Last Sunday- I made plans to have a quiet day of meandering around the internet. I had hoped to write a few blog posts for ye old blog and then later visit my favorite blogs. I also recently joined an ETSY team last month and planned on making some Treasuries on Sunday to promote the other team members… that was until my husband informed me that the neighbors were inquiring as to whether or not I wanted a load of patio bricks.
I went over there to peek at the bricks and the next thing I know I am hauling them over to my yard in a little red wagon. As if that wasn’t more manual labor then I do in a whole year, shortly- thereafter and six popsicles later I found myself on the internet googling “how to build a patio.”
Which is actually an easy project, it doesn’t entail any brains just a lot of brawn- which I can honestly say now I am short on both…
So here I am digging a hole on my lazy Sunday late afternoon, because I thought it would be pretty easy considering I only had to dig 8 inches deep… but actually it was a lot of work back breaking, mind-numbing work. While I was digging I started thinking about how I could be blogging, reading blogs, and making Treasuries on ETSY but instead was spending my Sunday ditch-digging and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. And that wasn’t really pleasant to think about at all so I thought I should try to think about things that would make ditch-digging fun!
In order to make it more enjoyable then it actually was, I envisioned myself finding some sort of vintage buried treasure and that I would have an insanely amazing blog post about all the cool crap I found in my back yard. I imagined that if I dug 8 inches down I might hit… oh I don’t know…perhaps the roof of a buried WWII bomb shelter stocked with all sorts of vintage goodies from the 1940s still beautifully, hermetically sealed just below my feet. Which is kind of stupid, because Wisconsin is the last place anyone would build a bomb shelter, because only the Canadians would want to bomb here. Needless to say all I ended up finding was a boatload of hacked in half worms, one mangy looking June bug and a really pretty blue swirled glass marble. I pocketed the marble and threw the June bug in the grass. I figured the marble was success enough and that I would take a picture of it and show you my beautiful vintage buried treasure I dug up in my own back yard.
Anyway- to make a long story short, I forgot about my marble when I threw my clothes down the laundry chute later that night and lost it. I have no marble, no treasure, and not much of a blog post either. I just hope you haven’t forgotten me, because I haven’t forgotten any of you and I will be visiting blogs and posting a few Treasuries for my team tonight.
I did a patio last summer/fall and it was a lot of work. I was certainly hurting places I hadn’t had hurt in a long time. I didn’t dig down, though. Ours is a raised patio: packed earth, topped with packed sand, topped with pavers. The border is sections of 4X4 treated lumber.
We’re currently visiting our family in the Madison area, but will be heading towards home in the morning.
On the contrary – that was a great blog post! Had you had some previous inclination to build a patio, or was this a completely sudden occurrence? And did you finish? It must have been pretty satisfying afterwards.
Also, I’ve never heard of a laundry chute… I’m guessing it probably isn’t as fun as it sounds?!
Hi Mike- I can picture your patio since you described it so well. I have been pretty sluggish all week and I attribute to all the manual labor. I am in pretty good shape, but it was quite a bit more work then I am used to. I am hoping to finish it up this weekend. I need to buy all the crushed stone and sand for fill- according to the internet I am past the hard part though.
I envy you on your tip- would love to travel more, but it is hard with our youngest Julian. He is 2 and the size of a 5 year old… handling him is a lot of hard work in itself. ;o)
Hi Jenny- We thought about building a patio before, but it really seemed like too much work. When the bricks for a small patio showed up for free I figured I would just go with the project.
A laundry chute is kind of neat actually. It’s a hole in the wall with a door on it in an upper level of a house. You open the door and throw your dirty clothes down the chute or slide and your clothes end up in the basement next to your washing machine. Our laundry chute is in the hall between the first floor bathroom and our bedroom. So you can quickly toss off all your dirty clothes in the hall, throw them down the chute, and make a run for the shower which is only about 10 or 15 steps away.
The only thing bad a bout a laundry chute is that little children are fascinated with it and I am always afraid one of the smaller children will go down it head first.
I was actually on your new website the other night reading. I love it- it is just so neat and I love the lay out and cohesiveness of the set up. I really envy you, it’s a great website to showcase your writing. I’ll be over there again on the weekend.
Thank you
I’m mostly just glad it’s finished now – it seemed to take forever! I am pleased with it though.
A laundry chute does sound fun, although I can see why you’d worry about the children disappearing down it! I’m quite pleased that the reality of it actually is as good as I imagined!
just the fact that you were able to make the painstaking task of digging a ditch into a treasure hunt is pretty impressive! And of course I haven’t forgotten you!