Surviving?

I'm still here trying to live through 3 holiday concerts, annual cookie baking blitz, Christmas shopping and family bull. The holidays are wearing me out and they aren't even here yet.

I've spent the last two days working outside. On Monday, we had to reset a sign that I repainted and repaired. A few weeks ago, the wind broke the sign legs in half so we had to remove the old before we could put in the new. Usually this is not a problem, unless your boss used 40 pounds of concrete to set each leg and the sign owners had added 2 feet of topsoil on top of the 36" deep the concrete is in the ground. So, we spent 3.5 hours chipping away at the old cement. This is hard work. Think pick ax chipping through a mountain hard work. The holes were big enough to bury a body in once we dug them out enough to get to the cement.

The sign itself is a beautiful sandblasted Redwood that I hand painted. It looks beautiful. The next problem being that a Redwood sign weighs a lot. Add two treated wood posts and that thing weighed close to 200 pounds.

So, we get it set in the holes, knowing we would have to pull it back out to cut the legs off to get it level. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to lift the sign up out of the 36" holes, plus up over a mound of dirt that was over 24" high. I just couldn't do it. I felt like such a weak girl.

I suggested that we go to the City Department of Public Works and see if we could round up a couple of guys to help. Keep in mind that this is a very small city of 3500 people, so everyone knows everyone. The two guys we found were guys I had graduated from high school with.

The guys were easily able to help us lift that sign up and out and then back in again with no trouble. The best part was that they didn't even make fun of me for being a weakling. I hate that I've lost muscle mass along with fat. My upper body strength is just not what it used to be since losing almost 180 pounds.

Yesterday was spent in the snow and freezing rain trying to put up tobacco free signs at a hospital, all while hospital workers sneered, "NO TOBACCO PRODUCTS, ANYWHERE!"

I was soaked to the bone and still had to drag myself back out last night to yet another concert. Is it Spring yet?