the body says it's time to take a break

Yesterday evening: OK, I'm tired now. Today was the 7th day in a row that I have gotten up earlier than usual and have been working in the shop grinding mostly, some polishing, in one fashion or another, quitting for the day about 1:30. Truth to tell, I was tired Friday and was dragging butt this morning. My arms are tired, my thighs are killing me from doing squats yesterday working on the four little feet...grind a little squat down check for vertical symmetry stand up check for height with the calipers, grind a little squat check for vertical symmetry stand up check height grind a little etc etc. But! With the exception of the little bit of work still to do on the heron head I am through with the grinding and can move on to the polishing and then assembly.

Today I checked that all my flat surfaces were flat and ground the ends of the two gray slabs into a curve and then tended to the edges and smoothed the sides and got about half the polishing done. 

About noon Minnie, who goes where I go even if she doesn't like it, got up and stood next to me looking at me imploringly. No, Minnie, it's not time yet, go lay down and she hung her head and trudged over to her shop bed. Twenty minutes later she's back. Nope, not yet. About one o'clock I relented. I'd done enough and so we quit for the day. Done enough that I'm taking the day off tomorrow. It's a good thing too since I had a beer with lunch and I've been laid out on the couch the rest of the day dozing in between alarms to move the hose which was a real effort as the soreness in my thighs continued to get worse. Between my thighs and the fallen green pecans that I haven't picked up for the past week, I was fairly hobbling around out there.

Late afternoon last Thursday I could not look at the suffering pink angel trumpet and the zinnias any longer, and yes I water them every day, and I dug out the shade cloth and two stakes and erected it to give them a little relief from that intense late afternoon sun. 

I have one more fence section I could put up and grow vines on and maybe I will but the immediate plan is to dig up and move the pink angel trumpet as soon as weather allows. I'll probably put it in a pot and bring it in for the winter and then find another spot outside in the spring.

Today: I didn't roll out of bed til 8:30 this morning. So far I've done nothing but start one of the hoses though I need to get out there and do some watering where it's not practical to just let the hose run in one spot. Also today I plan to make a dent in the green pecans littering the big backyard since my legs are less sore today and it's easier to move around. Tomorrow though I'll be back at it over at the shop doing the final adjustments getting the heron head fitted and getting the final polishing done while I try to remember what kind of glue I used in the past to put these boxes together.

I was just scrolling through my pictures trying to see when I finished the last box, the Ode To The Peach. 2015! Four years ago. Wow. And I made the original models for the heron box the month before Harvey and the house getting flooded so that's been two years since I first started on it. When I got back to work I started on the drowned feather pieces which I still have one of the big ones to cast. That's just ridiculous, that it takes me years to finish a piece or a series, although I did get a lot of other work done in the interim. Once I get the heron box put together it will be time, past time, to start some new models for the upcoming open house in December.

But today, today I'm just relaxing.