There are days when having this job that leaves me free to work outside, on my own schedule, is the most fabulous thing in the world.

And there are days when I wonder what in the hell I was thinking, to take a physical job fifteen years after my last one ended.

I think today has been both of them.

When it’s good, it’s really really good. I’ve been spending a lot of time outside in the last couple of weeks, developing a nice farmer’s tan, getting my old cowboy hat good and broke in for the year, and watching spring hit the valley. Today, I stopped at the well just to appreciate the smells. The boys had mowed the land around it last week, and it still smelled like fresh hay. I could catch a whiff of the dairy nearby, and not the chicken farm upwind. Flowers were blooming and a Great Blue Heron came in for a landing that paralleled the runway and looked like a small plane coming in. I said hello to my cabinet spider when I checked the chlorine. She doesn’t bother me and I don’t bother her, although the wasps will be a different story next month.

I spent the rest of the day running between a construction site (always a favorite), picking up samples and talking to tenants, and working by myself on valves and hydrants outside. It’s a wet job, blowing hydrants, but really satisfying when the water goes from dirty to clean in a minute or two. Sometimes the valves themselves are easy to turn; sometimes hard. Sometimes impossible, for me by myself, and I mark those to come back to with either my lovely assistant or a hydraulic assist. I like working as a team with the guys, but I also like doing it myself, at my own pace, as the last couple of weeks have been. I can think more about which way the water’s going and how best to get those pipes clean, and sometimes the phyisical work frees my mind to wander where it will.

 

But I get to working on these things and find that I can’t straighten my back easily. By the end of the week, I’m sort of a ball of hurt. I’m hoping I’ll condition myself out of that, and predict great big Ahnold arms by the time I’ve turned all of the valves. I’m not even on valve two hundred yet, and I have at least three hundred more to go. My noodley arms aren’t taking it very well, and I come home so tired. By the end of the week, I’d better have something easy prepared for dinner, because it’s all I can do to heat the kids up a frozen pizza, after those long days and then sitting through baseball practice for a couple of hours. At least that forces me to have a little downtime; if we were at home, my mind would be rolling with things that needed to be done at home, making me either more tired or just guilty.

I took the weekend off from the constant motion. I was on-call, and the kids had things to do, so I had to pass on Junior’s shoot, which I otherwise would have liked to go to. Not that I’d have chosen housework, but I sure am relieved that a big chunk of it is done. I can kind of veg in the evenings during the week, when I need it most. Well, that and I got to sneak in a nap. My poor body needed it.

It’s fun work, but somebody has to do it.