Saturday, May 26, 2007

Fixing A Hole Where The Rain Gets In

When you fall off a bicycle, you're supposed to get right back on and ride. The same is true of being thrown from a horse. After yesterday's thirteen hours of essentially non-stop television viewing, there was no real interest in sitting down on the couch and letting the comforting glow from across the room absorb me once again.
Instead, I climbed up on the roof. I have an absurd connection to this phrase which is connected to what I believe is the funniest joke in the world, but it is in fact what I did. There was a section of the roof over our back porch that had been rotting for several months now and today was the day that had nothing for me to do - except fix the dry rot on the porch roof.
The best part of the job was that I got to use a number of different power tools. Like so many things in my life, my carpentry skills have always been a little suspect, but I make up for that with a certain swagger and bravado. Of course I can fix it: plywood, nails, shingles, what else?
For one thing, I'm doing most of the work on the roof. Even my devil-may-care attitude couldn't make up for the fifteen or so feet between me and the ground. I know the acceleration of gravity on Earth is generally considered to be a constant, and I know my mass (give or take the weight of the tools on my belt) and I only needed to do a little conversion from feet to mass to figure out what force my body would make on the concrete below. I chose instead to concentrate on the task at hand.
Three hours later, the rotted wood was in the compost bin, and the rusty nails had been thrown away. The new wood needs a coat of paint to match the rest of the porch, but order has been restored in my corner of the universe once again. Now I have the rest of the day to fight the urge to lay on the couch and watch television.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good job! For both watching all
of the Planet of the Apes but for
fixing the roof. I don't know
which is more impressive.

Snort