaceTime call with the New Jersey bunch before we headed out and the First Blog reader remembered Keene Friend’s name from their limited interaction. He does make an impression. My granddaughter is showing signs of really knowing how to play to an audience, obviously dipping into her father’s gene pool. She was her usual charming self and demonstrated her addiction to ketchup and smiles.

She is a Charmer

We took Keene Friend out to dinner at Val’s which provided a great opportunity for us to catch up and for my wife to lecture him on taking better care of himself (welcome to my world). We think of Keene Friend as family so she felt completely within her rights to sermonize. A sure sign he’s feeling better were his attempts at his trademark dry humor with our waitress, something about Greek water which sailed completely over her head.

We were able to convince him to spend the night instead of driving back to Keene and we flipped between the Bruins playoff and Red Sox games. Neither ended well but it was regenerating to have my brother sitting next to my wife and I to dissect the action. I say regenerative again because I was facing a long sought, but dreaded Board meeting this morning and needed all the morale boost that could be bartered for.

It was every bit as painful as expected due to the combined subjects of route reductions and fare increases. This is part of the reason I’m so late blogging today. By the time the meeting was over I was in a near homicidal RAGE. It took me a good three hours to calm down. This is what happens when you put me in the same room (for 2.5 hours) as politicians and the assembled Voices of Inappropriate Worth. That latter group were the same ones that showed up at the public hearings and repeated the exact same nonsense they had at those. The politicians were actually fairly impressive (you may now pick yourself off the floor where I’m sure you ended up after hearing me utter that praise). There were some minor changes made but they all made sense and I now have a pell-mell sprint over the next couple weeks to translate wishes into an actionable plan, but at least they made the needed decisions. I also kind of like the sprint.

Another reason for Morale Boost - Updated Photo of Condo, Ours is 3rd Floor

The Pool Out Front

Sly Looks and Tearful Times

Dinner Master

I returned to the back yard after work yesterday subterraneaning the last two trees of our future screen. The soil, good New England dirt that it is, provided the usual overabundance of rocks to make the exercise fun. What I would give to put spade to earth and have the damned thing actually descend its full length without clanging off rock in wrist tingling fashion. I really don’t know how the colonial era farmers made a go of it, respect; it does explain all the rock fences that lace the area from that era.

Trees Finally in the Ground

My wife was similarly employed all day long in the rototilled areas out front. She’s about halfway through preparing them to receive her incoming plants. We were a creaky pair last night as age was having its usual diabolical influence over middle aged bodies. I’m not sure what the world did before Motrin. We took delivery of two specialized rugs for the kitchen yesterday. I was a little mystified as to why we needed the extra cushioned carpets but my wife ardently campaigned for them. She shrewdly told me they would help her during the long time she spends annually making Christmas cookies. She knows I will underwrite anything aimed at that effort. After making breakfast this morning I am now a huge fan as well. Hard to credit what a difference the extra cushion means for knees and back, talk about timely.

New Carpets

Since it was date night I took her out to see the Fate of the Furious which I saw last Saturday. She loved it and it was a great mindless escape from physical discomfort. I love seeing movies I like repeatedly which is a good thing considering how many I own. I’ve been like this since my earliest memories. Movie theaters used to have 7pm and 9pm showings of the same movie and I always tried to stay for both showings if the first one hit the mark. I didn’t realize this was strange until well into adulthood. I thought everyone loved seeing the same movie over and over again. I’m not sure what it says about me but once a movie impresses me I will willingly watch it repeatedly. This surprises no one who truly knows me.

C'Mon Dad!

Before the movie we were blessed with another FaceTime call with the First Blog Reader. It was the second day in a row that we caught her at dinner and it offered some interesting insights into the dynamics of a precocious 17 month old. She spends the whole day with her dad and its obvious he was the one enforcing rules at dinner when she tries to push the envelope. She likes ketchup on everything (including watermelon!) and repeatedly tried to eat nothing but ketchup, forgoing actual food. She’s developed a sly, sidelong look at him when she’s displeased. He picks up on it and tells her to knock it off. She noticeably plays to her mother, who’s desperate for time with her after a day at the office. All this was hilarious to us watching from afar. Our laughter probably wasn’t helpful in their parental efforts to establish boundaries but, hey, that’s our job as grandparents.

