Getting all the things done

It was a day for doing all the things. I started with phone calls before breakfast, (follow-up on garden work scheduling) then played in the dirt, laid bricks & fortified the anti-chipmunk defenses. I did another phone call & writing in the afternoon AND had a 'brar shift in the evening.

(Plus brushing the cat & entertaining him by digging in the dirt right outside his favorite watch-the-birdies window. One must not forget the all-important task of entertaining the cat.)

The biggest happy? I am physically tired, but not exhausted or injured. Daily life is a contact sport. I have to use the right protective gear to accommodate the needs of a body that really, really isn't designed for doing all the things I want to do with it.

Shifting around 4 bags worth of gravel, a bag of sand, 4 12-lb pavers and some head-sized landscaping rocks isn't a task I could have tackled last spring. Or the spring before that. My skin just wasn't up to the abuse.

Honestly it still isn't, but I start any major outdoor labor wit major prrep now.

Wrap the wrists in support tape. Layer silicone finger protectors over any iffy digits. Then nitrile gloves, then work gloves.

Does that seem like a lot? It feels like a lot, esp. after 50 years of doing all but the gnarliest garden labor bare-handed, but the results rock AND roll. Tired muscles, happy brain, but no new skin rips, tears or eczema patches. On my hands.

My knees? That's another story, and my next challenge.

I need new knee pads that don't annoy the shit out of me. I take them off & end up aggravating the eczema patches on my kneecaps every time I go crawling under stairs or weeding my way through flower beds.

But that's a challenge for another day.


Those me things again (I promise, I'll present them in a different format eventually)

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