Essays and Etcetera

Note: I wrote this story as a birthday gift for my cousin. That was back in March. I am only now getting around to posting this here.

Arielle was a lovely young lady of the finest disposition, but she had one problem. She had family issues.

These were not your normal family issues, like divorced parents, a brother with an embarrassing girlfriend, or even an Aunt Matilda who liked to steal the family silverware. They weren’t even the tantalizing, exciting, family issues like an Uncle Gus who was a mafia Don, or a second-cousin Clive who was an ax murderer out on parole, or even a niece named Eloise who had psychological issues and thought she was a dog.

No, Arielle’s family problems were much, much, worse. Her entire family was dysfunctional, a rather nicely vague word which covers a lot of neurosis and psychosis. But the crowning problem was one particular cousin of scraggly appearance and questionable mental stability.

His name was Rundy, a rather unfortunate (and unfortunately named) cousin. You see, he had been what polite company refers to as a “special needs” child, a phrase uttered sotto voce at social gatherings, heavy with meaning and significant looks—meaning exactly what nobody is usually quite sure, though in this case it meant quite a lot.

The Wedding Disaster

Arielle has met the man of her dreams, but will her dysfunctional cousin Rundy ruin the most special day of her life? Read this breath-taking story of adventure and romance to find out!

This illustrated story, full of light-hearted humor, brings to life the meaning of “family dysfunction” in hilarious style. Learn the true meaning of the Irish Shoe Dance, bedtime habits, and situational nose picking–all in the course of one wedding.

Special offer: For a limited time you can order a copy of this book directly from the author for $9.95 ($6.95 + $3.00 shipping and handling). Limit is one per person. To make an author direct order, you must use the special purchase button below. If you would like your author direct purchase autographed, please send an e-mail immediately after purchase, specifying exactly what you would like written inside the book. If you do not send an e-mail, it will be presumed that you wish the book to remain unsigned.

Yesterday I dug four holes four feet deep. Anyone who has dug holes for concrete pillar forms knows what I nightmare this can be. These are the rare times I envy the Southern folk, those who have the soft sandy soil, and no concerns about a four foot frost line. Putting in a porch down there isn’t so much trouble.

But I’m here, not down there, and so yesterday I dug. With a shovel. With a post hole digger. With an steel bar. It is an activity that feels close to a full body workout–especially when you get near the four foot depth, when getting dirt out requires going all the way down and then back up again. You can squat, you can bend over, but no matter how you do it you must go up and down, up and down, until you are quite sick of it. All the while you must haul tiny amounts of dirt out of the hole, using your arms and shoulders in what feels like the most un-ergonomic position possible. It’s like Chinese water torture, except a lot heavier, and more sweaty.

The first three holes went okay. Life actually felt sane, then. The ground wasn’t too rocky, so I could just plug along, pacing myself. But as the day began to head toward its conclusion, and my energy began to ebb, there came the last hole. It was very rocky. Worse, my helpers were working on a very rocky hole as well, and required my assistance. So I got to move from one rocky hole to another.

This was when life began to take on a tinge of madness. Removing the rocks required wielding an increasingly heavy steel bar against objects which were getting increasingly further away as the hole deepened. And so it became increasingly harder. It was like banging your head against a wall, except in this case to reach the wall you had to shove yourself into the depths of a hole.

Fighting rocks with a large steel bar is exhausting. By the time we stopped for supper, I was utterly spent. And there are more holes to dig–hello, Saturday!

I always find it interesting how my body reacts to physical labor. I’m in pretty good shape so my situation is a little different from your average person. I actually could get out of bed this morning, and while I moaned and groaned a little about being stiff and sore, I was not immobilized, and I was only a little stiff and sore. In honor of yesterday I decided I wouldn’t lift any weights today, but I did go on my bike ride.

I am not yet so old, or out of shape, that I cannot bounce back fairly quickly. For that I am immensely grateful, because it means I can all the more quickly turn around and murder myself all over again. At the time of working, especially when I am really pounding the stone, I feel it most in my shoulders and upper arms. The next day my lower back is very sore to the touch, because when I am using the post hole digger I absorbed the lower grade digging impact there. But the award for most weird recover goes to my hands.

