Perpetual Ruminations

Sunday

It's Sunday, and I should be in writing for NaNo, but I wanted to get this updated for today first. I'm pretty tired, and that's going to make it hard to write anyway. Even so, I'll try to get a little writing in tonight. I would at least like to get to then end of this section with Sabastian.
Tomorrow and Tuesday I'm off, so I should be able to get Lanae's introduction done and maybe even a little bit of the first big scene.

Of course, I've learned to not count my ducklings before the hatch. I know, it's suppose to be chickens, but chickens are so everyday. Ducklings are so cute, and their waddle is downright funny. Nope, I pick ducks over chickens any day.

Anyway, it was a crazy day at work, and part of the reason I'm so tired. Sundays are suppose to be a slower day, or so they say. I barely had the doors up and had a return to fill out, then guests  picking up stuff they bought -- days, even weeks ago. Of course, there were the people who needed to get some roofing materials, like they are going to get a good roof job done this late in the year, we may get snow over the next two days. I know I'd prefer to roof my house in a blizzard.

Actually, I see a lot of people roofing late in the fall. I don't understand it, but they do. I did a little work with a roofing company many years ago. We worked pretty late in the fall, but by October, we had to call it quits for the year, it was getting to cold for the shingles to stick together properly, which means the wind can lift them up and rip them off much easier than if it's hot and they stick to down to the layer underneath.

I did see one outfit putting shingles up on my way home, too. they had stopped and gotten shingles while I was working, but at least they waited until afternoon to put them up. And, I should add, it's a pretty nice day today, some sunshine and in the fifties. It feels colder because of the wind, but when you get into a sheltered area, it's actually pretty nice. In fact, it's still forty-nine degrees now. I bet it was close to sixty earlier.

Ah, the wind, that's the other thing I don't understand. It's nice out, so yeah, lets get our outside work done. Except it's windy, very windy. We have severe wind advisories until later this evening. It was blowing in at about twenty to thirty when I went to work, with gusts even higher. One person who came through said the winds had picked up to thirty-five miles an hour sustained, with gusts up to fifty this afternoon.

I don't know about you, but I don't think I would want to be up on the roof trying to put down sheets of OSB, felt paper, and shingles today. Of course, there are other things to do outside today, like the people who purchased soffits and facia, or the ones who left with steel siding. Hell, any kind of siding would be a fight on a day like today, even if you worked at ground level and stayed off the ladders and scaffolding. One person had an "extra" piece of vented soffit. We pulled it off, and I set in flat on the slab, with a 1 x 4 x 16 piece of treated wood on it.

Then, after it launched in a gust of wind into the side of a vehicle, I took it over along side the fence and piled a couple rolls of 4 inch tubing on it to hold it down. Luckily, it hit into the tires, and then up against the side, so it did not destroy the soffit. Even better, it did not damage the vehicle at all. Now imagine, if you would, trying to handle this stuff out in the open, and not have it blow all over. I could just about see some clown up and a ladder, trying to wrestle a piece of this stuff, or metal siding into place, and have the wind catch it and launch it, and him halfway across the yard.

Maybe it's just me, but I think I would rather work on inside projects, or do something more wind friendly. I mean, it would be a good day to rake the yard, just start on the south side and let the wind do all the work. Of course, there are plenty of people who think similar to me, picking up lumber and supplies to work on things inside. I'm not sure about moving sheetrock around in this wind, but if you have a place to unload out of the wind it would be alright.

And, some of the people working on the weekends is understandable. I know that for many, the weekends are the only open days they have. But, you still have to take some time for family. Some of the people who come through every weekend are married and have children. I see them many mornings, coming in to pick up items for one job or another, because they are contractors. But on weekends? Maybe once in a while, if your behind, or if it's the only day you can work someplace.

But man, if I was in that kind of work, I would want a couple of days off for family. I just worked all summer, and I mean all summer. Seven days a week and sometimes twelve hour days. It sucked slew scum! As the supervisor, I had no choice. But as soon as I had the people I needed to take a day off, I was all over that like ants on honey.

I also remember very well how many times I had to miss something the children had going because I had to work. That sucked slew slime, too. And not just children, but family and friends. Why would a person choose to miss these things? I know, sometimes there's just no other way. But, I'm talking about people who make this choice over and over again.

Some of them are pretty nice people, and they visit a little. I get a chance to talk to them and it's always the same thing. I have to work all the time to pay the bills, to support the kind of lifestyle we live. My question is, what kind of lifestyle is worth the cost of missing the most important things in life. I mean, if my "lifestyle" cost so much that I had to work everyday to keep it up, would I even have time to live it?

Like I said, maybe I'm the one who doesn't see it right. To me, it just seems better to have less, but to have the time to enjoy what you have, than to have it all, and never get to enjoy any of it. I just can't understand why anyone would want to work everyday to have everything but no time to ever really appreciate or enjoy it, and then die and someone else comes along and gets it all anyway.

Well, enough of my ponderings, I better to get writing in that novel for NaNoWriMo because that book isn't going to write itself~