“The RoseBouquet”

This past Saturday I was determined to make some headway with improvements around this house, besides laundry and baking bread. (No, the RRAP hasn’t come through yet). First, Joe came over to help lift the two sacks of patching cement out of my car trunk, and put them in the shed, so I could start mixing some up in a bucket to repair the walls in my basement.

Ugh, was that stuff ever heavy and hard to stir when I added water. And gravel was in there! It was really difficult to trowel that into the cracks. It was rather discouraging.

Well, the previous Saturday I had cleaned and prepared the back gate to be painted. But then I’d felt too tired to tackle the painting. I would do that this time. I gave the gate another good wipe with a wet cloth, and got my new avocado green paint into a margarine tub to hold in one hand, and went at it. However, I started on the outside first, and the wind was blowing that way. I had been a bit afraid the wind would blow dust on the fresh paint, but instead it blew the paint spatters into my face! Not quite so bad when I painted on the inside.

It took me about two and a half hours. In the end though the gate looked much improved from the mottled scrap lumber that Joe and Arnold used last November to make it for me.

After 3 pm I came in. My glasses were so spattered I couldn’t see through them, so I took them off and took a photo of my face, so I could see later how bad it was. Yikkes!

I had a nice soak in the bathtub and got rid of most of the paint. After supper I went to hear guest speakers at Bethany Manor as I had promised to take notes for some who couldn’t be there. (It was put on by the Mennonite Historical Society of Saskatchewan, or MHSS).

All that was okay, but the next morning I woke with a headache and right away I KNEW what had happened. I used to have this problem fairly often until I learned to work around it. When I exert myself to an extreme with physical labour one day, I invariably use up all the adrenalin my body can produce, and the next day my bowels and other bodily functions sort of grind to a halt. Sinus pressure builds up in my head, and I have a cross-eyed headache. All the painkillers and anti-histamines I take do nothing to clear this problem up until I’ve had time to rest and get my bowels moving again. That can take from 24-48 hours.

So Sunday I dragged around with my brain at half-mast, doing just the things I could persuade myself to do by will-power, and it lingered through yesterday until the evening. Then suddenly it lifted, and I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed again. Whoa, but I like it when I can think and see and do all I’m used to doing! Today I’m praising the Lord for good health and a fresh flush of adrenalin juice.

Yes, I know. I really have to remember to pace my heavy work projects more carefully.