Hefty Annoyance Gone

I feel like I just had a giant boil lanced. I have ejected my newly extracted concrete slug from the yard. I can’t believe how heavy it is. It took effort to roll it onto my handtruck. I’m surprised I was able to lift it out of the hole yesterday. In fact, it was hard to roll the handtruck. I had to keep the handles way down, to keep the slug from rolling off, and the weight made it hard to roll on the grass.

I was going to put it in a wheelbarrow, but I realized I would have to get it two feet off the ground in order to do that. My macho-man days are behind me; I avoid lifting whenever possible. When people make fun of me for it, I make a mental note to remind them, when I’m a healthy 65-year-old with a straight back and they’re having vertebrae fused.

Want a great lesson to teach your kids? Here it is: straining your back or a joint for one second can cause you misery for eighty years. Don’t be a fool, to save yourself the minute or two it takes to get help or the right tool. Never lift anything you don’t have to. I’ve done some dumb things. I pushed a cow off of me after it fell off a ramp. I have lifted my Moto Guzzi off its side several times. I used a pec machine which, I am pretty sure, is designed to loosen and rupture shoulder ligaments. But I am reformed. I was very careful when I lifted the slug yesterday, and if I had even suspected a problem, I would have dropped it instantly.

Back in ’05, I helped someone clean up his yard after a hurricane, and he made fun of me for asking for ear plugs. Whatever. He won’t be around in twenty years, to buy me a hearing aid to hear the TV. A single exposure to loud noise can cause permanent hearing damage. Wish I had known that when I was ten. At the gun range, I wear muffs plus silicone plugs. I wear plugs when I ride motorcycles, because of wind noise.

I have to BUY dirt to fill the hole the slug came out of. It’s about a cubic foot. Can you believe that? It never occurred to me to prepare for that. I should de-pot my Trinidad Scorpion plant and put it in there.