Glass and Concrete

This morning I went by the glazier's after laps in the pool and got the driver's window replacement set in train.

 The Bus has her new window installed and is now parking on the street across from the house because I have started breaking up the old butcher's market slab in the back yard.  I waited till eight in the evening to start, when the weather was down to the middle eighties and the Sun was not beaming directly onto me.  I'll be working by streetlamp.

 I've been working with my rented jackhammer for forty-five minutes, and I have taken apart maybe a twentieth of the ancient concrete - thank God there's no rebar in the slab; I don't know about the grade beam yet.  It's harder . . . 

 A buddy of mine said he busted his ass in grad school so he wouldn't have to do sch-tuff like this.  I considered that then, and again now.  The physicality of the world is a really groovy puzzle I get to dork around with.

 Forty-five minutes on; fifteen minutes off.

 Last March I turned seventy-three, and I guarantee-damn-tee, neither of my granddads nor my father were doing this at my age.  That's OK.  I'm just rocking the sweat and effort I'm burning here to make the wee bit of the world I inhabit the shape I want it to be.

 I'm sweating in ways and places I've never sweated before . . . not even on the Navy Boot Camp grinder in San Diego.  

 This is hard work, but, by God, I'm doing it.  Not fast, not well, but fast enough and well enough.

 I'm loving it.

 And Life is Good.

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