Okay.
Okay.
I’m going to be okay.
It’s just a scratch. The rusty nail that I stepped on managed to end up mostly between my toes. Not much blood at all. When I hobbled quickly back to the house to see and treat my new opening, I was happy to see that I had noticed the rusty nail penetrating my shoe and sock and foot fast enough not to have let much damage be done. Considering what I could see, it shouldn’t be a big deal. I washed it out with antibacterial soap, dried it, applied triple antibiotic ointment and a bandaid, and after my pulse began to slow a bit, I put my sock and shoe back on. I even tried to go back to doing what I had been doing when the trouble occurred, but I’m still a little too tense for that.
So here I am.
How are you guys doing? How’s the new year treating you? If I can get my internet access working I may get on writing the code that will translate all the dates on my blog to the Adjusted Calendar. Writing code should be relaxing. Hardly and chance of tearing open one’s flesh on rusty nails while sitting at one’s desk writing mathematical algorithms. Right now I’m writing this post in a text editor while my computer fights with my ISP. Hooray!
Relax. Relax.
Deep breaths.
Okay. So, yeah. I now really, really, really want to get that mess of a compost heap slash wood pile slash deathtrap cleaned up and taken care of as soon as possbile. Sure, there are dozens of other dangerous piles of scrap and such around the property, but this one, this one that keeps trying to tear into my flesh, this one has got to go first. Except that like so many other things I am finding need to be done up here, I can do it by myself (with a little instruction by grandfather at the very beginning of the task) over the course of weeks OR I can get help from an able-bodied and willing person and get it done in very little time.
Like those stacks of 2x4s (and a few other assorted sizes) that were rotten and needed to be cut up and put in the wood shed. I did some myself and then a couple of days later I did some with my brother, Heath. In the same amount of time with his help we did more than three times as much work. Three times! If I had Heath’s help (or someone else who would be willing to do the work reasonably, and was able-bodied), I could get that damned wood-pile/mess cleaned up in a day or maybe a weekend instead of perhaps not seeing it done for months.
Because even working by myself, things are hard to get done up here. There are literally hundreds of things that need to be done up here, and as often as not my grandfather will get me started on another one before I’ve had a chance to finish the first. So maybe I understand why there are so many unfinished projects around here despite all the time my father spent up here; he was surely working under the same man as I am now, plus that’s how he works anyway. I just want to do a job until it’s done. If I thought I could get it done myself, I’d be out there working on that mess right now. But first grandfather wants as much of the ‘brush’ (ie: tree branches… I’d never heard tree branches referred to as ‘brush’ before I came up here, and that seems to be the exclusive meaning my grandfather applies to that word…) that’s mixed into and beyond the compost heap meets wood pile meets dangerous mess collected and loaded onto the truck. So we can take it to the dump Sunday when they aren’t charging to dump brush. Which would be fine, except I have to walk over and dig through the dangerous materials (and/or sink into the compost) to get that job done. And I don’t want more rusty nails in my body.
Did I mention that I was in the process of turning over a couple of boards with rusty nails that I had noticed when the one I hadn’t went into my shoe? Fun.
I’m still feeling a little stressed out about that, and now I have a new wound to check on daily to be sure it doesn’t show signs of infection. My grandfather is probably looking for me right now. He’s probably decided it’s time to go get the backhoe running to bring a scoop or two of gravel over to cover the dirt floor he had me level in the middle of collecting brush earlier today. Ooop. I can hear the backhoe’s engine. I filled it with diesel earlier. I better go. I’ll be back later and write more.
