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Lack of hard evidence 

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This weeks farming Update from BEN

Did you ever watch a dog chasing a ball or a stick and watch them running and grabbing at it off the ground and think, doesn’t that hurt your lips scraping them across the gravel like that? 

We pondered that playing with Luna the other day. It doesn’t seem to bother Luna. 

Daughter came up with this Halloween costume all on her own:

Last week driving to Plainview there was a lot of corn still standing. This week a lot of corn has been harvested. Not mine, but all the corn around us. Several guys have finished. And now they’re hard into fall fertilizer and tillage. If any of you retired people want a job, I’m sure you could go to any of the larger farms in the area and get a job driving a tractor or truck for about 3 months. Depending on weather, it’s long days, lack of sleep, field meals, and, if you’re like my brother, “it’s just round and round- it’s boring!” But it’s big equipment and it can be fun. It wouldn’t work for me right now. I can’t get there until mid morning by the time I take daughter in. And I may have to leave mid-afternoon to pick her up. And I have a show this evening… Nope, I’m not the ideal candidate. YOU might be! 

And the equipment sure is fun to see. 

This week was all about getting the college show finished. We have our first show at 2:00 PM Saturday, the 1st. It will be ready, and ‘good enough’, but if I had more time, I’d tweak a little more. 

It’s a good thing this set isn’t any bigger. I don’t know what happens to me that everything turns into a rush at the end, whether trying to get book work done to meet my accountant, or finish a set, or get the machine shed enclosed before cold weather comes, apparently I think I like the thrill of the rush of adrenaline and the whooshing sound the deadlines make as they go past.

Music lately has been some boogie woogie piano, my usual ‘All That Jazz’ movie soundtrack, and then playing a video of “The Gospel at Colonus”, from 1985. The full show is available on YouTube. I’ve had the CD for years, and we saw it at the Ordway maybe 10 years ago. This production has Morgan Freeman, Jevetta Steele, The Five Blind Boys of Alabama, and SO MUCH good gospel music. I was painting alone and singing and shouting along. HALLELUJAH! AMEN!

So. The lack of concrete. I mentioned on the blog one day that I didn’t feel good over the weekend and postponed the concrete. 

Last Friday afternoon I rented a little machine called a plate compactor. It’s about the size of a small snowblower, I believe the plate measured 17“ x 20“ and its got a little Honda gas engine on it, and a long handle and when you rev it up it vibrates really fast and compacts whatever it is you’re trying to compact. In this case, about 8 inches of gravel as a sub-base for the concrete. It goes really good in one direction; pretty much drives itself. And it’s not too hard to go in circles, but if you drive it into a corner, you’re kind of stuck. The only instructions they gave me when I picked it up was how to start it. Later on I was on YouTube trying to find some instructions on running this thing, or if there was a certain amount of time you needed to compact material and the only videos I could find were how to start it. What somebody needs to make is a video that’s gonna tell you right up front, this thing’s gonna kick your ass. For the first half an hour. Because when you drive it into the corner the only way to get it back out is to use brute force and pull it back against the machine’s compaction motion. And eventually you’ll figure out you can flip the handle over and sort of steer it, almost one handed, but that doesn’t really help if you’re in a corner with a couple of walls. Anyway I learned a lot that first hour. And when I woke up Saturday morning, muscles I didn’t know I had hurt. And then my stomach started to hurt, then I got the chills, and I just didn’t feel that great. But, I had a lot of work to do. 

WFriday evening I had finished compacting the sub base inside the shed, that  20′ x 20‘ area. Saturday morning I started putting gravel in. Kelly came and helped. That woman really is too good for me. She has an attention to detail that I don’t. She’ll spend hours working on something that I said was “good enough” long before. I was still feeling terrible and I finally had to go in the house and take a nap. Three hours later she was still adding a little gravel here, taking off a little there. She used those YouTube videos to learn how to start the machine and she was compacting gravel. We use one of those laser levels that sits on a tripod and puts out a green laser beam line. Then I have a stick with three marks on it: the height of the existing concrete, then a mark for the sub-base, and a mark for the Gravel. 

Kelly is not afraid of hard work and she said she was enjoying it. I just wanted to move on because I’m always moving onto the next project. 

Saturday night I came in the house and took a shower and then I soaked in the tub for half an hour and I went to bed.

