If the readers of this column remember from a previous
article, Al was determined to get his Kubota tractor and I was determined to
have my own garage. As you read this article the garage is being built, My
Sweet Al is driving his Kubota around the property and the old blue truck is
still in the yard. Some people can’t be budged like some of those big rocks.
While building on this garage, I’ve jumped through a lot of
hoops and over a lot of hurdles. I’ve uncovered things I didn’t know about,
which held up the process. I made people mad, and I’ve had to take the high
road on a few things. I’m still pushing toward having a garage and a nice yard.
The garage is under construction and now I’ve shifted to
yard work. I need Al’s Kubota. I’ve got big plans for him and his tractor, and
he has big plans for my garage. I said at the beginning, my garage is my garage.
Al has plans for a workbench and other things in my garage.
I told him his old vehicles would not be allowed to drip oil on my concrete
floor. And none of his junk will be in my garage. These are empty threats, and
he knows it. Talk as big as I want, reality sets in. The garage will be what it
needs to be.
My Sweet Al and I work in the yard between rains. I’m
terracing big rocks down to our pond and he’s on his Kubota moving dirt. He and
his tractor do the work of ten men. He feels the power of the tractor under him,
and I feel the weight of the rocks. I instruct him to back up and move the big rocks
for me. He backs up while looking forward. I dodge the swinging backhoe and
yell, “Stop. You caught my sweater in the backhoe.”
He didn’t hear me over the roaring motor and he drags my
sweater around the yard. Thank God, I wasn’t in my sweater. He took off one of the porches on my cabin.
Thank God, I wasn’t under the porch. Those rocks don’t move easily, but I have
learned to move quickly.
Men love the roar of motors. I don’t know what it is? I
think it gives them a sense of playing in the dirt with cars. You’ve seen how
little boys run their miniature cars up and down the sofa arm and make loud
noises. That’s the picture I get while Al runs up and down the pond bank and I
stay out of his way. I need his tractor, and I have no intentions to learn how
to drive it. So I make the most of it, and give him a margin for error.
I told him it was time to get off the tractor and help me put
down landscape fabric. I picked up the fabric and said, “No, don’t do it that way.”
He yelled back, “Hold the corner. You are folding it the
wrong way. You’re so left handed.”
I told him, “I know how to fold material. Hold the fabric
like this.”
Our youngest daughter came over to sunbathe. Al dropped the
fabric and said, “I’m taking off for a couple of hours and sunbathe with Angel.”
Not the thing to say. I gave Al a look. He knows the look.
“No, Al. I’m here to work, if you must sun, take off your shirt and get a tan
while you work.”
He said, “We’re losing sun.”
I said, “Oh really? It’s10 o’clock in the morning. You can
sun this afternoon. I need you and your tractor now.”
It’s free help when you can get it and sometimes I wrangle
the family into helping. I enticed our daughter by telling her I would save her
the worms. She loves to fish with her Dad.
I made sure to show her the worms and I counted them as I
shoveled up dirt. It kept her mind focused on the work. I got a couple extra
hours worth of work from Al. He got sunburned
on his back, and he’s red as a beet. Our daughter got her worms and they made
plans to go fishing. I got a lovely terrace by the pond. All is well.
Next project my art cabins. They need repaired and painted. With
one porch torn off by the tractor, I need Al’s help. For Mother’s Day I ordered
myself a motorized Zoom Paint Gun for My Sweet Al to paint my cabins. I let him
look at it in the box. He thinks it will be fun. I’ll let him think that, but
I’ve got my eye on thirty shutters on the cabin windows and five doors. It’s a
big job, hopefully I can stay out of the way and not wear the paint.
Whether we’re building a marriage, a garage or painting
cabins, we still talk. We might trade worms for work, or sun for backbreaking
rock moving, but the work gets done. I let My Sweet Al think he gets to park
his Kubota in my new garage.
Final Brushstroke! Al and I have learned to work together. He
knows I can talk as big as I want, but he’ll have his stuff in my garage by the
end of the day. What is mine is his, and what is his is mine when it’s all said
and done. It’s learning how to move the rocks and deal with the hard places.
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