Fuckin' Nail!

In case you're wondering why the title of this blog is so inappropriate...it's become our motto. This was not a conscious choice. It's just something we found ourselves saying so often and with such vehemence that it necessarily became our motto. Nailing things in over your head is not fun, especially after you've been trying to hit the same stud for 15 minutes, and all your nails keep bending or falling out before you've pounded them in securely.

But that is not the point of the blog entry. Just a little eclecticity from our trip. This blog is about how miserable construction work is in the rain and mud. It's miserable. You've got a hammer in your right hand, a tape measure in your pocket, a pencil in your other pocket, and you're helping someone carry a 4x8 piece of OSB up the stairs. My legs ache, my shoulders ache, my hands are cramped, and I feel like I could sleep for 12 hours without moving. I am covered in mud. But even a miserable day of construction makes me feel good. There were highlights. Have you ever noticed that when you're doing really tedious, even painful work everything becomes hilarious. I mean, the puniest, dumbest joke becomes enough to send everyone howling. It's that distinctly human way of dealing with unpleasantness.

There was the Tyvex incident. Tyvex is this really interesting material that is somewhere between plastic and paper that you literally wrap a house in. It comes in huge rolls--like rolls of wrapping paper, but about 3 times as wide--and you literally just wrap the house in it and secure the stuff with a staple gun. This work requires at least three people (inexperienced people, granted), a ladder, and infinite patience, especially when the wind blows. Everything about this was funny even though I could never relate what exactly was funny about it. We were floundering, and yet it was hilarious.

There was also a period when we were nailing OSB into the roof area of the house--up at the top where the apex of the roof is. So, three of my fellow workers were on a scaffolding, one of them was on a ladder on top of the scaffolding, and I was sitting in the beams in the attic, leaning out the side of the house trying to bend a nail that was sticking through the roof, preventing us from getting the OSB flush with the roof. This was not even remotely safe, by any standard, but it was pretty much the only way we were going to nail that bastard up there. And it was hilarious. We were constantly yelling things like "Where's the hammer?" Where's the chalk line?" Where's the angle?" "Where's Hunter?". And then, we were tired, our arms were cramping, and we kept losing our pencil. It was fabulous. I felt like such a renegade, hammering up in the air, my pants muddied and my boots dangling from the rafters.

Then, the future owner of the house brought us King Cake. This is a phenomenon that I was not aware existed until today. It's this circular sugar-cinnamon cake with green or purple sprinkles and white icing on top. But the best part is that somewhere inside the cake is a tiny, plastic baby Jesus. I don't know what it means if you happen to be the person who finds the Jesus, but there was, indeed, a Jesus in there. "Look, guys, Jesus is made in China."