Mother's Day and Demolition

Saturday morning, we went to the rental place, and got ourselves a sixty-pound jackhammer. We didn't know how to use it exactly, but we quickly figured it out. Heavy? You betcha. Efficient? Hell yes.

We worked from about 3:30 until 7:00 pm, Max and I; we made it about three-quarters of the way around. Fortunately (for us) a huge and terrible Maryland thunderstorm come through. It was hot, and the storm brought the promise of cooler temperatures. The physical aches and pains I was expecting didn't really happen; we were really, really tired, but not terribly sore. Sleep came quickly; it was a good kind of tired. So often I feel emotionally tired rather than physically, especially when I'm not feeling very well. I so prefer the physical exhaustion...it makes for a good, honest nights sleep.

Sunday morning brought Mother's Day...a beautiful bouquet of roses from the kids (Maggie, Max and Roger), and a sleep-in, read the paper in bed with tea morning (actually, we do that most Sundays); the aches and pains that I had expected previously had visited sometime over Saturday night, but it still wasn't as bad as I thought. There was no way we could start hammering before ten; I'm sure the neighbors didn't appreciate all the noise, but before ten on a Sunday morning, even I would be complaining.

We only had about one-quarter of the concrete left to do; maybe it was because we knew what we were in for, maybe it was because we were sore...but that small space took us three hours. Granted it was the large area around the stairs (which is twice as wide and twice as thick), but it seemed endless. But we slowly kept at it...and finally, it was done.

Poor Richard didn't get to play with the jackhammer, but we let him try it for a minute. If you look in the picture, the pose he has is almost the same as the pose of the man on his shirt. Funny!

Ta Da!

After a thorough cleanup and rejuvenation (a shower and a caffeine pill) we headed out for our Mother's Day gathering. Diane and Joe were nice enough to host this years fete'....we brought an appetizer (which so needed more spice) and Mom and Dad brought shrimp cocktail....and then we had Chinese food. Yum. It was a really nice, low key dinner with our family, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Joe and Diane have a really big, really gross snake in their birdhouse (I hesitate to think about what happened to the bird!), and we didn't get to see it, but we did see the skin he had shed. It was at least 5 feet long. Ewwwww.

Joe had made dessert (chocolate chip cake YUM)...it was a really nice day capping off a really productive weekend.

Here's more results from the demo: