The Retaining Wall is Slowly Murdering Me.

We had to stop working on it. Our bodies gave out. I hit that point where I had to give myself a pep talk every single time I went to pick up a rock. You know, the heaviest rocks I can conceivably lift. Those rocks*. I mean just look at the amount of work we got done.

Yes, that is a full scale lawn chair. In case you were wondering. Also, at some point during this ordeal Scott did some more math and figured out that we did not have enough weight. Do you know how you add weight to the wall? More rocks, Ha ha ha, how ever did you guess?

So I'm a little bitter.

I never thought that I would find myself identifying with Boxer from animal farm and his 'I will work harder' mantra. But this retaining wall is taking everything I've got and then some. I hit some sort of wall yesterday where we both decided that we couldn't do this anymore. 

Glamor shot!

With the wall growing in height, it became impossible to use creekside rocks, which meant only one thing, we were headed for the rock bar. For those of you that don't know, a rock bar is a big strip of rocks that lay on the surface. They can be treacherous to walk in because most of the rocks are huge and the smaller rocks are kind of wedged between them. So we had the fun take of grabbing these motherfucking huge ass rocks and waddling through possibly shifting footing to the pickup. Yay.

For every two or three rock trips we would alternate with a fill load of dirt that King (the backhoe) had dug up for us 'cause he's cool like that. Because there is nothing better for your back then lifting heavy shit and then digging a whole bunch.

Kill me.

Any who, I feel like I have been fighting the landscape. And that the landscape was fighting dirty by slapping us with 80 degree temperatures in motherfucking March. WTF Nature?

Seriously WTF?

Nature was all like, 'oh you want to work outside all day? Well fuck that shit, BAM eighty degrees bitches, take that cocksuckers!'

And then we were all 'why nature, what have we ever done to you?'

And then nature flipped us off.

Yeah that's pretty much how it went down.

* I can not stress this enough.

Want more retaining wall adventure? Here's part three. 

The Duct Work Was Trying To Murder Me.

So yesterday I had valiant battle against some duct work.

Owing to Scott having to work yesterday, I had put in all the duct work under the trailer by myself. There was a lot of cursing, and unnecessary anger. I manged to stab myself in every finger in my right hand at at least once.

My day started off at 7am, and at exactly 7:45 I realized that Scott had purchased round duct work yesterday, but somehow it never occurred to me that he didn't assemble any of it. Now round duct comes loose, in that you have to snap it together into a tube. This is ridiculously hard to do. Fortunately luck was kinda in my corner. Most of the ducts went together nicely. However every fourth or fifth duct, the sides would slip out of the groove and a tear a lovely gouge out of my finger. If you are wondering why I was not wearing gloves, the answer is I was wearing gloves. Duct work is like a circular razor blade, in that it thirsts at all times for human blood.

I congratulated myself on the assembly, had a cup of tea, and prepared for round two, actually installing the damn stuff. Now what you have to understand here is that mobile* homes are not made to have an wood stove sitting in a shed out back. Meaning that none of the vents are anywhere near conveniently located.

It pretty much took me all day. The space under the trailer was enough that I could crouch over and kneel, but that was about it. Also, I had to install the ducts in a very specific order, because when the last duct went in I would not longer be able to get in there any longer.

I'm not sure if you have ever used self tapping metal screws before, but let me put it this way, it takes for ever for one to sink and then most likely it has only gone though the outer layer meaning you have to do the whole thing all over again. At one point I was sitting on my ass, holding a section on ductwork up with my foot, one arm around it, trying to screw on a piece of pipe, and thought that I might end up punching the next person in the face who talks about being able to sit around in their underwear on their days off.

I have cold air returns crossing over hot pipes, and three elbow joints hooked together like the tin man had just broken his leg and it was terrible compound fracture, but it got installed god damn it. I had to custom cut some pieces, but it all worked out and I had enough parts, and for that I am very thankful.

I choose to celebrate my badassery (and also the pain in my hands) by getting drunk. This seemed like a great idea until I realized that I hadn't really eaten anything since breakfast. Also I came to the conclusion that, if you are already a crappy cook, getting drunk will not help with that.

Which is how I ended up stabbing myself with a fork.

* If you are from West Virgina you are legally obligated to pronounce it mo-bile.