OMG...somebody come help me up!
Those new rakes have nearly done me in.
Friday morning, shortly after my last post, as I was contemplating how I was going to spend my day off (time with the rakes wasn't even in the running), a daughter-in-law came in. She was scheduled to work from home, but her internet is crappy, and she needed to work from our home where the service is more reliable. She set up her laptop computer in our office, and then plugged a telephone directly into our router. I don't know a lot about internet/router stuff, but I figured it was probably best that I not spend much time online to keep from sucking up the bandwidth (if that's even a thing). It was a lovely, sunny day, so I decided to break out the rakes and get busy in the yard. Around 9 a.m., I put on my gardening gloves and went outside.
Now, I haven't done much hard physical labor in several months. My knee problem started acting up in November, then I came down with bronchitis that lasted for weeks, then the weather turned cold and icy, so I've been rather sedentary for a while. My muscles have turned into jelly.
Friday morning, though sunny, was a bit chilly. After about an hour of raking, my hands were cold and my nose was running to beat the band. I came inside, blew my nose, had another cup of coffee, rested a bit, went back outside. It was still cold, so all morning I'd work a bit, come in to warm up, then go back out. Finally, about 2 p.m., it was warm enough to work without needing to come inside to thaw. By the time The Husband came home at 6 p.m., I'd raked and burned about 30 piles of leaves/gumballs/sticks. My knee was throbbing, and every muscle in my body was screaming, "WTF?!" Around 7 p.m., I propped the rakes on the front porch and called it a day. I took a shower and a big dose of Tylenol and was in bed by 9.
Saturday was the day The Husband called in the troops to cut up the tree that had fallen in Nanny's yard. Grandsons arrived around 10. Son #1 still hadn't made it to our house with the chainsaw, so The Husband sent the grandsons down to Nanny's to rake pine needles in Nanny's yard until the chainsaw got here.
I was moving remarkably well after a night's rest, so I put on my gloves and went outside to resume my raking. The rakes were gone; the boys had taken them to Nanny's. I ripped off a few curse words, then went out to our shed to get our old rake. While in the shed, I found the leaf-blower and dragged it out, plugged it up, and started trying to corral the leaves/sticks/gumballs into a pile that I could burn. It was like herding cats. As I was working, The Husband came out and said that Son #1 had called with the news that the chainsaw needed a new chain, so he went to the hardware store to buy one. He came home with yet another yard rake. I put the leaf blower aside and started raking while The Husband went down to Nanny's to get on the tractor and haul away the pine needles that the boys had raked up.
Around 2:30, The Husband came home to tell me that Nanny had fixed lunch for everybody. By this time, I'd finished raking the yard on the north side of the house. I laid my rake down and went to Nanny's to eat. After lunch, the menfolk tackled the tree that had fallen across the garden. As soon as they cleared the limbs off the garden, I went out and started pulling up the fence posts that we'd used for supports for the tomatoes and running beans. It was nearly 7 p.m. by the time the guys finished with the tree. I still had not pulled the posts from the tomato rows - they were wired to hog-wire fencing, and I didn't have any wire cutters on me - but I said Screw this, and we all went home.
It took TWO doses of Tylenol to ease my aching everything.
Today, I question the wisdom of resuming the raking job, but there's still a lot of yard left to do.
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