Struts and frets


Macbeth:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.


Yesterday was about doing. Doing what I really didn't want to do in weather I did not want to do it in. March again gave us gale force winds chilling a day that would have been great without it.

I am trying to clean up my property. More specifically the huge mess the last tenants left. And a scrap wood pile the studio contractor left and I added to. It all has gotten totally out of hand. With no help from the winds this winter which more than any previous year seems to have blown in trash from Hwy 434. I hate litterbugs.

It all seemed to go so very slowly. Especially when you factored in hot tea breaks to warm the chilled bones and muscles. I would cup my hands around the warm ceramic of the mug and stare at my computer screen seeking diversion or some relief from the boredom of picking up chip wrappers and water bottles and beer cans. There was a full bottle of soda. How did that blow in? And then back to clearing up the scrap wood and lumber. Running up to the dumpsters with another full black trash bag.

The dumpsters are up wind on the road. They are supposedly bear-proof (if there is such a thing) or were before the locking lids broke. By bears? Or people just trying to get bigger stuff in them? And if they are not dumped on schedule the tourists just put their bags of trash at the base of the blue boxes. The out of control dogs and ravens do a good job with those, so more trash blowing the winds.

Yesterday seemed to last forever with not much progress on the jobs at hand.The trailer a friend left in my drive for this purpose seemed to get fuller, but the piles of scrap wood seemed about the same. Be nice to just burn it. Especially the raked up firewood scraps in the tenant's yard. But the winds and the dryness of the winter makes that impossible to even consider. It has to go to the transfer station to be burned in controlled conditions. When the winds got so bad I could not control the trash bags (had visions of floating away like Mary Poppins) or pieces of wood scrap I was carrying I quit. Today's weather is suppose to be worse. Blizzard. I have inside jobs in the rental unit to complete.

Wish I had taken before pictures. Something to measure my progress against. Just cleaning up trash is not as rewarding as remodeling the front porch or painting a picture. I kept thinking of worker ants taking yet another grain of sand to the top of the hill and turning around to go get another.

And it is still March.

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