I actually don't
feel old, it was just a cute title. I am however, a
cementing fool. And this entry is more of a
documentation of just how many pounds I moved all
over the place, yet can somehow still walk. Not bad
for a man who turns 36 tomorrow...
...and to
celebrate that? I figured I'd use the background
version of "Thursday" for this entry's video that
I wrote and recorded, sigh, 20 years ago at 16.
Amazing that that makes me smile with pride and not
cry with nausea. Life, is, grand.
There's something
particularly twisted about yelling at your dogs for
three days not to walk on the cement and then putting
their paws in it at the end. LMAO. CeBe in particular
was like: "WOAH. WOAH. I'm trying to move away, you
canNOT blame this shit on me. You literally put my paw
in this. WHAT THE FUCK."
So seriously, what
the hell am I doing? Well, to understand this I
have to take you all the way back to
2003...
Jess and
I paid thousands to have soil brought
in, a sprinkler system put in, and grass laid
down. The sprinklers were shitty - they would
break if you walked NEAR them which then
meant for the rest of the afternoon you would
dig a massive hole around it, cut the pipe
and reattatch a new sprinkler. Hours. You do
this about 3 or 4 times and you realize that
this simply isn't gonna work. You can't even
mow your lawn without accidentally knockin'
one out.
You need to
re-pipe the entire yard and you'll ruin the grass.
Time passes, you try to water it by hand
(TWICE A DAY) and eventually, you just can't
keep up. The grass dies. Oh and check out what was on
the old patio in chalk...
Ha. I had
totally forgotten I tried to draw a 4-Square
court on that old patio. Funny what that became.
:)
So the deck was a
great way to ignore the "dirt yard" in my
backyard, but around the deck was this shitty
sand-type shit that got EVERYWHERE. I then realized
that they never brought in the soil they said they
did, because nothin will grow on it. It's sand, we are
in the desert. I could repipe-it now, get an assload
of soil and put in the better sprinklers to grow grass
again... or I could just cover it with something.
I checked out the fake grass they have now (really
impressive actually) but it's lik $4 a square
FOOT. At 300+ square feet just around the bottom and
right side of the deck? That's not happening.
I thought of gravel, I thought of wood chips
(which would ALL be in our bed within a week -
thank you LeeLoo), and all that was really left was
cement. Extending the driveway up to the deck. What I
didn't realize was just, how, hard that shit would
be.
I broke it up into
3 sections. The first section took Twenty-one 90 pound
bags. 90 pound bags that I had to move SIX times.
From the store to the cart (1), from the cart to my
car (2), from my car to my dolly (3), from my dolly to
the ground (4), from the ground to the wheel barrow
(5), and finally mixed with 12 more pounds of water,
move it to it's final resting place and smooth it out
(6). Holy shit. Day one was 2,142 pounds of cement
(1,890 dry before adding water). What the hell, right?
That was just one section. Then it rained for the
first time in 5 months (of fucking COURSE Murphy) the
next day and then the following day I did the 2nd
section (19 more bags; 1,938 pounds) and the next day
the 3rd section (19 more bags; 1,938 pounds) for a
grand total of 6,018 pounds of cement. Yes, over 3
freaking tons which incredibly only cost $200. Had I
hired people to do that? It would've cost
easily $1500 (and that's illegal alien prices).
Who knew if you do it all yourself it can be so cheap?
But it certainly did a number on my
body...
...or did it?
I mean, I definitely feel tired... but I'm
not that sore. My hands are kind of sore, my muscles
are simply drained of energy - but I'm not sore.
I feel like I'm in the shape of my life. Talya
nor Jon could even pick UP one of those bags and
I did 60 of em 6 times EACH. Hell, yes. Here's to
being in your mid-thirties!
As well as being a
glutton for physical punishment I think Talya
officially knows I have the most ridiculous work
ethic of anyone she's ever met. Not sure people
realize that when it comes to my "virtual" life online
with video, etc. People watch a video and they just
haven't the slightest idea what "cutting out each ego
frame by frame" really means. Trust me, it's harder
and more time consuming than moving 3 tons of cememnt
by yourself. What I've done the last two weeks has
been a VACATION to me. A well-defined goal,
well-defined path to get there and a well-defined
belief that I can get it done. As I've said for
over a decade, "oh what I'd give for that in my
career". I had it with CBS and The Egos and when
you watch the last season? Those 13 episodes? I've
never pushed myself so much or produced so
efficiently. Well defined goal, well defined time
frame (work for 40 straight hours) and the people
around me to help complete it (make-up guy, sound-guy,
camera-guy) as well as an incredible place like
Television City to shoot it.
Anyway, that's
miles away and after I finish painting the cement
(gonna do a deep brown to match the deck - sounds
crazy, but you'll get it when you see it finished)
I'll be back in that career/virtual world trying to
figure out what festivals to attack.
And yes, this has
absolutely been a mental vacation from that world
because I simply do not have the drive to keep pushing
the documentary. I will submit it to some festivals
ONLY because of this site. ONLY because it's the
proper end to the arc of that story. It deserves to be
seen in a few festivals and I believe it will,
I just have to get a little excitement going and
work out those copyright issues. Ugh.
But tomorrow is my
birthday, and I'm gonna enjoy it. In fact, I'm working
on an entry about just how happy I am and how
technically entering my late 30s fills me with pride.
Weird, right? The older I get the prouder
I am of my accomplishments. There is a twinge of
frustration about what could have been, of course, but
it doesn't define me. My ability to produce does.