Sunday morning we were back at it. All we had to do on Sunday was a little area 13‘ x 6‘ to be a walkway at the front door of the shop. I didn’t have much energy and if I had to get on the ground to do something, I tended to stay there for a while. Outside the shed, I cut a hole in the wall and shoved a piece of PVC pipe in for the drain, and then I laid in the dirt for a while. There was a thistle under my left shoulder. It hurt. Eventually I got up. 

And by Monday, I knew I had to postpone the concrete. I needed to take that off my plate. A friend told me I don’t need a plate, I need a turkey platter. Yeah. That’s about right. 

Almost ready!

Speaking of pondering, I read these two phrases in a new display at the college art gallery. :

Ouch. That seems kinda harsh.
This one reminds me of that quote: “In order to discover new lands, you must consent to lose site of the shore.”

The display is photographs by Ethan Aaro Jones, and is called “Unsearchable Distance”.

PONDER WHY WE DO DUMB STUFF.

ANY GOOD GOSPEL MUSIC STORIES TO SHARE?

34 thoughts on “Lack of hard evidence ”

  1. Good grief… if anybody could truly figure out why we do dumb stuff, they could write a book, make a fortune on it and buy a small island in the Caribbean!

    Occasionally I think I’m getting smarter. I reminded myself to move the tray of Ukrainian egg ornaments before I tried to set my coffee cup down on the little heater on my desk. Yea!

    But then when making apple muffins, I set the bowl with the chopped apples on top of the flour tin and then promptly knocked it over. Apples all fell onto the stovetop/burner, so then had to be thoroughly washed and dried off before I could continue. Nay!

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  2. I do dumb stuff when I’m in a hurry, which is almost always. Or when I’m feeling stubborn, or mad. Maybe later I’ll relate some of the dumbest things I’ve done lately…

    I used to enjoy the Hopeful Gospel Quartet on Prairie Home Companion, but that’s about as close as I get. Couple of Twin Cities friends have sung with a gospel choir up there and really enjoyed it…

    Yep, you got a good one with Kelly, Ben. And love Daughter’s Halloween costume.
    (We got just three sets of kids last night.)

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  3. Spent my childhood driving in ever tightening circles. My theory is I have never properly unwound.
    I used a plate compactor a few times in my late teens when my father took a few jobs running cement. A beastly device, but I did master it.
    The Anonymous Four. Been listening to them this week.

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  4. I think I was born to do dumb stuff so that others don’t have to. I’m very proficient at it.

    I love gospel music. I don’t have any stories about it, but I love listening to it and singing along.

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  6. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    This morning I paid for someone else’s dumb stunt. Lou and his aide were painting yesterday. I saw that they left the paint out. I picked it up to tip off the rainwater, and the paint spilled on my right foot and the sidewalk. I was furious about this because they should have closed the can securely and put it away, especially his aide. (Jimmy is a terrific aide for Lou). It took me a couple hours to stop being angry and get myself paint free, then anger free. Lou cannot help that he forgets such things. Jimmy should have done this and I will talk with him about it. He is usually careful about such things. On top of the spilled paint, the puppy was a wild man this morning, pulling on my clothing and shoes which I did not need on top of the paint coverage.

    I don’t have gospel stories, but I enjoy it. Many years ago we used to take our kids to the Park Ave Methodist Gospel festival in the summer, which was wonderful. It was a neighborhood celebration that was pure joy. I do not know if they still do this.

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      1. Bought no candy cuz there are few trick and treaters, turned out the lights at sunset then hid in the downstairs family room watching tv (Great BritishBake Off)

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  8. OT – Archie Fischer has just passed away.

    “And when I die, you can lay me down,
    Sing haul away, my laddie O,
    In her rusty hold where the breakers pound. And sing haul away, my laddie O.”
    –from “The Final Trawl,” ɓy Archie Fisher

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  9. Add another dumb thing to my list. I’m at the laundromat for my semi annual washing of the allergy covers and bedding and pillows. I had loaded up one of the two washers and started the one and poured the detergent into the other and that was when I realized that the credit card machine for that one had been removed. It didn’t even occur to me that this one particular machine in the midst of all the others would not have credit card ability. And while I do have enough quarters to make it run, I didn’t want to use them all up because I might need them for drying. So I had to move the clothes to another washer. Look before you leap.

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  13. I think we can do dumb things to gain a measure of happiness. This can often be unrealistic like buying something you can’t afford. There is a podcast on this stupidity/happiness quotient somewhere in the Hidden Brain archives.

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