Digging post holes requires hand strength. The harder the digging, the more hand strength is needed. When I stopped yesterday, my hands was spent. They were achy, crampy, and trembling. I didn’t pay it much mind. Then I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and my hands felt very strange. The felt like they were on fire–or, more precisely, like a huge amount of blood was rushing to my hands. My hands felt over-sized, and in particular the meat of my right thumb, which now felt like it was the size of a very large chicken drum-stick. Of course my hands had not really swollen up that much, but the sensation was an indication of how much blood was rushing to my hands in the over-drive to repair and replenish all the damage and depletion from the work.

Today, my hands are back to normal, mostly. But after last nights experience I can see how life-long laborers get their massive hands. If I dug post holes every day I quickly would have a grip strong enough to crack every joint in your hand.

On March 5th some friends and family had a surprise birthday party for my cousin Arielle. I was the instigator, and grand architect, but I had a lot of help. Other people suggested the main course, brought the dessert, made the meal, and set the table. You should know I don’t know how to set the table with such class. My greatest accomplishment of the day was sneaking most of the guests into the house so we could all come up the stairs together and surprise her singing happy birthday. It was a height of brilliance I will probably never again attain.

A wonderful time was had by all. When good friends and family are gathered round, and love and laughter are present, how can you not have a good time? I think more than one person considered it the best birthday party they had ever attended.

My biggest contribution to the party was the special present I made for Arielle. It was a fictitious story about Arielle’s supposed wedding, and the disasters therein. The story content was completely immature humor about boogers and deranged relatives, and (for those who can appreciate that sort of thing) utterly hysterical. A large part of the party was consumed by Arielle reading the story aloud, and all of us laughing ourselves silly.

So maybe that isn’t your typical birthday party, but we all enjoyed it.

Most importantly, Arielle thought everything was perfect

On Thursday the list of entrants that advanced to the second round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest was posted on line. I did not make the cut.

This stung. I doubted I would win, I found it likely that I would not make it past the second cut, but I felt pretty certain I would make it past the first cut. On the Amazon forum’s I saw people describing some pretty poor material. (Awful might be another word.)

To be dropped in the first round makes me feel, in some small way, like I am among the dregs. Am I really like those losers, who can’t see bad writing right in front of their nose? Do I really write that bad of a pitch?

Now for the sour grapes:

I was ambivalent about the whole contest. To be out this early in the contest is a blessing in that it makes clear what I certainly won’t be doing in six months–that is, receiving a publishing contract with Penguin. If I had made it into a later round only to then be rejected, I would have been held in suspense longer.

To be dropped in this first round is really not a comment on my novel–the person who rejected the novel never saw it. They merely read a 300 word pitch. The fact that I was rejected could mean I don’t know how to write a pitch, but it is not as stinging as if my entire novel were read, and considered not worthy to advance. And perhaps there was nothing intrinsically wrong with my pitch–it might just be that my ideas are too unique, and don’t follow the standard cliches close enough.

Yes, that is it. I am a misunderstood genius.

The snow is falling thick and fast outside my window, and the weather report says we could end up with a total of nearly two feet. With this as the atmosphere, I sit down to write about winter.

Winter is like a friend. Not so, you say? True, sometimes it is very easy to think of winter as The Enemy, but it is a friend.

Winter is not your typical friend, don’t get me wrong. It isn’t that light and airy friend, that friend which is all sunshine, and butterflies. (That would be summer.) Winter is not that friend which always makes you smile, or laugh, that friend which always gives you a good time. Winter is not always fun, or easy. Winter is like those difficult friends. Those friends which require so much, but when it is all said and done have given you a lot.

The season is a temperamental friend. One day the sun is shining brightly from a clear blue sky, warming the bare branches of the trees. The next day snow is pouring down, heaping in drifts, as the wind howls. It can be hard to get through those days. Then you turn around and the sun is shining again, only now the world is more beautiful with everything blanketed in crystal snow.

But mostly the sun isn’t shining. Winter is that moody, dark, friend, who you suffer with. Winter is severe, not easygoing. The months are full of those days were the darkness comes early, and leaves late.

Winter is the kind of friend that makes you think. It makes you think about how slippery the roads might be, or how unpleasant it is to feel cold. But you also end up thinking about the rest of the year, the other seasons. On those cold and dark days, you think about what you like, and why. You think about the year, about life, and how things come and go.

This is the best thing about winter: it is like a friend that gives you perspective on life. It is like a friend that is difficult, but in being difficult improves your own character. If we didn’t have winter around, what would we be like? Would we appreciate the other seasons as much? Would we have eyes that see so clearly all the good things? Without winter we would we grow aesthetically lazy, taking all the beautiful things–the green growing plants, the beautiful flowers, the sweet breeze, and the warm sun–for granted.

