Mortar boy

Woke up nice and early today. My alarm clock is a CD player that plays Lauren's song "45"...which is then followed by t.A.T.u. singing "All the Things She Said." After that we switch to Courtney Love, and things go from there.

Breakfast: microwaved salmon, my favorite. Fed the cats, too, though not my salmon.

Out of the house by 8:20 and headed to Career Link in Scranton for a 9:30 class - which turned out to be a retitled version of a class we took last week. Since we were there already, and were the only two people there for the class, we had a nice little conversation with the instructor about job-hunting strategies.

Then I headed to my brother's to pick up his dog. He and his family went to Hersheypark today and he asked me to take her out for a walk. But since it's about 20 miles from his house to mine, and since the dog was just going to be cooped up all day anyway, I told him that I would take her to my house with me.

She's a yappy little dog and she jumped around the car a lot until I opened her window a crack to let her feel the breeze. Once we got to the house I realized that the one thing I really wanted to do was take a nap. Yesterday's activities really did a number on me. Unfortunately, my brother's dog was not in the mood for sleeping - every chance she got she would kiss my face. Eventually I realized I wasn't about to get much rest, so I may as well get some work done.

But what to do? I thought about starting on scraping, sanding, and painting the garage doors, but realized I was still too sore from yesterday to repeat those motions. So that left: mow the lawn - well, that would include the weeds that are springing up in places the mower won't reach, I didn't have my weed whacker, and wasn't about to run home for it; begin repairing the grapevine wall; or begin repairing the sidewalk in front of the grapevine. I decided to start on the wall.

Now keep in mind that my home-improvement-and-repair skills are basically non-existent. I can garden, but that's about it. I've done some plumbing in the past, but my last adventure in that area didn't turn out so well. I don't play with electricity. Painting - well, I can do that, but time will tell how good of a job I've done. I've used mortar once, to repair a cracked stone step, and that's held out for two years.

The wall I am trying to repair is old. How old, I can't tell, but it was old when I was a little boy, and may be as old as the house, more than 90 years. It's been patched numerous times in the past, but now chunks of it are missing. Still, I'm not prepared to rip it down and replace it. So what I'm doing is basically an extensive patch job.

I'm not sure mortar is supposed to be used like this. It's mainly meant for holding stones or bricks together. But that's what I see it doing here: holding together big sections of my wall.

I spent four or five hours out there, mixing mortar from a 60 lb. bag in a plastic Folger's coffee can using a sawed-off tomato stake as a stirring rod, my brother's dog resting happily a safe distance away in the shade. I kept working until I finished the bag, and I got more than half of the wall finished. (While I was doing this my brother came to pick up his dog. He was wondering why I wasn't answering my cell phone. We discovered it was because he was calling my work cell phone, which is apparently still active.) I cleaned out the mixing container by adding a little more water to make a thin slurry that I then used as a crack-filler. By seven o'clock some of the mortar had already dried and set, and the wall was looking good.

It's not perfect by any means, and it's certainly not the way this would be done by a professional, or simply by someone who knew what they were doing, might do it. But I'm hoping it will be good enough for my insurance company.