Time flies. It’s been a couple weeks since I filled up my red folder with stickers. After that, we moved on to physics. The beginning concepts weren’t too bad. Then Wendy said I needed trigonometry and the Pythagorean Theorem at my fingertips for physics. I got tripped up on the trig and had a little setback in the ol’ academic confidence. So she broke the work down into small bits and took things real slow.
Today, we take a welcome break.
Because tomorrow is the big day.
We’re standing in the shack, making a list of all the detail stuff we need to finish up.
And I cannot stop smiling, thinking about the work we’ve done on this shack these past weeks.
We painted inside and out. We even painted the floor after days of sanding the splinters away till it was smooth.
We hauled two-by-fours from the truck to the shack, Wendy on one end, me on the other. We measured, sawed, and hammered those things to make the frame for the canvas awning. We laid the frame flat on the ground and tacked one side of the canvas down. Then we walked around to the other side. Wendy sat her butt on the ground. She grabbed some of the canvas and pushed her feet against the frame and she pulled and pulled the canvas tight, while I hammered in nails. Wendy’s muscles are no longer a joke. Mine, either.
It took a couple days to get the canvas as tight as we wanted. A couple days to hang the finished awning frames on the front and back of the stand. We bolted them to hinges and then we had to figure out how to lift the awning toward the sky at twenty degrees and prop them up with sturdy, secure poles.
We busted Tio Ed’s budget when we brought in an electrician.
We hauled in refrigeration. And shelving.
We built a nice counter out of scrap wood, and we sanded and finished it.
We bought an old roaster from a farmer in Deming and hauled it back in the truck. We scrubbed the hell outta that thing.
Wendy made the stand sign, and I never mention it, but I think she’s at the very least a pretty darn good artist.
“Hey, Earth to Teodoro!” Wendy’s at the counter with a legal pad.
“What, Wendy?”
“We need cash for change. Propane for the roaster. We need tacks for the farm photos. And we need locks for the awnings.”
“Sounds like a trip to town.”
“Let’s go! Let’s go!”