Posts Tagged With: Construction

~ The Hot Box ~

Posted on June 24, 2015 by mamaboe

Yesterday was a whopper of a hot day here at Pop-pop’s beach cottage.  I mean it was a humid, fly-biting, feels-like-the-air-has-already-been-breathed kind of day.   Around 9 O’clock, I checked in on My Captain, (who is in week two of his beach chair shed project that he and his best friend Ty had started when Ty’s family visited earlier last week)…

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(remember he is on vacation….).

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and found him in the garage, planing wood.

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He was drenched with sweat.  Even his hat was dripping…and it was only 9 O’clock in the morning!

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It was already nearing 100 degrees (it got to 105 by Noon – which in Delaware is most emphatically NOT a DRY heat) and My Captain was out working in it.

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He’s the kind of guy who gets hyper-focused, in case you hadn’t noticed.  Anal Retentive to the extreme, he wouldn’t even stop to drink until I stamped my foot and unplugged his power cord.

Yes,  I really behave like that. I’m a tyrant. Don’t judge.

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So I took it upon myself to make him a work-oasis.  I put a beach umbrella out where he was working in the sun.  I took no less than three INDOOR (as in, not safely meant for OUTDOOR) extension cords and put a fan outside (I’m an incorrigible rebel, I confess.  I also rarely put the milk away when I get it out.) where he would be, and switched that puppy on to ‘High.’

Did it make a difference in the heat?

 

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Er, no.

But I bet he felt loved.

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He did eventually call “uncle” and gave it up around 3pm, when he got tired of the relentless, oppressive heat and biting flies.  We dragged him down to the beach, where he was still in relentless, oppressive heat, and was still sweetmeat for the biting flies, but at least he could go jump in the cool, rather shark-infested Atlantic for respite.

Ah, living the dream, I tell you.  Living the dream.

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He plans to finish the shed tomorrow…has to, really, because he signed up to work Overtime at the firehouse for Friday, and so will be cutting his vacation short. (Someone has to pay for my Lindt and Hershey Chocolate habits, for which no rehab has put even the slightest dent.)  As far as the shed project goes, that means putting the siding on, building and installing the doors, and painting any trim.  But he’s totally got this.  He’s a hyper-focused animal, My Captain.  It’s what makes him so good at his job as a fireman and FEMA task-force leader.  He’s always super focused on the mission!

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And we’ve decided to name this particular mission ‘The Hot Box’ in honor of the tortuous conditions he slaved under and survived!

Thank you, Beloved!!!

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~ Earning A Man Card ~

Posted on July 20, 2013 by mamaboe

It has been hotter than a World War II Pin-up Girl here in Dickerson this week.  Though the thermometer reads 95 degrees, with the humidity that comes with the swamp that is the greater Washington DC area, the Humiture is usually around 105 degrees.  Basically, you walk out of any air-conditioned building, and the hot, wet air hits you like a concrete and steel-reinforced, brick wall.  The air is so stifling;  every breath feels used already…. like someone is breathing directly into your face.   It’s nasty.  And gross.  I don’t do well with pre-breathed air.

My Captain, when he wasn’t working this week, has had the unlucky task of digging up the wooden border around Critter and Varmint’s old playground.

The one outside in the back yard.

The one in the sun and pre-breathed air.

The one with all the bugs and yucky mud.

Poor Captain!

Critter watched him from the coolness of the kitchen, and wondered aloud about how long it would take to finish the job.  I eyed him speculatively and answered, “I dunno, but I reckon it would go a lot faster if he had some help.”

“I can’t do anything to help him,” he shrugged.

“How would you know if you don’t ask?”

Man I’m good.  Smoother than 30-year-old Whiskey, and twice as effective.  I lobbed that guilt-grenade right over his head…he never saw it coming.  Dead Bulls-eye.  I’m like a guilt-sniper.  Ka-POW.

He grumbled and went out.  And by ‘grumbled,’ I mean bitched.  Audibly.  Copiously.  He was, as they say, unwilling.

Five minutes later, however, I watched him through the window wielding a hammer, and some other strange device that, while probably originally designed for a different task entirely, looked to me like a Medieval bludgeoning device.

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Apparently My Captain entrusted him with the task of removing screws from 25-year-old pressure treated 6X6s.  This is NOT an easy task…..And certainly not if you are 60lbs, working in the sun when it is over a hundred degrees, and the bugs are eating you alive.

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I was sure there would be more, er, unwillingness being communicated.

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But Mama learned a lesson in Male-ness that day.  Instead of focusing on being too hot, or too bug-bitten, or too frustrated when screws would be difficult, Critter dug in.  He took it as a challenge, not as an undesireble chore.  And I could see that a little bit of discomfort and adversity actually sat well with him.

I’m not saying he would sign up to do it every day, but he wasn’t a tool about it.

I could see My Captain was just as surprised as I was that Critter wasn’t quitting in disgust.  It was obvious he was enjoying being ‘one of the men,’ and doing manly tasks.  You might even go as far as to say he took PRIDE in working with My Captain.

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He didn’t have time to whine.

He was too busying earning his man-card.

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~ Picnic In A Hurricane ~

Posted on July 7, 2013 by mamaboe

It all started with the small idea that we go to Lowes and buy a simple $90.00 picnic table for Pop-Pop’s cottage at the beach.  A table where the kids can eat without getting yelled at for doing so in wet, sandy-butted bathing suits.

My Captain got that familiar look in his beautiful eyes and said in his deep, quiet voice, “We could build one way stronger than anything on the market.”

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The next thing we knew, he and Varmint and Critter were doing math computations, and trying to say “3 and 3/16ths” three times fast.

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There is something you should know about My Captain:  He has more structural engineering background than one OCD man should have… and when he has a structural challenge before him, he takes it seriously.

Perhaps a little too seriously.

This anal-retentive trait served him well when he was the Task Force Leader for Maryland Task Force One during the rescue mission at the Pentagon on 9/11.  This served him well when he was working the rubble pile at the OK City Bombing.  This came in handy when he was at Hurricane Katrina’s Search and Rescue efforts.  But when he takes on a small task like a picnic table….it becomes a little overkill.

He was putting struts and braces on his struts and braces.  He was using a heavier wood than would normally be required…and more of it. He had impact drivers and hammer drills out.  He used pulleys and mechanical advantage systems.  There was rebar littering the deck, and he wasn’t even using concrete.

He was building a picnic table so structurally sound, it could withstand a Class V hurricane….complete with Tsunami….during a tornado.

But we love him and his good intent, and cheered him on the whole time.

After day one, we thought he was finished.  Silly, silly us!

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Apparently, he had just begun.

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On day two, he added cross braces and more diagonal struts.

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On day three he added double reinforced cross supports for the umbrella stake.

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This table, I kid you not, weighs at least 2 tons.

And after day three, he turned to me and said, “Ok, you take it from here.”

I blinked innocently, and he handed me the Dewalt Sander.

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And I’ve been sanding ever since.

You see, all of those cross braces and struts and double reinforced thingy-ma-bobs have hard, splintery edges that are kid unfriendly.  My job is to make it kid friendly.

And in the shower, while I’m picking saw dust out of crevices on my body that would prefer NOT to have saw dust, I can’t help but wish a hurricane would come to test the table.

We’re THAT proud of it.

Obviously we need to get out more……

 

Bethany Beach, DE, USA

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