Physical therapy

These past few days I've taken up physical therapy. No, I haven't been injure & am not in need of some form of medical & physio treatment. I'm taking 'physical therapy' much in the same way peopl take 'retail therapy', but instead of shopping to clear my head, I exhaust myself by doing physical labour. Yes, construction. No, I'm not cash-strapped, and in any case this construction 'job' that I've been doing doesn't actually pay. I, in fact, have to shell out the cost of all material PLUS put in my own labour. So here's the story:

A long time ago my father bought a pond set (water feature plus liner) and a few months ago while taking a week of annual leave he decided to put that in use. But my father being my father, instead of doing it properly, he simply dug a hole, put the liner on, & weighed it down with some loose bricks & pot plants. I've never liked that look, so I decided what while they're gone I'd redo that pond completely with bricks & mortor. After dabbling in with a couple of hand-drawn designs I finalised it with a digitised version & order the bricks. I was told the bricks were supposed to arrive on Thursday so I waited & waited, until 10:30 (am) or so when my phone rang, telling me that the day's delivery was cancelled because of a light drizzle & will call again to tell me when the actual delivery would be. Fuming! I switched my work days & all! So, 5-ish & they called again, saying that the bricks would be delivered Friday instea. Great, need to call in 'sick'. But at least the bricks finally arrived. I already had a couple of bags of brick layer mortor mix ready so after spending a couple of hours Thursday preparing the site (tipping out water, flattening ground, washing liner, etc...) I began shifting the bricks (all 288 of them!!) from the front to the back yard. That alone took hours & by the end of all the shifting I was buggered! Still, I managed to try my hand in brick laying & mixed a little mortor mix to start on the foundation. Then, I carried on for about 3-4 hours on Saturday (with some help from my brother, digging & stuff) before we ran out of mortor mix 4-ish when the bricks were only about 2-layer tall (I designed the pond side to be 3-layer tall & the plant side 5-layer tall). Sent brother out to get 3 more bags of mortor when he went out for tennis Sunday morning, & then spent another couple of hours in the afternoon laying more bricks, carpeting the pond size (old carpet as pond underlay), filling it with water to weigh it down & get the best fit, & leaving for Beck's b'day dinner. Then, it was a full-day of brick-laying, tipping out water again because too much muck (soil & mortor) dropped in, refilling the pond, & planting out. In the end, 3-layer was simply not deep enough so the pond side ended up being 4-layer tall, & I ran out of mortor again so 3/4 of the plant side was 5-layer tall, with the pond-plant common wall 4-layer tall. But now it's all done, & I'm quite tired, & my finger tips ratchet from the mortor seeping thru the gloves. Changed the planting scheme a little too & got rid of the side over-hang which was to cover up the gap between side wall & house wall. Now, onto the next challenge. Well, not so much 'next' but on-going - the old dreaded PhD. More books to borrow tomorrow, if they've been returned that is (even though I request that THREE weeks ago.....!!!!)