It’s been a really “fun” couple of weeks at work as I’ve been delivering the annual personal evaluations to the eight directors that work for me. They’re all great people but I’ve always felt honesty and constructive criticism are more important than sitting around and singing “kumbaya” together. Some people would like to stay in their comfort zones and believe nothing bears improvement. I’m getting the distinct impression this was a new experience for some of them. They’ll be better for the experience but it’s kind of draining to have to point out shortcomings to people I honestly respect. It could be the tears from some of them when I’m trying to be especially constructive. They’re all at least still talking to me.

Rototilled into Submission

My Hide and Seek Partner from Last Night

We’ve been so busy travelling and visiting over the past few weekends that I honestly looked forward to yesterday’s Patriots’ Day holiday as a chance to get to work on the next phase of the back yard terraces. I traced out the next wall while my wife was away at Zumba but she had other plans for me which she ruthlessly enforced for the rest of the day. I did get to work outside all day which was what I hoped for but as the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

Final Phase Traced Out n Hillside

It’s been a long time since I’ve had my butt so thoroughly kicked as it was yesterday. We’re talking an epic beat down. I unwisely acquiesced to my wife’s emerging vision for yet another series of vast gardens. She’s been notably inactive in this regard since we moved in last year, mainly because she spent most of the year down in Panama. There was no denying her now as the weather turned towards spring but first there was this pesky thing called a lawn to deal with.

Wrestling with the Demon Spawn

I had an inflated opinion of my ability to physically deal with a large rototiller and told her I could easily create the gardens she was looking for. I rented the machine which looked innocent but possessed the heart of a demon. I’m sure someone with more experience with the machine would have laughed at my efforts and pointed out the correct way to deploy the damned thing. With no instruction manual I went with my default setting of brute force and ignorance and paid the price. This wouldn’t have been a problem twenty years ago which was the last time I used one of these things.

So Much Fun

Inside of the first twenty minutes and only the smallest future garden cleared my arms felt like they were going to fall off. I still had another two hours of rototilling left and certainly wasn’t going to admit to my wife that I was getting my ass kicked by a smallish machine, but that was the sad truth. To add insult to injury my wife insisted I wear sun screen on the bright sunny day. I think that has to do with my serial bouts with skin cancer, just guessing. Since we’re early in sun season we didn’t have any sun screen except for a roll-on stick we had for my granddaughter’s visits. She liberally applied the stuff to my face which had me looking like Betelgeuse while out in the front yard. I half expected a copyright infringement suit from Michael Keaton.

The New Gardens

I eventually finished the three major gardens while my wife was raking out the destroyed tufts of grass and seemingly endless supply of rocks. Just when I thought it was time for some serious recovery operations in the Man Cave she disabused me of this with a trip to Home Depot which was conveniently near where we had to drop of the rented demon machine. I got some weird looks for the white pancake makeup/sunscreen I was still wearing. She found some large evergreen trees that perfectly fit her plan for a screen between our back yard and the neighbors’. Since I’m an idiot I told her I could get them in the ground with no problem (when will I learn that I don’t have to prove physical prowess anymore?).

The Screen Trees

Since the trees were fairly large it took two trips to get all six back to the house. I finally looked at the planting instructions and found I had to dig a hole twice the depth of the pot for each one! That was around four feet deep into the rock laden soil I had so much fun with during my terracing project. I was able to get four of the six into the ground before I reached muscle failure point in my arms. Luckily the sun was going down so I could use that as an excuse to stop.

Face Timing with Grandparents

Giving us a Hug

And a Kiss

It was around that time that my granddaughter checked in with the nightly FaceTime call. She seemed inordinately cheerful as she downed her favorite chicken casserole and waited for me to entertain her. Since I can deny her nothing we played a silly game of hide and seek on the video screen. She seems to have new words each day and picked up “Whoops” from her grandmother during our last visit. She was exactly the medicine needed at that torturous end of the day.

2d Gen Curbside Time

Already Good Friends

We also checked in on the grandpuppy Riggins who had an even more challenging day than I did since he had a date with the emasculation doctor. He came through fine and was dealing with wearing the cone of shame for the next two weeks. The ABFA seemed to have a tougher time of it as he primary acolyte was in pain. Speaking of pain, one of the interesting things about rapidly aging middle aged bodies is the reaction after a day of hard labor. It was “almost” entertaining as new and exotic muscle cramps popped up last night whenever I made a sudden move. I learned to ease through the final waking hours but did feel some degree of satisfaction with all the work we got done, painful as it was.