A difficult friend can sometimes teach us more than all of our sweet easy friends combined. The difficult friend can be very important in our lives.

And yet, still, we can’t help feeling glad when they’re gone.

I am not particularly cosmopolitan in my eating. At the end of the day the types of food I will eat are of moderate variety, and those which I really enjoy or which you will find my regularly grazing upon is an even more limited selection. However, I am a curious fellow, and perhaps I still haven’t shaken that infantile urge to stuff various things in my mouth and see what they will taste like. As a result, when I am in the grocery store I will keep my eyes out for some odd thing to try, something which will “Expand my culinary horizons.” More often than not these experiments are not added to my regular diet.

A few weeks ago I experimented with black garlic. The black garlic caught my eye because the packaging loudly declared it was excellent on pizza. I am a big fan of regular garlic in cooking, so I decided to give it a try.

I made up a batch of dough and garnished the pizza with black garlic. It was a leap of trust, or at least of culinary experimentation. Not only was I risking my pizza, but the garlic was expense too. As a one time splurge to further my education I felt the pizza risk, and money, it could be justified, or at least excused.

Black garlic is fermented garlic. They say it is very good for you–even more healthy than non-fermented regular garlic. The idea of fermented garlic is enough to send some people running, but since wine is fermented and cheese is aged (fermented) I was not immediately appalled at the idea. But I confess that when I peeled the cloves and discovered the actual contents I had second thoughts. The shriveled cloves were–in color and consistency–almost exactly like prunes. Or . . . um . . . other more nasty things. I don’t have any problem eating prunes (some people do) but when I found myself looking at cloves of garlic that appeared to be little shriveled prune bits my reaction was “Oh my gosh, that doesn’t look natural at all. Hmmm. I really wonder how it tastes.”

Soft, prune-like garlic cloves? I had to work myself up to taking a taste. I found it wasn’t bad. Definitely unique. The website www.blackgarlic.com describes the taste as “sweet meets savory, a perfect mix of molasses-like richness and tangy garlic undertones. It has a tender, almost jelly-like texture with a melt-in-your-mouth consistency similar to a soft dried fruit.” That is fairly accurate, though someone with sensitive taste can certainly pick up more undertones.

Black garlic is interesting, but far too expensive to be a part of my regular life even if I wanted it. I don’t think I would want it a part of my regular life. The garlic is rich and flavorful, but it is a middle-eastern or oriental flavor which is not the cuisine I usually eat. The Molasses-like sweetness is intriguing when consumed plain but I found it struck a discordant note to what I expect on a pizza. It was too sweet. On pizza I expect the zing of normal garlic. Black garlic is something I would expect in a rare exotic spread for baguettes at some party.

After my own experience I had to bring some of the garlic back to the old homestead for the rest of the family to try. The first thing everyone asked on being offered a little shriveled sticky bit was, “What is that?” Being a man of great maturity I aways answered, “What does it look like? It’s a bit of poop. Here, have a taste.”

Everyone had a taste. Many required that I give a more accurate description before they were willing to stick the garlic in their mouth.

Not everyone could taste the same flavors. A number of people claimed it mostly tasted like burnt garlic. A few thought it tasted like molasses. The youngest kids thought it tasted horrible, one running to the garbage can to start nosily spitting, another declaring it tasted so bad it made him want to cry. Based upon my experience, I would say black garlic is not something most children will enjoy. Your own enjoyment of it will depend a lot on what kind of ethnic food flavors you appreciate.

____

There is a little further info on black garlic at the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_garlic_(food)

On Monday, January 25th the daytime temperature climbed to 50F, and it rained. A lot. With the ground still frozen and the snow rapidly melting, we were caught in a deluge. Behind the house, Choconut Creek rose rapidly in a flash flood. The water, murky and violent, was almost dizzying to watch up close as it rushed by.

By Friday morning the temperature was back down to -2F. Such is the nature of a mid-winter thaw.

