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Several years ago, my wife and I were watching a W.C. Fields movie. W.C. Was lying on the couch and his wife walked by. “Honey, it’s time to come to bed” she said. W.C. Answered in his raspy voice “I’m to tired to go to bed!”
In the last few days, that has been me. Of the 5 or 6 jobs I was “on call” for, I was suddenly immersed in heavy duty part time work. I shoveled gravel for a local guy for 5 and a half hours, only to come home, get a drink of water and go to another guy’s job site and shovel gravel. When I went to bed, my arms felt like they were going to fall off.
The next day, I went to a 3rd guy’s place of business, and delivered bed mattresses. ”Now this one here has a motor and metalwork in the foundation, so it’s pretty heavy,” was the admonition. Sure enough, he was right. I was encouraged by my my co-worker to be careful, because there was some very expensive artwork in the house which we wouldn’t want to take out with a bed mattress.
That reminds me of a painter’s story in Aspen: A painter spilled a bucket of paint on a very expensive rug while doing some touch up work in multi-million dollar house in an exclusive part of Aspen.. Knowing that the wife was at home, the painter did some quick thinking, and saved his skin. He grabbed the little house dog, and rolled the dog in the paint and began yelling “BAD FIFI! BAD DOG!” The wife came running to find that her little dog had knocked over the paint bucket, and was covered in paint. “Oh, my poor little Fifi!” She cried as she scooped up the scapegoat. She never questioned the painter, but instead thanked him for keeping the dog from running all over with paint on him.
After delivering the mattresses, I went home and fell into bed. I think I dreamed about my arms falling off.
Today, I went to another job site where I shoveled gravel, threw rocks, and hung on to a bucking mule for 6 hours. If I don’t fall face first into my soup tonight, it will be a miracle. Did I mention that I need to finish installing the big glulam beam on my house tonight? It’s true.