Weekend Festivities
I'm a little bit sore from last Saturday. I should've stretched out more before starting, but I think that anyone that did what I did would be sore if it's not something they do for a living. We went back down to the Chehalis, WA area for another work party to help the flood victims. Initially I was scheduled to do some inside kitchen demolition of cabinets and assist with some flooring, but when the work teams were divided and in assessing the physical abilities of the two other women that were there, I let them have the kitchen demo so I can do the backbreaking work...shoveling gravel. I'm much younger than the other two women and I've got good knees and a strong back. The two other available jobs I don't have the skillset for (sheet rock install), so moving the gravel was the most logical work location for me. I can do grunt work - I'm not afraid of it. I just trim down my fingernails so they won't get ripped, and I'm good to go. Once I get into a groove, I can do quite a bit for my size. For example, for one home project to build a french drain, we used many bags of gravel - each bag was about 75 lbs. and I had no problems hoisting them onto my shoulder and moving them from the front yard to the back yard - my low center of gravity helps. But, I can easily haul around way over half of my body weight, which kind of freaks guys out. I can do it for limited spurts - surely not for a living. On that project, our neighbor was helping us out and he was complaining about the size of the gravel bags. Just to give him a bad time, I picked one up and called him a wuss. Yup, he stopped complaining.
Anyway, at the location we were at, prior to the flood a neighbor of the house we were working on had a gravel driveway put in. The flood moved a good portion of that gravel into the backyard of this house. The owners of this house are in their 80's, so they physically can't perform the job. So...in the morning hubby and I shoveled the gravel into a wheelbarrow, and one other guy moved it about 40 yards to its dumping location. Each time we filled the wheelbarrow, we believe it was about 250 lbs. After lunch, one other guy joined our work party, so I got a break from shoveling, and instead used a pickaxe to help break up the gravel and raked what little remained to level it out. We figure that in total we moved maybe 3-4 tons of gravel. It was pretty hard work. But, the home we worked at fared much better than their neighbors - it was due to a lot of the house being brick and being well constructed. The neighbor to the right of the house had walls pulled away from the house. The neighbor to the left had its house pulled away from its foundation - about 100 yards away you can see the roof of the house and some parts of the walls. The roof of the house hit a tree, which kept it in place. During the flood, a 35-40 mph current at least 5 feet high ripped through that area - many houses were damaged so bad they were tagged as being uninhabitable.
On Saturday night, my shoulders and lower back were quite sore. Yesterday and today, my shoulders, the base of my neck and my fingers are sore. But, it's all good. I wasn't feeling much pain on Sunday since I was busy getting the house ready for our Super Bowl party. We sure had enough food: beer brats with grilled onions, two beer can chickens, my special rice, ribs, beans, cornbread, various chips, and an apple pie.
Oh, and the weekend kicked off great with Friday being Ladies' Night Out. We went out to an Italian place for dinner and then saw "Over Her Dead Body." The movie was...so-so. We thought it had potential due to this one scene with veterinary assistants having problems trying to get an obese dog up on the examination table. We giggled for about 5 minutes after that scene since it was so funny - it was the best part of the movie.
Anyway, at the location we were at, prior to the flood a neighbor of the house we were working on had a gravel driveway put in. The flood moved a good portion of that gravel into the backyard of this house. The owners of this house are in their 80's, so they physically can't perform the job. So...in the morning hubby and I shoveled the gravel into a wheelbarrow, and one other guy moved it about 40 yards to its dumping location. Each time we filled the wheelbarrow, we believe it was about 250 lbs. After lunch, one other guy joined our work party, so I got a break from shoveling, and instead used a pickaxe to help break up the gravel and raked what little remained to level it out. We figure that in total we moved maybe 3-4 tons of gravel. It was pretty hard work. But, the home we worked at fared much better than their neighbors - it was due to a lot of the house being brick and being well constructed. The neighbor to the right of the house had walls pulled away from the house. The neighbor to the left had its house pulled away from its foundation - about 100 yards away you can see the roof of the house and some parts of the walls. The roof of the house hit a tree, which kept it in place. During the flood, a 35-40 mph current at least 5 feet high ripped through that area - many houses were damaged so bad they were tagged as being uninhabitable.
On Saturday night, my shoulders and lower back were quite sore. Yesterday and today, my shoulders, the base of my neck and my fingers are sore. But, it's all good. I wasn't feeling much pain on Sunday since I was busy getting the house ready for our Super Bowl party. We sure had enough food: beer brats with grilled onions, two beer can chickens, my special rice, ribs, beans, cornbread, various chips, and an apple pie.
Oh, and the weekend kicked off great with Friday being Ladies' Night Out. We went out to an Italian place for dinner and then saw "Over Her Dead Body." The movie was...so-so. We thought it had potential due to this one scene with veterinary assistants having problems trying to get an obese dog up on the examination table. We giggled for about 5 minutes after that scene since it was so funny - it was the best part of the movie.