Can´t Be Easy

Beautiful weather for walking. Had three fine pilgrims from Oregon stay here last night, a teacher and two students, part of a group that´s on the Road. They were enjoyable company, but they made me feel quite old and out of touch.

This morning Patrick and I began the monumental task of moving his painting things out of the little kitchen and out to his new studio in the back yard. It is one of the domino-theory frustrations here -- in order to do Job A, you must first do Job B. But to do Job B, everything already in the corner of Space J must be moved to Space K. It is much like one of those sliding-square puzzles. I hate puzzles.

But the back yard was a shambles, and something had to be done, so me and Paddy girded our loins and set to it. We moved a big length of fence alongside the chicken coop, only slightly damaging the existing fence. We shifted a large pile of boards from one side of the woodpile to another -- they all were right-angles and Zs and Ts, spiked and studded with pointy nails and screws and bits of string. I dismantled this year´s garden irrigation hose system, seeing as the builders had pretty well demolished it anyway. I started a pile of things to go to the trash, another to go to the gardening shed, another to go to the tool storage. I was getting into the rhythm of it, accustomed as I am to feeling spiders run up my arms and bits of adobe dribble off the beams and into my hair. And then I asked Paddy to help me move a great sheet of corrugated iron from the middle of the yard into the woodshed. We couldn´t find a second pair of gloves, so I gave Paddy half of my pair. Of course you know what happened next.

No stitches, but a pretty tightly-bound bandage round the middle finger and across the palm of my right hand. So that is my excuse for not blogging more. It hurts when I type, and I don´t want to keep breaking it open. 
 
None of this would be remarkable, except for one factor: We expected a volunteer a week ago who was to stay right through the end of summer, helping out with these heavy chores. (We´ve been saving them up for a while now, and they´re hitting critical mass.) The guy has not called or written, nor has he answered my emails. I guess he isn´t coming. People do that a lot these days, and not just builders.

The piles are still out there.
The wheelbarrow needs to be wheeled to the bin. Paddy goes light-headed when stoop-and-lift are required. It will be a while before my right hand picks up anything heavier than a Coke bottle.
I hope it doesn´t rain anytime soon.
I hope the volunteer shows up.
I hope the cuts close up before next week. I want to go Camino-ing again!