The Price of Sandbags... Saturday, April 20

Nothing like looking at a ladder when you’re about 12 feet in the air and noting that the warning label on it reads “maximum 100kgs”. Snickers is about 75kg, I’m 53kg, so we’re 128kg… 28kg over the limit, great.

I’ve turned into this fierce workaholic, attacking and conquering tasks I never imagined I’d ever be doing let alone would know how to do and setting daily missions for myself that defy what it means to be determined because I’ve been refusing to go to bed until they’re completed. I feel like I can honestly say I have had my hand in every and any aspect of the making of Hulk’s – the plumbing, concrete pouring, wallpapering, cleaning, assembling and disassembling, moving, scrubbing, electrical, printing, ordering, planning, creating – and tonight I continued on with the drilling. I’ve also been involved, of course, in the paying of Hulk’s too and tonight I proved to be paying more than just money from my pocket and time. Tonight the price I paid were fingers that no longer can clinch together to make a fist, feet that swell up when I take off my work boots, eyes that itch because of the sand, arms I can’t exactly lift above my head right now, shoulders that surely are perma-flexed, and clothes that now sport about a zillion-trillion layers of water and sand – concrete.

Tonight was rough, there’s no flowering it up or getting around it. We were on a mission to drill the holes into the ceiling for the sandbag holders.

10 sandbags x 4 holes per holder = 40 holes.

Forty holes in concrete beams, that was our initial thinking, however what ended up happening was for every 3-4 holes one of them wouldn’t go though because of metal rods within the beams. Our anticipated 40 holes turned into something like 60. It was grueling and body draining work. Snickers with the drill above his head, us up standing 12 some feet in the air both on a ladder that noted it didn’t support our weight, and me spraying water while he drilled so to keep the dust down.

Sure, we got all ten sandbag holders put up on those beams but we also have the aching bones and soon-to-be clogged laundry machine piping to prove it.