ohhhh my aching back

I woke up in utter, physical pain this morning. This weekend/upcoming week’s project is to get my workshop/studio set up in the garage.

Before yesterday, my part of the three-car garage was filled with junk and boxes, tools, and about 200 extra bricks from the builders.I bought 2 more sets of metal, wire shelves from Sam’s, so I first assembled them as one very long wall of shelves which will seperate my studio from Richard’s car. My own car is parked in the driveway.

I still had to deal with the bricks. The builders only landscaped the frontyard as part of the price of the house. It’s up to us to put grass and bushes and things in the backyard. Right now there are two trees (which, actually, they threw in) and a sprinkler system. However, the rest of the backyard is dirt. The yard backs up into a greenbelt, so when you look out the windows of the house, it looks sufficiently green and alive. However, when it rains, the entire backyard is muddy and slimy and unpassable.

So I used some of the bricks to make a little platform right in front of the steps to the “patio.” It was a pain and took about 4 hours worth of labor to haul bricks over there (without a wheelbarrow, I improvised using cardboard boxes and a dolley), level the dirt (which, unfortunately, was mostly clay and filled with rocks (including one HUGE 100+ pound boulder) and dried concrete bits.

The result is only somewhat satisfactory, but sweating in the sun, wearing some gloves and working the earth was a very satisfying, masculine experience.

I haven’t done much landscaping / gardening since I left the folks’ home for college. When I was growing up, I did everything from cutting the grass, to weeding, to tending the garden, to installing caliche rock in certain areas, to cutting limbs and trees, to sifting rocks (we were always sifting rocks, for some reason), and the very worst of all: weeding. We had a fairly large grassy backyard- that’s quite a feat considering we lived in a desert. Eventually, my dad had us pull up the grass in the front yard to replace it with landscaping rock to cut down on watering and maintenance costs. I’ll always remember getting up at 4:30 or 5:00 during one summer to shovel rocks before the sun came up and made it too unbearable to work.

I think my workshop is going to have to be a trial and error experience. I think I have things set up in the configuration I like, right now, but I still need to buy some lighting (instead of the hideous, garage flourescent buzz) and figure out how I’m going to maintain computers and electronics in this room which is not at all climate controlled. I’m already guessing that I’m going to need to acquire some additional big tools and I’m worried about where I’m going to store my creations… but we’ll take it little by little, ok?

Image of brick platform from steps.

Image of greenbelt.