Friday, August 25, 2006

The joys of drywall and deer

Not a lot happened with the farm house this week, so for those looking strictly for updates, you may as well pack it in now. I won’t get a lot of work done on the farm house until the city house is fully refurbished and ready for sale. Hopefully, that will be two or three weeks. My day job really interferes with my ability to get work done. I am completely mystified at people who can watch television 20-40+ hours per week.

I guess I did receive my scaffolding which is mostly set up at the new house. The bid to put gutters on the house and garage was almost $1,400. Five hundred dollars worth of scaffolding suddenly looks like a bargain. Materials cost for the gutters will run about $300. Plus I get “free” scaffolding out of the deal.

I picked up all the supplies to hook up the sump pump. If I’m too tired to do actual work, I can at least go shopping.

We do have some deer that drop by every day to check on progress at the house. Mostly, they check out the corn that I put out for them, and the salt block. The most frequent visitors are a young doe and her even younger fawn, still with a few fading white spots. I was watching them work on the salt block yesterday morning. Deer have amazingly long tongues. I use binoculars sometimes, though they are scarcely fifty feet behind the house.

Even though deer are pretty and I like having them around, I intend to shoot a couple this fall. Venison is tasty, naturally lean and low in cholesterol. Of course it’s organic in the sense that they don’t get growth hormones and antibiotics in their feed. Deer cost farmers millions of dollars a year in crop damage. The deer population in this state could use a lot of thinning out anyway. Failure to do that will cause lots of deer to starve to death this winter and increase the risk for a big die off from Chronic Wasting Disease (the deer version of Mad Cow disease) and other disease issues.

Despite the fact that not a lot of things happened at the country house, other things did happen. I finished the repair of the plaster work (on the city house) in the living room, dining room and office, praise the Lord oh my soul!

I’m not fast at drywall/plaster work. This is probably due to the fact that I don’t hang or finish drywall for a living. The finished product is top quality though. On the whole, I think this is not a bad trade off. I would be miserable doing this 8-10 hours a day. The way it stands now, I actually have moments when I can disregard the aching shoulders, the choking dust, the filthy hair and clothes and the grit in my eye. I can find satisfaction and even joy in making a broken, rough surface into something that is smooth and satisfying to the eye and the hand.

I attribute this joy to the fact that we are made in the image of God. We all find pleasure in fixing things that need it, unless we are deeply separated from our maker. It could be the car, the house, the research paper, the kids’ toys, mending clothes or the relationship with our spouse. We all have our area of expertise. But He is the great fixer, and will ultimately right every wrong.

Have an exceptionally good week.

troy

No comments:

Blog Archive