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.

Comments

Post a Comment

I write for me but I care what my readers think. Please be polite and no scamming.

Popular posts from this blog

Polyethylene Packaging - a Dark Times Journal entry

Image
I was in the fourth grade when our family moved from El Paso, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We moved because I could not breathe the air there. I want to say they cracked petroleum there. But what did I know beyond the sky was sometimes yellow and I could not breathe. Mom was pregnant with Debbie, and Gary and I rode in the backseat separated by a round tank full of Dad's tropical fish. Dad had a job with Sealright, Inc which made paper milk cartons. Sealright was a polyethylene packing subsidiary of Phillips 66. The petroleum company. I was rather proud of myself for learning to say that, and to not laugh when adults would stare at me not knowing what to ask about that. Albuquerque smelled better. Then. Before all the freeways were built and the shape of the valley trapped the exhaust down near the ground in the winter months. We lived in the foothills. I could breathe. I learned that if I could see the air I could not. Still it was better than El Paso though I missed our trip...
Read more

Swimming

Image
For much of my college career my fitness workout was swimming on the B squad of the swim team. I remember it as the days before heated pools and women coaches. I also remember being so exhausted and cold I could only lean against the shower wall and throw up. Not exactly warm fuzzy images but I was in awesome shape. Needless to say it did not leave me with a overpowering desire to swim laps. Point of fact for years my swimming became really informal: Swimming to shore after the canoe tipped over, challenging my sister once a summer to across the lake and back, seeing how long I could back float without moving a muscle, and a scuba course. I also played around with other ways of staying fit: aerobics, bicycling, jogging, skiing and dance classes. All of which seem to be bad for the knees, back or feet. After my ski accident my physical therapist steered me back to the pool. Damn if I was going to swim laps! However, aqua fit was just getting rather seriously taken so I took it. It r...
Read more

The Pruning the Crown of Thorns

Image
Crown of Thorns Before I am a lover of Euphorbias . They are from the deserts of Southern Africa and Madagascar. They have evolved physical characteristics and forms similar to cacti of North and South America and are often incorrectly referred to as cacti. My big Crown of Thorns was one of my first of a growing collection of these succulents from the spurge family of Euphorbiaceae. I picked it up as a 6 inch plant in a New Iberia nursery when my sister and I were touring the northern gulf coast. I believe that was 15 years ago. I made an attempt at limiting its height a few years back to allow it to devote more energy to the new branches and make it a denser plant. That failed. And the height of the plant continued to challenge the window space and soon the long branches were leaning over and leaning against the window. I googled and found the proper way to prune this treasured plant. Still it was very difficult to cut off the four longer branches. Even with a plan. The f...
Read more