Ouch

After a busy day today, I am sore.

First, off to my old workplace to get some papers to sign. Hard to believe it's been eight weeks. When all this happened the year was only eight weeks old. Most of the last eight weeks have been uselessly crappy, weather-wise. Which is exactly what we expected.

It took me over an hour to go the 33 miles to my old place, with several construction-related detours. One thought kept going through my head: I can't believe I did this every workday for nearly fifteen years. Maybe the next job will have less of a commute.

After that my friend and I, who are going through all this crap side-by-side, went to the Scranton Career Link office to get our WIA Orientation. This is a class that explains to you how you will be taking other classes. This is the class you should take first, though no one explained that to us before we started taking classes. She and I have already taken at least five classes each, and I am taking another one on Monday and then we are doing another one together on Tuesday, so we're pretty far ahead of the curve here. Still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, though.

Then it was back home for a late lunch, and then over to my house to try to squeeze in some painting before the anticipated rains. I put a second coat on the South side of the garage, but I may need another one. About halfway through my painting I heard several people running down the hill that leads to my house. Girls, High School age, as far as I could tell. I assumed they were jogging, maybe as part of the track team, but on their second lap around the block I determined that they were not: from what they said to two younger girls who joined them later, they were looking for worms under rocks. (They were not being quiet about it, as I heard this at a range of about 100 feet.) I was trying to figure out some Tom Sawyer-(or was it Huckleberry Finn?-)esque way of enticing them into painting my garage for me that wouldn't involve me getting arrested, but in the end I gave up and kept on painting.

I got done with this by 4:30 PM ("done" defined as "I finished all the paint I had allocated myself, and I got the whole wall covered") and did a few other necessary tasks (unloaded a 60 lb. bag of mortar that I've been carrying around for a week from my trunk, killed some weeds that are growing in the wall I need to repair). Then I headed home to mow the lawn with my old-fashioned push mower. Somehow I got all this wrapped up by just after 6:30 PM. It usually takes me four hours - maybe the cooler weather helped!

And now I am sore. Bits of me are aching that shouldn't be. My right arm clicks when I roll it in its socket, and my left hip does the same thing. Plus I need to take a shower before I go to bed. At least I don't have any classes scheduled tomorrow. As an added bonus, it might rain, freeing me from any heavy-duty outdoor activities. Maybe I'll hit the home improvement stores and see if I can get prices on Shademaster Locust trees.