Life In Construction ©

It’s been a long week and it’s only hump day.
Hump day, there is the appropriate combination of words for how I feel right now, I have had about 6 hours sleep in the last three days.
It started the other day when the phone rang at 3:20 am and after chasing an ambulance for 2 miles I sat in the emergency waiting room for the next eight hours with a lot of time to think.

There has been a lot of bad things happening here and out there I have noticed and was wondering why.
Why all of a sudden has so much pain, worry and sorrow made it’s way to a major part of my daily life?

Twenty years ago it was rare that there would be this many bad things happening at once.
Someone would die once in a while; it was like the Reaper was on vacation in some other part of the world or someone else’s life.
Outside of colds and the occasional accident, most of the people I knew were healthy and happy.
Today, that’s different story, those same people that were healthy are now sick, dieing or dead and I am sitting in a room with a handful of other strangers waiting for someone to walk out to tell us:
A. The news we want to hear.
B. The news we don’t want to hear.
What will they tell us?
I look around the room and I could see in the eyes of the people waiting how bad the person they brought in was.

Two women were giggling and having a grand old time talking and watching TV, I guess their friend must have broken a nail or something like that.

A man was sitting by himself in one corner looking bored, wishing he wasn’t there, maybe a little pissed he was being put out by whom ever he brought to the hospital.

Then there was a couple in their forties that looked distraught.
I knew their child was back there somewhere; I didn’t need anyone to tell me because I could tell by the way they clung to each other as if it could help the doctors fix the problem.

A woman with a young man sat there alone not talking but lost in thought.
Every now and then the young man would ask her if she wanted something and she would tell him no, then he would go to a venting machine and get himself a coffee then go back to waiting next to the old woman.
A son with his mother waiting to find out about his father, her husband; I could tell by the lost look in her eyes.
As I sat there I could almost see their life together as it flashed by her sad eyes.

The double door swung open and we all look over in unison to see a laughing girl on crutches come out to the squeals of the other two who were now running over to her.
The rest of us just turned back to stare at the floor once more and wait for the doors to swing open with news for us but until then the clock ticks away.

I walked in the door and dropped in my chair, beat, dead tired and getting old really fucken fast. The cursed phone ran once more and I was walking out the door in a hurry and 20 minutes later I was now sitting in another waiting room.
The room was filled with different strangers but the same.
Like drones waiting to be told, we sat around the room waiting, more time to think.

Why is all this happening all at once?
Is it bad luck?

Two hours later I am home with a screaming child wanting her mother and father but all I can tell her is to watch TV and she will see them later, I hope.

So is all that is happening to my friends and family because of bad luck?
The answer is no, we are getting older and those around us are getting older to.
Outside of family the people we hang out with are our age so it seems that a lot of bad things are happening when in fact it’s life that is happening.
We are getting closer to the end, which is a natural progression and see a lot of grief and sorrow as time rolls on.
Sometimes it’s overwhelming, depressing because of the number of bad things that befall so many people and in reality it’s not that many.
It’s what it should be but because we all hang out with people our own age it looks like it’s more than it should be.
I think one of the biggest faults we have is that we don’t mix it up, we stick to people our own age when we should be all hanging out together age be damned.
Granted, there are many things not everyone could do but the younger crowd could try and keep up.
I think by mixing it up there would be less bad things to experience; the numbers would be the same but it would be spread out more, not to mention the other benefits, like learning from each other.
It wasn’t always that way, if we look back in history people hung out together without prejudice but now it’s not cool.

The construction is proceeding slowly, mostly due to my brother’s zealous desire to put all these gizmos in the houses.
My mother couldn’t breath the other day because of the dust and had to rush her to see a doctor and get her asthma under control.
When I got back I let my brother know it either had to stop totally NOW or he had to stop FUCKING around and finish it NOW before he kills our parents.
My father isn’t looking any better.
He is constantly running around for them and cleaning up after, to try and keep the dust down for my mother.

Last night I had another argument with my brother because he wants to put a 48 inch fan above my mother's bed and she doesn’t want one that big.
She asked him to get her a smaller one and he told her it’s either the 48 inch fan or she can go buy what she wanted with her money.
I wanted to slap the teeth out of his fucken mouth for that, I then told him to take his fan and to fuck off and that I will got get the old lady what she wants.
The fan would be five feet above their bed and it’s to much fan for them, they are old Greeks not Eskimos.
With any luck I could get the work done in my parents place by tonight and they could sleep in the bed for the first time in weeks.
At least they could get some rest before the plastering and sanding is to take place, that will be another nightmare for my mother.

As I was telling you last week I had my old computer room to fix while there were demolishing next door.
This was my old computer room after I cleaned it out and patched up the walls.




After the patching and cleaning up I went down to Home Depot to get paint, I have yet to find Sally there BTW.
I went to the clerk at the paint section with a sample of the paint I wanted from the rack.
It was a whitish yellow but you could barely see any yellow but I like how it was tinted.
After I handed it to him I made two mistakes the first being staring at a woman walking by wearing clothes that were 6 sizes to small and barely holding back the bits everyone was expecting to burst out.
Second, I wasn’t watching WTF the clerk was doing because he was watching the same woman hoping for an eruption of her top to.
After the machine mixing my paint finished he passed it to me and as I looked at the lid I said to him that the paint look a little to yellow and not like the sample I handed to him.
He said that it was the same but when it dries it’s lighter and not as yellow.
Hmmm, sounded like it might be true.

After Home Depot, I drove to a carpet store to buy myself carpeting for the room.
I walked in and a salesman was on me before the freakin door shut.
He asked me what I wanted and I told him I wanted an 11x8 carpet.
Then he asked what color I wanted it to be and I told him it didn’t matter as long as it wasn’t pink.
He went and dragged this plush carpet to me that looked great but when I got close to it I swear it was pink.
I told him it was pink and he argued that it wasn’t.
It was flesh tone.
Huh?
What was he, stupid?
Flesh tone for a Caucasian is fucken pink otherwise they wouldn't call white people pink skins.
After bringing me six more carpets I chose one and stuffed that into the trunk then took off for home.
Painting was easy but not eventless.
I have high ceilings and as I was standing on the ladder cutting the ceiling the light cover fell hitting me on the head causing me to fall off the ladder knocking over the CD case that was in the center of the room sending it crashing through the wall.
This meant that I wasn’t painting any more but patching a huge hole in the wall and the CD case was totalled with CDs spread all over the floor.
Not to mention there were four old people on the other side of the wall that almost had synchronized heart attacks.
After assuring them I was ok I went back to work.
I painted everything but the part I patched and the wall looked yellow to me.
I shrugged the color off because he said it would get lighter when it dried.
Four hours later I went back and I still had a yellow wall and it was dry so I put another coat on, who knows maybe the more coats of yellow paint you put on the wall the whiter it gets.
Four hours later I came to the conclusion that I had a yellow wall.
Oh well, I guess it will look good with the pink fucken carpet.
Shut Up Vickie, that goes for you to Jules.
It’s a good thing MrH is on his way to see his parents in Connecticut (who BTW are in their nineties) or I would never hear the end of it.
After the walls were painted and the carpet laid I brought in all the junk that will now occupy the new video library.






So that's life in construction.
Sometimes it's black and white and other times, it's pink and yellow

Have a nice day.

Walker