____

For more photos: http://silverwarethief.com/photos/albums/spring-thaw-01-25-10/

I was up very early this morning. Actually, I got up a few minutes before 12:00 AM. You see (as I informed cousin A) I was chasing fame and glory and riches. This is also known as entering the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Submissions opened at 12:01 AM Monday morning and submissions will stop being accepted as soon as 5,000 entries in each category are reached. As entries are still being accepted now at 12:00 PM, my early start entering was clearly unnecessary, but I wanted to play it safe. So many people were trying to enter that Amazon’s servers were bogged down, and as a result it took me an hour to get everything filled in and uploaded. Then I went back to bed.

Now I will just have to hope I entered the contest properly, and see how well I do. It should spice up the rest of winter, and spring, a bit.

It is not often a contest comes around that I can actually enter my writing into. Often there are stipulations and requirements which keep me from even entering. The rules for the ABNA contest this year were changed to allow previous self-published novels as valid submissions. This enabled me to submit The Stuttering Bard of York. This year there is also a separate category for Young Adult fiction, which means that my light-hearted and childish romp won’t have to compete with the likes of the next James Joyce.

The prize for this contest is a $15,000 book advance with a publishing contract with Penguin. The contest progresses by “rounds” with more manuscripts eliminated with each round. The first round ends February 25th, with the number of contestants in each category reduced to 2,000. The second round ends March 23rd with the YA category reduced to 250. The third round (quarterfinals) ends April 27th with the field narrowed to 50 entries. The fourth round (semifinals) ends May 25th with only 3 finalist left standing. On May 25th everyone can vote on who they want to be the winner, so if I make it that far I’ll be counting on your vote! On June 14th the winner will be announced.

So, anywhere between February 25th and June 14th I could find out I am a looser, but I won’t know if I am a winner until June 14th. I’ll keep you all posted as things progress.

For further info: https://www.createspace.com/abna

I am the sort of person who is always doing “something,” a “something” which can be describe as some productive project or getting into trouble–this depending somewhat on what I am currently doing, and your opinion of what defines “trouble.”

I like to work with my hands. I like to fix and make things. During the seasons of good weather I will usually have some endeavour under way, either of creative or practical import. Such was my life, but when I began taking care of Grandpa this habit was interrupted. When you are spending most of your time caring for someone with Alzheimer’s you don’t have much time for projects. For two years I had a nearly complete absence of hands-on work, except for an undertaking involving a very large pile of dirt and a very old wheelbarrow. (But that is a story for a different time.)

This past summer I decided it was time to end this sabbatical. At that point Grandpa was so far along in the progression of Alzheimer’s that there was much less I could do for him. It was a situation ripe for making a person feel helpless and useless and I decided I need to put myself back to practical use–to fight off the despair, and to take my mind off Grandpa’s failing condition.

The Patio

In the spring I decided to make a small patio out back, providing myself with a more pleasant environment in which to use the propane grill. The enclosed porch/sun room also need some lattice to beautify its base, so this was worked into the project. Consulting with Grandma, we decided on a very modest patio area, built from concrete pavers. All in all it was a nice little project–the minor complications being that I didn’t have a truck, I was working alone, and I still had to care for Grandpa. I solved the first problem by borrowing my brother Teman’s truck to haul the supplies from Lowes, I ignored the second issue because I am still young and healthy (and perhaps slightly deranged), and as for the last matter–well, I handled it as best I could. Trying to not “abandon” Grandpa and yet work on the project added some stress, and I felt a bit guilty, but at the same time when the end of the day came around and I could see that I had actually done something I felt good, too.

The patio project was simple, but this did not keep me from having disasters. It is a rare feat for me to get through any project without at least one minor disaster, and this is why (much as I enjoy working with my hands) I hope to never be employed by someone else in this manner. When I have a disaster while working for myself I can say “Oopsie,” then laugh or cry as the situation warrants and get on with my life. If I were working for someone else and were so feeble as to commit a mistake then honor and mortification would require me to rush out and find the nearest bridge from which to hurtle myself and thus atone for my miserable failure. Unreasonable? Perhaps. But knowing my temperament I avoid such employment and situations as might put me in that emotional state.

The first mistake in the patio project was my preoccupied forgetfulness. Grandma and I discussed two different patio sizes, and settled on the smaller dimension. I then forgot this little fact, either by failure to write it down, failure to look at what I had written down, or just plan caught up in my original grand vision. In any case, I went out and bought the correct amount of supplies for the smaller patio dimension, then dug out the ground for the larger patio dimension. I remained blissfully unaware of my stupidity until after I had finished digging the foundation, laying the fabric cloth, pouring and leveling the sand, and was halfway to three-quarters done laying the pavers I had bought. At that point I said, “Gee, it doesn’t look like I have enough pavers to cover all the area I have.”

