 |
| 1961 Today |
For those
who wonder what happened with my chemo treatments, I finished them almost three
weeks ago. I’m still a bit weak, but life goes on. In fact the doctor
encouraged me to keep doing the things I’ve always done while on the chemo. So
that’s why I kept bowling every Friday and did other things that literally
took my breath away, like walking my dogs. You’d be amazed at how much energy
it takes to bend over and pick up dog poop.
On Friday of
this past week I noticed a sag in the roof of my garage. So I went inside the
garage and took a look at the rafters. Sure enough, one of them was split and
that split was right over the front end of my ‘classic’ Mercedes. Either the
heavy, wet snow we had in January had cracked it, or the squirrel that lives in
my garage put on too much weight. I pondered the problem. Should I have a new
garage built? No, that would blow up my budget. Find a handyman to fix the rafter?
No, that would also blow up my budget. Then I remembered my grandfather, Bill
Webb. He helped my dad jack up the roof of our house in Tinley Park to build a
dormer. They borrowed old fashioned automobile bumper jacks to do the job and
lifted the roof. Hell, I have a jack and it’s much better than those old bumper
jacks. Then I thought about how I would do the job. Marry two boards to the old
rafter with some bolts was the best way. That was what I would do despite the
fact that I’m a doddering seventy five year old man. But hell, Grandpa was
seventy five years old when he was crawling around on the roof building that
dormer with my dad.
I got the
job done, despite not having any help. It only took me two days, a lot of
cursing, and some very sore muscles. Remember,
I just got over chemo treatments and my body is still pretty weak. Luckily, I didn’t fall nor did the roof
cave in and kill me. The real test will come in about seven or eight months
when the snow starts blowing and the squirrels scamper across the roof of the
garage looking for a way to get in.
No comments:
Post a Comment