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Having decided the termites eating our mailbox post were wearing out their welcome, we got the makings of a replacement last night at the new Ace Hardware that just opened up at Thomas Crossroads—one of those PVC ones that termites for some reason find unpalatable. And today I broke off the old post at ground level (took a little twisting to get it all the way off) and set about putting together the new post.
It went as such things normally do when I set out to do them—which is why I always correct Chris when she overstates my capabilities in this regard; she claims I’m “mechanically inclined” but I tell her I’m merely “handy.“ And frankly, even that’s bragging.
Pretty much every part had to be taken apart and put together again the right way. And when I used my neighbor Mike’s big sledgehammer to pound the steel stake into the ground all by my lonesome (instead of asking him for a hand as of course I should have done), I managed to make the big, heavy sledgehammer come into dynamic contact with my right index finger.
It was
...only a glancing blow, I was wearing heavy leather gloves, and as I was working alone I wasn’t getting a whole lot of force into the swings. I had full range of motion and sensation (let me tell you about that sensation!) all along, and I ended up with a bit of bleeding and some desultory swelling that a bag of ice seems to have headed off. And Mike stepped in to help so that I could finish pounding the stake. He even refrained from ribbing me about nearly smashing my hand to hamburger because I was too dumb to ask for help before I hurt myself.
And while I was typing this (using my right index finger normally, as though nothing happened to it), Chris has come home and announced her plan to reward me for getting this task done without knocking out power to the neighborhood, flooding the front yard, or requiring the jaws of life.
She doesn’t even know about my owie yet.
Afterthought: BTW, we ran into Vickie, Mike’s wife, at Ace last night (her son works there) and discovered that what I credited to my county commissioner last March was actually done by Mike and Vickie.
Oh well. The county did come in and put up a new street sign at the entrance to the subdivision, where the only thing resembling such a thing had been barely visible plaques on vine-covered ornamental brick walls. So the county did come through—just not on what I asked for.
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