And the truth struck like a lightning bolt.

In this case it was no great crises. I went out and bought the pavers I was short, and the resulting patio looks better for the increased size. But in the moment of realizing my mistake I was exceedingly grateful that I was not in the business working for someone else. I could just picture myself coming up to the suburban homeowner: “Um, heh, you know how I dug up that large portion of your lawn? Well, it turns out I only needed to dig up half of that, and now you’ll have to fork over more money so I can build you an even bigger patio.” I just about died thinking of the imagined fool I would be in that imagined job, and swore once again that I would never go into the business doing this sort of thing.

A minor irritant–but thankfully not a disaster–occurred at Lowes when I was picking up the initial load of pavers. It was not my fault (for once) but this did not make it much less irritating. The number (and weight) of the pavers made it unwieldy to drag the cart(s) of them through the store to the checkout. The supposed routine was for me to check out my smaller items and then drive the truck around to the gated Lawn and Garden exterior section of the store and have a fork-lift place the pavers on my truck.

It was a brilliant plan, but like all brilliant plans it died in the hands of corporate America. A manager was notified that he would have to unlock the gate to the Lawn and Garden loading area, but by the time I got out to the truck, loaded my minor items, and drove around to the gate, the manager had gone on break. The only person waiting was a peon who had neither the authority nor a key to unlock the gate. I had a headache, and there was a chill spring mist in the air adding to the unpleasantness of standing around waiting.

We waited and waited. Another peon came and used the forklift to bring the pallet of pavers up to the gate, but this peon didn’t have a key to open the gate either. Still we waited. The peons suggested I rip the manager when he finally arrived. Much as my mood was heading in that direction, what I really wanted was for the manager to show so that gate could be opened and I could have the truck quickly loaded. At that point I would have been willing to thank the manager for showing up, late or not.

What I should have done was not waited another minute but went back into the store and raised hell with somebody besides a peon so I could get the pavers I had paid good money for. Instead I told the two peons, “Look, just pass the pavers through the crack in the gate and I’ll load them into the truck.”

I always chose the stupidest solution, in case you were wondering.

“You sure?” they said. (Probably thinking, “Is this guy nuts?”)

“Yes, I’m sure.” It beat standing around in the mist waiting for some selfish, lazy, manager to come off break.

So the two peons passed the pavers through the crack in the gate. I then loaded the 3/4 of a ton or so of stone pavers into the truck. All. By. Myself. I did it, and with a pounding headache besides. The two peons wandered off to do whatever peons do with nary an profuse apology or offer to come out and help. I was pretty peeved at Lowes by the time I was done. Perhaps some day I will become smart enough to go into the store and demand that someone get the ball moving after waiting five minutes instead of waiting fifteen mintues to half an hour and then loading it all myself.

I was very thankful to get home without further trouble.

That evening I had to go back to Lowes for another load because the truck couldn’t carry the weight of sand and pavers in one trip. This time ended in disaster. At Lowes I actually got competent help the second time and with a forklift in action I had the truck loaded with my 27 or so bags of sand in a jiffy. But my brilliance was my undoing.

I have a bit of a phobia about transporting stuff. I always have this nagging fear that somehow it will all come loose to an accompanying great disaster, embarrassment, and perhaps police trouble. I never want to be the poor fellow you see on the highway who has his stuff scattered down the last two miles of road.

So . . .

My second load from Lowes consisted primarily of the twenty-something 50 lbs bags of sand and some eight foot plastic lattice panels. How was I going to get all of this into the truck? Since Teman’s truck had an extended cab I couldn’t get the lattice to lay flat without dropping the back gate. I had visions of the light lattice blowing away if I put it on top so I put the lattice on the bottom and stacked the sand on top. The bags of sand would keep the plastic panels in place, I figured.

The rest of you experienced people can stop sniggering up your sleeve now.

I was a very cautious and careful fellow driving home and by some miracle managed to not dump my load on any of the people behind me at the various stops on the way. Then I came to the last intersection a mere hundred yards from Grandma’s driveway. At that point I was nearly giddy with relief. I was home-free. Everything was done. No big disasters this time. And so I accelerated out of that stop perhaps just a little faster than the other times. Just fast enough to break the slight friction holding the slick plastic panels in the bed of the truck and send them to sleighing out the back, neatly depositing my entire load smack in the middle of the road.

