Rocks

Southern Man has lots of plans for The Land and usually keeps an eye on Craigslist for anything he might make use of and this morning had the good fortune to be the first to call on a bunch of rock that had been used in a koi pond - highly desirable as The Land has a little washout that has always been designated as the future garden pond and the native rock out there is soft red shale that's not much good for rockscaping. Warned that some were large and he ought to "bring help" Southern Man tossed a couple of long 4x4s and a two-wheel hand truck in the back of The Titan and headed out after work to pick them up. Some were indeed quite large but Southern Man is fairly adept at moving and loading heavy things by himself and once he got started the rock-owner came out to help. He had a large back yard that was clearly in the middle of several projects (including a half-completed swimming pool where that koi pond used to be) and the back of the house was in the middle of a major remodel as well so we chatted about landscaping and remodeling and such while moving big rocks on the two-wheeler and flipping the biggest ones up the 4x4 ramps. The rock pretty much filled The Titan's bed and he was crouching perilously low on the springs but he's a big tough truck and Southern Man wasn't too concerned about breaking anything...

...and then while looking things over one last time before departing the rock-owner's wife came out and Southern Man overheard one of the highest compliments a man can earn:

"How did you get all that loaded so quickly?"
"Honey, that guy really knew what he was doing."

So Southern Man was pretty happy on the slow and careful drive to The Land where he spent an hour or so unloading and stacking the rock on pallets (he'd nabbed a truckload of those last month) and looking the place over as he hadn't been out there (other than a quick errand last week) since the pinched nerve flared up two weekends ago. Curiously, it didn't bother him at all while loading and unloading all that rock (it's really bad when lying down and trying to sleep). He had inadvertently left the AC on in the trailer and it was still cycling just fine so he pronounces that breaker problem solved but has a mild feeling of dread about what the next electric bill might look like.

And now he is home and had breakfast-for-dinner (bacon and eggs and chocolate milk and a hydrocodone in the hopes of getting some sleep tonight) and has a favorite movie in the DVD player and in a bit will take a shower and go to bed in happy anticipation of a long weekend - next Monday and Tuesday are Fall Break and he probably won't work the kids too hard on Friday either.