Andrew's View of the Week

Writing isn’t a summer time sport.  When the weather is warm it’s time for travels with family, being in the garden, working in my shop, walking – almost anything other than sitting at my desk writing.

I’ve got tons of things I could be writing.  The daily notes of our river trip are still on my screen.  There’s a poetry collection I’m six poems into.  There’s my novel, blog posts, and a short story concept I’d like to try (the whole story is told with book titles).

Then there was this whole dental issue that slowed me down.  I had to have gum surgery and for two weeks I could only eat soft foods and was in a bit of discomfort the first week.  Didn’t feel like doing much during that time.  I was thinking about writing about it, but what can you really say about yogurt and cottage cheese?

I guess I should be able to come up with something amusing about yogurt.  I was able to eat scrambled eggs – eggs have more humor potential than yogurt so I guess I could have written about that.  How about brushing teeth?  I had to be careful about that right after surgery.  Let me think – anything amusing happen while brushing my teeth?

humm,  I’ll have to get back to you on that. 

But it is summer and last weekend I went out to work on the irrigation system in our front yard.  That was mostly just changing a few spray heads and adjusting things.  Because of the surgery I wasn’t allowed to lift anything heavy for a couple of weeks.  A spray head only weighs a few ounces so I was able to talk Heather into letting me do that.

I did write last Sunday afternoon, but all I got was a poem for my lectionary project.  It was really hard to write with all the warm air blowing around and the smell of wood wafting in from the workshop.

This last winter I wrote a lot on cold Sunday afternoons, but became dissatisfied with my desk.  I don’t like my desk.  Not enough room to spread out books I’m researching.  No bookcase within arm’s reach and I don’t have enough room for all the financial and banking records I keep up on (when I do them and am not complaining about my desk).

So I decided that I should rebuild my desk, which turned into a, “Let’s rebuild everything in the office” project.  It took me months to do the planning and I now have detailed drawings in SketchUp, a real cut list, and notes on how to build the whole thing.

When done, it will be a great desk.

Heather told me it will be my last desk, as this is the third time I’ve rebuilt it since we’ve been married.  Really?  Only three times?  Maybe I counted moving the desk as a rebuild.

Anyway, yesterday I went over to the lumber yard and filled my car with red oak plywood and two different thicknesses of solid red oak lumber.  I haven’t decided if wood is getting heavier or if I am getting weaker, but that stuff was heavy.  I used to be able to lift a 90 pound 4×8 sheet of plywood with ease – yesterday it was hard work.  Strange.

All that physical labor left me too tired to type.  I did think about all the cool things I’ll write when I finish my new desk, but didn’t take notes.  There’s no room on the desk for a notepad in any case.

I don’t really have room in my shop for all the wood I bought so it had to be rough cut and moved into the atrium.  The new desks (Heather gets a new one too), and new bookcases required four sheets of oak plywood and something like 20 million board feet of solid lumber.  Okay, maybe a little closer to 30 board feet – let just say the ten foot long boards are heavy.

I’d say one board is about 40 pounds – at least that’s what it felt like when I dropped one on my foot. Any idea how long it takes for a bruise to show up on your foot?

Speak of feet, did I mention that we took the grandkids kayaking on Lake Tahoe? It was a fun day and I managed to get a sunburn – on my feet. Just my feet.  Seriously, just my feet. That was going to be a funny blog post about how my feet hurt.

So today, being a sunny day I setup the table saw on the driveway and started doing all the basic rough cuts for the desk.  This is the basic part of woodworking, cutting big pieces of wood into little pieces (later you glue them back together to make big pieces).  Once cut smaller, the wood is easier to move around, and less dangerous to my feet.

I was thinking of skipping writing today as now both my feet and back hurt after a day on the driveway in the summer sun cutting heavy bits into lighter bits.

But I thought that I should post a little something just to say that it’s summer time and I don’t expect to write much until fall.

Till next time,

Andrew