Spring
The robins understand winter
is over and are chirping like crazy. Yesterday’s fresh cold rain cleaned winter’s
dust from the budding daffodils. Road salt has finally been rinsed from the
streets. Ah, the blissful promise of
spring!
Wrong. The certain promise of backache. My wife, just like a chirping robin, has
started the mate’s call to yard work and home improvement. I’m thinking a brief spring vacation in a
tropical place and she is thinking I ought to build a deck while she sits in a
warm place just inside the patio doors smiling with encouragement.
They don’t call them patio
doors for nothing. We have a patio. My wife doesn't like the patio. My wife thinks it would be nice to have a
deck that is one foot above a perfectly acceptable, if not somewhat cracked and
uneven, slab of concrete. As far as I can tell the deck will function solely as
a leaf strainer. The rain and dirt will
go through the gaps between the deck boards and the leaves will blow across the
deck through the deck door (read former patio door) and onto the carpet. Dirt will collect on the patio under the deck
and ooze out as fetid muck.
You don’t just get a pile of wood and build a deck. It takes planning. Specifically planning the new tools you need
to buy before you are ready for wood.
I’m going to need a new computer program for deck design, a twelve-inch
chop saw to go with my table saw, a new cordless deck screw driver, a laser
level, a new two-wheeled utility trailer to haul tools and materials and a new
SUV with the appropriate trailer hitch.
But first, I need to invent
a fetid muck removal system. I’m
thinking battery-powered, remote-controlled, toy monster truck with a functioning
toy snow (read muck) plow to drive around under the deck. To have perspective for operating the muck
removal technology (read remote controlled toy truck) I’m thinking the deck
needs to have a place to mount an operators control platform – like a
hammock. From the hammock I should be
able to see the little lights on the muck removal device (note to self, don’t
forget to get lights for the toy truck) while it whirls around under the deck.
Nothing
is worse than a half-baked idea. So,
this afternoon, in the spirit of design development, I dashed off to the toy
store and bought this really cool remote controlled, four-wheel-drive, monster
toy …er… muck removal device on sale for only $150 bucks. I put it on the winter-browned lawn between
the trees supporting the old canvas hammock I found in the attic.
Things were going pretty good. I am twisting and turning the monster muck
remover in the yard and twisting and turning my tubby little body trying to
keep an eye on it from my hammock control platform. The monster muck truck did a graceful
pirouette in the mud and I did a reclining Triple Lutz Combination in the
rotted canvas hammock along with it.
When the canvas ripped I was too hog-tied in the shredded fabric to
extricate myself from on top of the muck truck that kept spinning its little
studded snow tires against my spine.
That is how spring equals backaches and it’s
all my wife’s fault. Now I have to add
one of those cool lumbar back support belts to the tool shopping list. There will be time for buying tools when I
finish recuperating in my new nylon hammock.