I remained completely obviously and happily drove the rest of the way home. (See why you should never hire me?)

As I pulled into the driveway I noticed a truck following close behind me, and thought it rather odd. But I figured maybe someone was just using the driveway to turn around, so I ignored the vehicle, parked, and hopped out.

“Hey! Hey, sir! Were you carrying a load?”

Were.

Never had the past tense carried such dreadful meaning.

“Because if you were . . .”

“Oh, dear Lord,” I said, horrified realization coming in an instant.

“It’s just back at the intersection, come on!” the man said.

We hopped back into our trucks and zipped back to the scene of the crime. Never have I hurled bags of sand so fast. I was flipping them into the truck one right after another. Another passerby stopped and helped load. The three of us had the truck loaded in record time. They had my profuse apologies. No police showed up.

It could have been a much worse disaster. Instead, it was a minor disaster, a big embarrassment, and one of those country-life male bonding experiences.

I guess.

Such was the excitement from the patio project. Beyond all of that I am very happy to report everything went smoothly.

Building Barn Doors

I have never built barn doors before this summer. The closest I came was a door to a goat shed. Even if you have constructed and mounted a barn door before it is not a project you are ever advised to undertake by yourself for the simple reason that mounting long lengths of metal track is difficult to do by yourself and mounting an eight foot door by yourself can be a bit dicey. Not deterred by these facts of reality, I undertook building and mounting two new barn doors for Grandma, all by myself.

I will admit the only thing that allowed me to do this was the fact that the faceboard over the old bard doors was level, which allowed me to use it as a guide for mounting my track. If that hadn’t been the case doing the project by myself would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible. It also helped that I am still very fit, and so remain dexterous and able to lift heavy objects with one arm. (Translate: I can do dangerous things on a ladder.) Nonetheless, there were a couple times when the whole process was a little dicey. If you have ever tried holding an eight foot 2×8 up to a line with one hand while nailing the board with the other hand–well, you probably haven’t tried but let me tell you it was about the very limit of my dexterity, strength, and patience.

If you are comfortable with the principles of carpentry then the theory of constructing track barn doors and mounting them is simple. The only really challenge I had was doing it all by myself. I honestly wasn’t sure I would be able to pull it off solo. With each door being eight feet wide, I wasn’t at all sure I would be able to mount them on the track alone. I simply dragged them out and gave it a try. They were a bit heavy, but the biggest problem was the fact that I could only work one end at a time when it came to mounting. Grandma thought I couldn’t do it, and watched (or gaped) as I righted first one door and balanced it precariously then slid it onto the track and then did the same with the other.

A quick test showed both doors slide smoothly and easily in their track and hung true.

I was very pleased.

To finish the project off I replaced the old wooden panel in front of the loft opening with a sliding glass window.

The Bike Shed

With the barn doors as a warm up, my next project was building a 10×10 bike shed for Mom. I have built other structures of similar size before, so there was nothing intrinsically challenging about the task. Since the only time I had to work on the shed was during my one day off from taking care of Grandpa (when someone else would watch him) the only real issue I was working with was time constraints. So the one challenge I set for myself was to build the shed as quickly and efficiently as possible.

A good part of the first day was spent at Lowes picking up the supplies. The journey home this time was uneventful, though I was uneasy for the entire journey because I had over-loaded Teman’s truck and the trailer to fit all of the lumber in one trip. I drove home very slowly, envisioning all sorts of disasters.

It was already afternoon by the time I reached Mom and Dad’s and began working on construction. I had plenty of help for building the shed, so the important thing in this project was to make sure I knew exactly what needed to be done, in what order, and know who to tell to do what. I think I succeeded in my aim for efficiency and speed. I worked hard, and late, the first day–to nearly 11:00 PM. By the end of the first day almost half of the roof sheathing was on, and some of the wall sheathing. Dad volunteered to watch Grandpa so I could work a second day, and by the end of the second day I had the roof completed and all of the wall sheathing tacked on.

In basic form, I had the 10×10 shed built in two days. Given the constraints I worked with, I felt I couldn’t ever expect to do better.

As the final touch I built and hung the doors later, at my leisure. I also built two bike racks for the shed using ripped 2x4s. I felt a bit like a genius for this (or at least brilliantly frugal) because the bike hanging gear you can purchase is pretty pricey. For the cost of a hanging hook for a single bike I built two racks for a total of eight or so bikes. Ha. Beat that Walmart.

