It Was A DAY

 You know what I mean.  Every day is a day, of course, but sometimes days come along that are DAYS.  

Yesterday was one of THOSE.

(Long Story Warning)

It all began with the dreaded question a spouse with A PLAN asks of the other: Have you got a minute?

Gary asked me a version of that day before yesterday:

"Have you got some time tomorrow?  It'll only take about an hour."

Hahaha...

Ha has been working on his corral in the West pasture, making it more sturdy for the handling of cattle, like when we have to vaccinate or weigh or whatever. He needed to set the head gate in concrete so they can't knock it around when being run through it.

He had the hole dug and the head gate placed in it, he just needed help with the concrete work.

Gary's had this concrete mixer he got off of the neighbor decades ago, like back in the 70s.  He has used it several times for different bigger projects in the past 20 years of our marriage.  If it's just a small concrete project we just use the wheelbarrow and a shovel.  But we are both getting older, so he thought he'd use the mixer.

The challenge there is getting a power source to it out in the field.

So here is our initial set up: the Kawasaki Mule to bring the wheelbarrow, shovel, large water jugs and the generator he bought from a different neighbor just a year or so ago, and the Oliver tractor to bring the cement mixer on its little stand thingy.  We'd had to make a couple of trips with the Mule to get all the things. Oh, and the Ford truck with all of the cement mix bags.

To shorten things up a bit, here is a semi-concise list of the events as they occurred...

*the first generator wouldn't start, despite having started with little trouble the last time it was tried...maybe a year ago.

*the welder generator was tried and also found lacking.  We didn't even take it out there.

*the 3rd option was the generator that attached to the PTO shaft on the blue tractor.

Woohoo! The third option worked!  

For 3 bags of cement.

Then when I plugged it in again the cord shorted out in my hand, flames actually shot out.

That was a bit disconcerting, and ended the use of the cement mixer.  

So after TWO hours of going back and forth and carting things hither and yon we mixed the last 7 bags of concrete with the shovel in the wheelbarrow.



Haha! 

After that we had to go to town to run errands and get 5 more bags of cement mix.

Then it was back home to finish.

We'd also had to work lunch in there, too 

So what with running back and forth between corral and barn and house and town the "it will only take an hour" job went from about 8:30 AM til about 1:30 PM.

But we actually spent the whole day together, which has become a rarity recently, and even with all the aggravation we maintained our sense of humor and no cross words were exchanged.  

So, all in all, it was a good one of THOSE DAYS.




Comments

Donna. W said…
Oh my, that WAS a day!
October 16, 2024 at 7:15 PM
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