Labor Day Reprise

As I so often do on Labor Day, I celebrate by working. This year was spent on Camp Stranded as we finished the roof on the shed.

I understand this begs the question of, "What the hell have you been wasting your time on?" And, "You should have been finished with that by now, you lazy bum."

Both valid comments and with spending the last several weeks catching up on work, fighting with getting the right materials from a "local" big box store (since the closure of our home-town lumber yard) and saving my wife's dog from the vet, I've been interrupted a few times.

Oh, and then the adventure that started out with replacing a wax ring on the toilet that turned into replumbing my upstairs bathroom. Next is a new floor...

But now I have a roof over the newly acquired Farmall H:

Camp Stranded Shelter #1 (built without union labor)

Since my mower deal fell through as I was looking for a tractor (kind of a cart-before-the-horse kind of thing, which to get first), I sat on upon my new metal roof and looked upon an impressive field of horse weeds, burdock and foxtails and questioned my purchase of 20 acres of work.

But I also contemplated upon a family with each member contributing effort during our first construction of an amateur shelter. Yeah, it took longer than I wanted, but the next one will be better and built with experienced team effort. And I watched my wife take her first tour of the treeline without me but with her faithful dog at her side. The same dog we nearly put down because the vet gave up on him a few weeks ago.

As we were screwing the roof down, the turkey buzzards glided just 80-100 feet overhead and later hummingbirds came to visit as we took a break. The hummingbirds were a welcomed surprise and we will definitely encourage their return. Blue herons stopped at the pond for a brief rest before flying southeast of us as they spread their wings just above the mature trees in the corner. All this reminds me of the variety of nature in Iowa as we paused to watch the menagerie.

As the last screw on the last metal sheet was turned only half-way, my battery died on the drill. Perhaps a metaphor of the life of a short balding fellow from Iowa (he just never quite gets the job done). But a ratchet wrench works in a pitch, as I was taught to be prepared, bring a backup and always cover your ass.

And there were others at work yesterday as David Codrea reported of another ATF gunrunning fiasco, this time in Indiana. It makes me wonder why we even have the NICS check at all. If it wasn't for David and Mike Vanderboegh I wonder if we would have heard about the gunwalking into Mexico by the ATF.

To little Jimmy Hoffa Junior and to Joe Biden who opened their mouths yesterday, there are more of us than there are of you... This country was built by hard-working Americans, free and unionized, and not by loud-mouthed freeloaders who grabbed power for their own benefit. I'd bet that neither of these two bums ever worked a day in their lives. Calluses are for regular folk.

So Jimmy and Joe, shut the $%@#$% up. This SOB has to get back to work.