Pure Joy Of Exhaustion

Yesterday I worked a nine hour day. To some, that may not seem like a lot. I normally only work six hours a day. Given that it's only been two weeks since I had abdominal surgery, this was a very long day.

Our first job of the day was putting lettering on a window in a downtown cafe. There were four huge windows. We had to work around those old cafeteria style booths. I had to sit on my knees backward to do it. 115 pounds ago, I could have never done what I did. The job took us five hours.

One of the restaurant customers looked and sounded exactly like Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade. Remember the "Mmm hmm...I like biscuits with mustard" guy with the deep gravely voice? Anywho, this guy was seriously mentally ill. He talked loudly non stop whether anyone was there or not. At one point he threatened to break out the window I was working on when his case worker pointed out the job I was doing. He was told that that was unacceptable talk and that he may be thrown out. Sling Blade guy babbled about how he wasn't going back to prison because people steal from you there and that he wanted kids but not a wife. Wives were a bad thing. I learned a lot about this guy in the short time he was there.

The next job was putting the lettering on a fire truck. We use 22 kt. gold which is hard to work with because of the soft nature of the material. All the guys in the fire barn decided to watch the process. I don't really enjoy an audience when I work because it makes me nervous.

One of the guys stayed very close. I dropped a piece of paper and he quickly bent over and picked it up. When he handed it to me, he made a point of touching my hand. I'm one of those people who doesn't like to be touched by strangers so I was taken aback.

Another guy brought his alligator head out to show me. What a strange experience to get so much attention while working.

At the end of the day, I was absolutely exhausted, but happy to have had the ability to physically do the day's work I did.