Doing the Build

I woke up this morning feeling absolutely wretched.

I get headaches. Big, bad migraines. I hate 'em. And I have meds for them, and sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. This morning was a don't.

So I got up with the rest of the family, did the ponytails and sorted out the toothbrushes. Then when they all left to go to school, I took a shower, and then went back to bed and slept until 11am. Which was great, because by the time I got up, the headache was mostly gone. Like Westley, in The Princess Bride is 'mostly dead', which means he's a little bit alive. So the headache was still a little bit alive, too.

But by about 1pm I was OK. So I decided to do a couple of things that have been collecting. I recycled the old batteries, took the small, broken electrical things to the SBET collection facility (see you, Obnoxious Laughing Santa thing - it's been real), did the charity shop drop, went to the ironmonger, and then home again. Which is when I decided to finish the wood storage.

My husband has been telling me for about three months that he wasn't going to buy any firewood for our house until we had a place to store the firewood. We DID have a place to store it last year, which was just piled crazily against the house about as far away from the back door as you can get and still be on a paved surface. Sort of a long way to go when it's pelting down rain and you're in slippers. But he wanted a REAL place to store the firewood. And when he investigated about how much it'd cost to buy one (150 quid or so), I just said in a casual way, 'Honey, I'll just build you one'. Of course, this was one of those times where he was actually listening to what I said, so he said 'Great idea!'.  Figures.

When I was at the ironmongers, I bought some self-tapping screws (IS there any other kind to use, really?), and some nails (oooh - it's like pick and mix, but for building supplies!). I got a few other things, too, but that's for later.

Armed with a hammer, a chisel, my electric drill (clever me I charged the battery up last week), and my electric saw, I took apart two pallets, and with the bits from those, and various pieces of scrap wood we've been hoarding from a building project last summer, I made him a wood storage. It's pretty great, if I may say so. I think I want to say so because it's made from reclaimed wood, and I like that. It also sort of looks a little bit like something you'd see in R.A. Miller's back garden -- it's not perfect, and it's very rustic, but that's why it looks so cool; at least why I think it looks cool.

So I think that being outside in the cold (2 degrees C today) and doing something physical, but not formally exercise, helped get rid of the headache. It's a bit meditative, actually. There's an end result that I'm hoping to gain, yes, but it's also a task that has to be done in a completely mindful way - there's no room for thinking about something else when you're busy using an electric saw. It's the same frame of mind I can get into when I'm following a really involved crochet pattern - you can't think of something else, or you end up with a completely wonky piece of unidentifiable yarn thing.

So I did a bit of letting my mind wander (in an 'I'm very much paying attention to the electric saw' kind of way) and did a bit of mulling about The Carrot thing. It's still very much front of mind. But I find that I'm able to think about The Carrot when I've got some peace and quiet. It's a drag that the peace and quiet was precipitated by a monster of a headache, but I guess I'll take what I can get.

I've still got some serious thinking to do. Certainly nothing is going to be discovered in a day, or a week. But just going outside, and working with my hands, and starting with a large pile of odds and ends and leftovers, and ending up with a wood storage thing and a much smaller pile, was good. The coldness of the day, and the quietness that was so quiet that I could hear the echo of the hammer hitting the nails, was a good place to be in for that couple of hours.