Half-Assed Weekend

I'm sure I cannot possibly be the only one who opens a box to assemble something, and sees the pamphlet that tells you "assembly time: 5 minutes". This is quite possibly one of the biggest fucking lies of all time.

Last weekend, while I was in the city delivering papers and visiting my family, I was also shopping. Due to the fact that my home location is so remote that the nearest Gag Wal-mart is over two hours away, I tend to do the majority of my shopping in the city, which is about 3 hours away. I even take a cooler - usually someone else's. Anyway, I had asked my parents to add to their short Costco list of mine an 18" oscillating fan. That sucker was going in my bedroom and my tiny little 12" fan was leaving.

They promptly forgot. Actually, I believe it was my dad who did Costco and therefore, forgot the fan. He did buy me two 36 packs of Diet Pepsi. One was plenty.

So, off I went the next morning to find me a fan. I found one at Target. And it even has a remote . . . which I don't have batteries for. So the remote is pointless until I remember to get some AAA batteries. Whatever.

I got home Monday evening and it seriously took me about an hour just to unload the car and unpack shit. Oy ve. I had a lot of stuff in my car.

That's just the back seat. The pic doesn't include back seat floor boards, the front seat, nor the "trunk" - which was loaded with about 30 or so bundles of papers at the time.

My house was hot when I got home, so getting my fan assembled was a top priority. At first I thought I could multi-task by calling my BFF back and assemble said fan. I couldn't have been more wrong. So I spent about an hour or so on the phone, sitting on the couch . . . sweating . . . staring at the fan trying to will it to assemble itself. The reason I couldn't multi-task was I couldn't pay attention to my BFF's portion of the conversation and comprehend the fucked up diagram that was sitting in front of me.

Now, this isn't the first fan I've put together. I don't remember having trouble putting the smaller ones together. Maybe I've been out of college too long? I'm forgetting the basics?

As soon as I'm off the phone, I'm on that fan like flies on shit. I get everything done and then attempt to put the front grill on. The little side clips don't seem to want to work the way I believe they should. And they give you the tiniest screw and nut to work with. I cannot tell you how many times I had to get down on the floor on all fours with a flashlight to fight the damned things because I kept dropping them.

I finally get the front grill screwed on and attempt the clips some more. Nothing changes. So not counting the hour I was on the phone, that damn fan took me about an hour to put together. Five minutes my ass.

I figure that basically as long as the front grill doesn't fall off in the middle of the night and scare the living shit out of me, then it's all good.

And the fan was worth the $40, and the scavenger hunts. I've been freezing my ass off for a week. It's awesome.

Half-Assed Weekend

People seem to be giving me shit for wanting my swamp cooler to work. I'm not really sure why. Okay, has it gotten to triple digits where I am, no. But that is not the point.

The point is this: at least half the work I do is outside. In the sun. Where it's hot. My house, even with the windows open and fans on isn't the coolest place in the world. Wednesday night, it wouldn't cool off for shit, and slept without my covers until like 4am, when it finally cooled off enough.

I'm sorry, but if I'm sweating while doing nothing then there is an issue. Watching a movie from my perch on the couch really isn't much of a workout in the evening.

So, while I understand it's not in the triple digits just yet where I am, that doesn't mean I'm not doing something in that 85 to 95 degree weather that's making me hot. Or my house, which gets the sun until early evening.

Let me bitch about it people, it's my right.  ;o)

Half-Assed Weekend



I'm moving my Half-Assed Weekend posts here - which of course was started by the all powerful Simple Dude.

I'm a little pooped to blog, but I'll give it a shot. Hence the whole half-assed thing. I know that ranching is an every day job. But on top of the ranching, I help my grandparents with their publication. And on top of that, I now work 4 days a week for the local vet. Granted it's only about 20-ish hours, but that's 20-ish hours a week I'm can't be on the ranch or working on the publication. I'm fucking exhausted. I swear I nearly fell asleep at the desk today at the clinic. No amount of caffeine helped.

My grandmother is generally very nice and gives me a day off now and then so I can just rest. My grandfather always says the same thing, "Well, we don't get days off". My grandfather wouldn't know what to do with a day off. The man has worked every day of his life since high school. Even when he married K, they ran to Reno, got married, and drove back to calving season. No honeymoon. No vacations. If I won the lottery and presented him and K with an all-expenses-paid trip to Tahiti, my grandfather would look at me like I was an alien. K, however, wouldn't even need to pack, she'd be running to meet that plane.

And now that the weather is nicer, we've been able to get dirty ranch work done. Heavy lifting, irrigating, and the grossest water troughs to clean ever. *shudders* I'm not afraid of the work, I would just love the opportunity to sleep 12 hours and spend the day in my pj's watching movies.

But, since my grandfather's gout has flared up making it nearly impossible for him to do any work, I doubt I'll be getting any real time off.

The term "just keep swimming" enters my head . . .