Woody Cavenaugh

With Sara off conquering Florida, I found I would have a few days to myself to do whatever. My first thought of course was to do nothing. My second thought was that I do that every day. Sara's gone for three days and I should do something I haven't done in a long time. Something that won't get me arrested, won't get me divorced, and maybe get me out of the house a little.

So today, being Friday, I played hooky from work. Yeah, it wasn't all that spontaneous. I announced my intention to play hooky on Tuesday during a staff meeting. That night I bought a family pack of country style pork ribs for my weekend. First thing this morning when I woke up, eight in the morning, I think. I made up a pot of coffee and I sat outside on the porch and I surveyed all that was before me and I let a plan form. Then I went shopping.

You can't make an omelet if you don't break a few eggs. If eggs were dollars I broke a whole bunch of them. However, being my father's son, I shopped twice, purchased once, and had a good lunch. I said I was going to do stuff that I couldn't otherwise do with Sara home. So, not only did I shop in stores without buying anything, I had a lunch buffet. Oh I am such the rebel.

My starting plan was to do some square foot gardening in boxes to the left and right of the front porch. The best boxes I could find for the job were nearly $40.00 each. So to stay in budget the best I could do was maybe buy two boxes so at least it would remain symmetrical. I suppose every month I could add two more, and then by winter I could have my whole garden finally in the ground. But there is also this pesky problem I'm having with drainage. OK, new task, I need to do something about my drainage problem. Water from the driveway shouldn't be able to wash down the driveway, up the ramp and deposit red clay on my doormat. It shouldn't but it does, and I need to fix that too.

New plan. Lets see if we can fix the drainage problem with a garden. Dad always said that if man made it, man could fix it. I'm not sure if man was totally responsible for my drainage problem, but they had enough of a hand in it that I felt like I had a fair shot at fixing it, or at the very least, not making it worse.

When I got home from a really relaxing day of shopping, eating, and planning, I still had two hours before I had to be at fencing. That gave me time to install a couple of shelves in the man cave, organize that, and what do you know, I still have time to do one other small task.

I chose the task "pave the end of the walk". The ramp to the house ends and the original builders put in some round flat concrete stones to bridge the gap between the end of the planking and the drive way proper. Due to the fact that the slats on the ramp ran diagonally I had a polygon shape to fill with something. I found some really cool oddly shaped concrete blocks roughly sixteen inches on its longest side. On the display they fit together like natural looking puzzle pieces. The display made them look really awesome, they were four dollars each. I only needed four so what the heck. I realized that this would mean there would be blank spots around. In the display they had neatly cut the pieces to fit in their display. I had nothing to cut concrete with besides an old splitting ax with a busted handle. Not a masonry saw, but way way cheaper than a masonry saw.

First I would need to dig out some of that dirt that has washed into the space so I can get a good flush fit. The entire place I live was carved by glacial movement. I know this because you can't put a shovel in the ground without hitting rocks. Sure, four paving stones, multiplied by all those lose rocks turned an easy job into a much more difficult one. Plus three of the four blocks had to be cut to fit. As you can imagine, with the tools I had that didn't go as well as one would hope. By the time I was finished I was borderline overheated, and exhausted. I sat under the porch nursing a bottle of water and surveying my accomplishment. I was tired. Real tired. Then Mario messages me.

He can't make fencing tonight, I will need to solo his class. Why oh why did I pick up that shovel? I left early for fencing. I had some small projects there to deal with too. On the way I picked up a big Gateraid, and a big bottle of water. I was going to need to hydrate if I planned to teach saber that night.

I had just put the finishing touches on my fencing cabinet work when my students arrived. The lesson was absolutely awesome and I managed to leave fencing more energized than I had arrived. Now to Bojangles, I wanted chicken, I really wanted the biscuits to go with strawberries for my breakfast Saturday morning. It was eight PM and I had managed to find the one Bojangles in all of creation who was out of chicken. How does one even do that? You're a frik'n chicken place for heaven's sake!

My back up plan was to go to food lion and pick up a box of chicken and two cans of refrigerated biscuits. As fate would have it, they had no chicken either, so I picked up three bananas for dinner, a six of hard cider for those hot evenings of surveying my hard work, and two cans of refrigerated biscuits. Apparently Sara prayed that I wouldn't do anything stupid this weekend while she was gone. I guess that chicken counts as stupid. Damn.

At home, I ate my bananas, drank a cider and played a game before hobbling sorely to bed. Saturday was going to be a hard day.