A Truly Great Day

Last night was brutal. I kept waking up in shocking pain from muscle cramps. At one point, my left heel was suddenly pulled tight and hard against my thigh and I could not get up or get it to relax and it was scream-out-loud painful (I didn’t).

By bed is high so rolling out meant a long fall. It was awful, but I did it and I wrapped my knee in a bandage I have for my back that makes heat. No doubt it was from all the bending up and down from stacking the wood yesterday.

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I’m very happy I met Amy and I’m grateful for the company of Patsy and Jay. Still, after GIRO-ing with Amy and dining at Jay’s on Saturday, I was very happy to wake up on Sunday — except for having to step over Leon’s gift of the dead mouse — and know I had the whole day to myself.

Sundays are particularly pleasant alone; I love the idea of keeping the day as a day of rest and solitude. Even on a blustery winter day I’m happy alone at home with Leon and the fire.  

I’ve become very attached to my workshop/garage. It’s very well lit and there are, plenty of wall outlets for power and there’s even a nice new heater in there. I like that it’s so large and rough. I can enjoy assembling my patio furniture — and storing it — in there, out of the rain and cold. It’s a lovely space for dirty work whereas my studio is a place I will want to keep clean. It’s kind of like having a stand-alone basement. I’ve my generator in it, a spare freezer my aforesaid deck furniture, my car, my recycling bins and I’ve still acres of empty space.

Clearing space to stack my wood in the woodshed I found an old — extremely old — table saw. I’m going to move it into the workshop and see if it’ll start up because if it does, I can turn a lot of the left over wood here into kindling instead of chopping my nice fir.

By nine o’clock Sunday there was blue sky and sunlight burst into the glade of trees outside my office window. After the storms of the past couple of days, the sun was such a joy to see — I was suddenly gifted with a day to stack wood. I got started at 9:15.

First I had to put some sides on my woodshed to keep the rain out. Then I started stacking and by 11:30 my back was aching! Picking up all the wood off the ground and stacking it, starting low, meant I was bobbing up and down for hours. I did a yeoman’s job for a novice landowner who’s a sneeze away from seventy.

Thank God Todd suggested I get a wheelbarrow and that I bought some work gloves. I had my wireless speaker outside; it was Mozart, Bach and Vivaldi and me mastering the woodpile. For breaks, I fed the birds.

Around noon, my friend Ally’s mother, Sherrie, whom I’ve never met before, came by to introduce herself. And she introduced to my neighbours Elwyn, Deborah and Nancy. Sherrie had two dogs with her and so did Nancy; Elwyn and Deborah share one dog.

Then it was back to work but by 1:45 I was done ... not the work. My hands, wrists and forearms ached but I was almost finished by then.

I went into the village to get something special for dinner (pie) as a reward for all the work I did today and to get some different cat food to try to get Leon to eat. He’s wasting away right in front of my eyes. I got kitty junk food (Whiskas) and he loved it! I was thrilled. Then we both collapsed by the fire.  

At 3:30 I returned to work and finished it: Two cords entirely stacked. Then I folded my massive tarpaulin and cleaned up the yard. Then it was into the hot tub and it was fab-u-lous. What a great way to relax after a day of stacking wood. 

I got out feeling as limp as overcooked pasta, got into my also fabulous flannel pajamas for barbequing my dinner and settled in by the fire to wait for The Durrells in Corfu with Leon. All in all, a truly grand day.