The Day John Henry Died

We finally received some Spring like weather 'round these here parts over the weekend and I spent it like a majority of my 9 loyal readers...interviewing potential nannies and digging ditches.  Let's take the last part first...

As some of you may know, I planted corn in my backyard last year.  It grew well once the weather finally decided to warm up in mid-September, so this year I planned on expanding my corn field from 6 stalks to 10 or 12...it would be a veritable corn maze come fall, 2 bits for a harrowing journey through 3 square yards of terror!  Well, no.  However, 10-12 stalks would require more room for the corn to grow.  The root systems on those bad boys are impressive when all is said and done.  Unfortunately, when I began digging water percolated up Beverly Hillbillies style out of the ground.  About 6 inches down I hit standing brackish water.  Gross.  Now, our backyard has always been boggy during the winter months, but this year was especially bad...plus, I had never hit standing water before.  This called for some action and investigating, and sadly, that's the order I undertook when I decided to remedy the boggy depot I call a yard once and for all...

I began by hauling out the pickaxe and shovels and started toiling away at creating a French drain that led to the collection basin by our back fence.  I did this because collection basins, in the real world, collect run off and ship it off to retention ponds and what have you.  The collection basin in my yard does not...but I didn't discover that until I had dug a fairly long and deep trench along the northern fence line of my yard.  It wasn't until the next day that I realized that the trench I had dug the day before was useless...

See, one of my neighbors just undertook a major yard drainage project, and somewhere in my action first/have a plan second brain I remembered him saying that his collection basin was useless.  So, that's when I decided to dig around the area of the basin.  That took most of yesterday because our homes were built on top of an ancient Indian quarry.  Once you get past the top soil it is nothing but rock and clay and dirt that may as well be concrete.  Swinging a pickaxe is not exactly easy work either, and there is nothing like the nerve shredding sensation of striking a rock that the axe fails to cleave - it is literally bone jarring. 

At one point, I even resorted to wearing gloves.  Now, my hands are as manly and fierce as the hands of any other full-time cubical warrior and part-time blogger.  There is no keyboard I can't coax into submission, but the pickaxe, well...that somnab!tch was talkin' back to me...loudly.  So, I had to sport gloves. 

By the end of yesterday afternoon, I was drenched in sweat, my shoulders and triceps were on fire, and my spinal cord had been compressed about 3/4 of an inch from swinging and shoveling away.  And how far did I get?  Far enough to realize I've got at least two more ditches to dig and lots of drainage pipe, gravel and sand to put down.  The collection basin in my yard only collects water if it falls straight into the grate from above...there were no pipes leading into it and only one leading out.  That means in order for my yard to properly drain I have to give the water somewhere to go...hence more ditches and more blinding back pain. 

Oh, and at one point yesterday the neighbor's yard guy put down a metric ton of organic fertilizer on their yard...and the smell was at times overpowering, to the point where I thought I had pulled an Andy Dufresne escaping Shawshank by breaking into the sewer pipes under the prison.  Yum! 

One thing this whole ditch digging endeavor taught me is that I am sadly lacking in what I refer to as practical strength.  Digging ditches, hauling lumber, laying brick all require a modicum of strength you just don't build doing bench presses and preening in the mirror with dumb bells.  That strength only comes about from being got-damn useful around the house.  I'm finally realizing that being able to bench press a decent amount of weight means sweet eff all when it comes to not having a heart attack while swinging a pickaxe.  This realization led me to this million dollar idea, pay close attention Outdoor Network and Spike TV:

The Practical Olympics...games where average dudes square off against each other in everyday tasks.  I'm trying to come up with 10 events to make this a Practical Decathlon, this is what I have so far:

1 - Shoveling snow:  Each contestant is given an identical driveway uniformly covered in 6 inches of snow and a snow shovel, the first to clear the driveway wins.

2 - Wood stacking:  Each contestant stares down a pile of cord wood, the first to neatly stack it into a woodshed wins (my dad can judge this competition, he was notorious for tearing down wood me and the Pescado brother stacked if it was uneven or sloppy looking)

3 - Wood splitting:  I'm thinking of combing this with stacking, each competitor would have to split a cord of wood.

4 - Jar opening:  Competitors would be timed to see how many home canned Mason jars of tomatoes they could open in 5 minutes. 

5 - Ditch digging:  A poorly draining back yard and pickaxes, what more can you ask for?

6 - Room painting:  Olympiads would mask and then paint a room with identical dimensions red.  Why red?  Because pushing red paint on a roller sucks a mountain of ass, especially if painting over contractor grade flat paint.  Quit asking silly questions!

7 - Leaf raking:  Our athletes muscles will be aching after even 5, especially their delts and traps...having to rake and bag a quarter acre clear of leaves will be a test of their endurance...this even will separate the wannabes from the contenders...

And that's where I kind of peter out a little...laying tile is more tedious than strenuous...although having to unload a pallet of bricks and building a retaining wall would be a challenge.  Let me know if you have any suggestions and I'll get you a producer credit when Spike or Outdoor Network options this idea for a pilot.

That leaves nanny talk, and I've only got one word for that; unacceptable.  Not one decent candidate in the mix of people we spoke to over the weekend.  That's all I've got to say about that.