The Cabinet

I am not–and never will be–a true finish carpenter. I think that even if I had all of the right equipment, I would still be a little short on patience. For really good finish carpentry you need good tools and a lot of patience and attention to detail. Because of my personal flaws, I will never be able to boast about the beauty of my finished carpentry work, but that doesn’t keep me from dabbling in it for fun.

I decided to build a cabinet from scratch, according to my own design, just because. This is the first cabinet I have ever built, a complete learning experience. If a real carpenter saw it he would have a fit. The cabinet is very solid, but I made some mistakes, and did a number of ugly things. For this cabinet I can say in my defense that I was learning, and I didn’t have all the right tools. (I was using a framing chop-saw and trying to get by with a shortage of proper clamps.) I will never make finished carpentry as a professional job but as a challenge and mind-stretching experience for myself I enjoy it.

Of all the the projects I did last summer I think the cabinet intimidated me the most. Building the cabinet required a lot of precise cutting. Staring at the pile of lumber and starting the cutting–believing that it would all come together in the cabinet at the end–was an act that gave me pause.

Perhaps the biggest mistake I made was purchasing a sheet of stainless steel that was far too heavy gauge. I just about broke my thumbs trying to cut the thing down to size with tin snips (I told you I don’t have the right tools), and the difficulty in working with it made the finished top not come out as polished as I had hoped. Also, I felt like a giant idiot when I realized (after the fact) that I had put the wrong side of the stainless steel up (I put the better face down). On the positive side (I say dryly) the steel top of the cabinet should make a good shield in the event of a gun-battle.

Today I will write about dreams I had this week, just so you can all worry about my mental stability. Don’t let Freud get his hands on this.

Early this week I had a dream about a scale. It was bright florescent pink and made from a textured plastic fabric. Apparently I had bought it, and was pretty pleased with this fancy new scale that was rolled up. I unrolled the scale and stood on it to see what I weighed. I was unhappy with the number on the scale, and couldn’t believe I was that fat. Then I realized the number I wanted to see was how much fat I had–this was one of those fancy new scales that can somehow use an electrical current to measure your body fat content. I reasoned that since the number was so high and I clearly wasn’t that fat the scale must not be working properly or I was doing something wrong. Then I saw the little electronic eye (or button) beside the digital number display, and understood I had to put my big toe on that button to get a reading of my body fat. So I put my big toe on the button and the number on the display was much better. I was very pleased.

I did it again . . . and again . . . and again.

Then I woke up.

My thought on waking was, “That has got to be one of the stupidest dreams I have ever had. What a waste of dreaming. If I am going to dream it could at least be of something more interesting than a pink fabric scale that checks my body fat weight every time I put my big toe over the button.”

Later in the week I dream I was in college and had forgot to write my finals paper, tomorrow was the last day of class, it was late at night, and I was very tired. I could either try to stay up and write the paper (being so tired I could barely keep my eyes open) or I could go to bed and hope I could get up early enough to write the paper in the morning. I was appalled and deeply, deeply, embarrassed that I could possibly have forgotten something so important. Mortification and self-recriminations filled me as I tried to figure out what had gone wrong, and what I was going to do about it.

“But what . . . But how . . . I can’t possibly . . . how did I forget . . .” I thought to myself, and the emotions responded, Oh, you forgot! You bad little boy, you completely forgot! You forgot so bad, and now you’re in troubleeee!

“Wait a minute,” I thought. “I’m not in college, am I? I haven’t been in college for years.”

Yes you are, and you’re in trouble.

“No, I’m not! I’m not in college! I’m not in college! I don’t have a paper due tomorrow! I don’t have any papers due tomorrow! This is a dream! This must be a dream! Yes, this is a dream!”

I was very glad to wake up.

Probably just about everyone who has gone to college has had similar college dreams. What I find so odd in my case is that I only took two college classes in a non-matriculated status. I did very well in both classes, and never forgot a paper. I don’t recall having nightmares at the time about missing papers. But in the years afterwards I have intermittently but consistently had dreams where I am back in college and have forgotten a paper was due, forgot I signed up for a class, forgot to pay a bill, forgot to catch the bus–or any number of other variations on embarrassing forgetfulness.

Clearly the event made a deep impression on my psyche.