April 5 – “Tedious”

Well, this will certainly be a short post compared to the full and exciting ones of recent days past.  We are home.  That has been established.  We hosted home group last night, as we do most every Thursday, and had a pretty good group.  We are kind of in the middle of the story of Balaam and his infamous talking donkey.  It was great to have Mrs. Betty back.  She always has some insightful questions for us to ponder.

But as to the rest of the day …

I spent the entire day kneeling down or sitting.  Sound glamorous?  Sound relaxing? Yeah … no.  We decided to find a use for all the slate we uncovered when we tore out the patio after getting the fence put up.  Yep.  Another of those “One project leads to another leads to another” deals.  And the use we decided upon?  Cover the strip of ground from the gate to the existing back door area.  The back door to the existing grass will be transformed into a little patio with the new pavers we will get from Home Depot because they are on sale four for a dollar.  But that’s another new project. 

So, the slate on the strip of lawn project.  To accomplish that I needed to first dig up the area and get it somewhat level, yet maintain its drainage integrity.  Then came the tedious task of placing the small pieces of slate into a random mosaic pattern.  It wasn’t really that hard until we ran out of the larger pieces and I had to use those tiny little quarter-sized ones.  Did I mention, “tedious”?  I never really accomplished the final part to the task.  That would be carefully placing dirt in between each piece of slate and tapping it into place.  I’m afraid those little pieces may wash away the first time it rains, so I had Chris take a picture.  At least I can say it looked pretty good for a while at least. 

I know the first question that popped into your mind was, “What about your new knee?  How did it handle all that kneeling?”  Thanks for asking.  It was … difficult.  The kneeling just felt weird.  But I still have trouble with the hamstring when I bend the knee too far.  Not serious.  It just hurts to do that.  All manner of logic screams, “If it hurts, don’t do it.”   But the tiny little voice of a physical therapist whispers, “Let measure to see how far you can bend it.”  And the not-so tiny voice of the surgeon declares, “You can do whatever you think you can do.”  So do I push it beyond the pain?  Do I avoid the pain altogether?  Ah, the dilemma …

1 Thessalonians 5:15 says, “Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.”

Father, thank you for our home group folks.  They had an array of medical issues last night, so please touch them where they need you the most.  Amen.