Despite flagging motivation levels for such things, we began work in earnest on Saturday to install a chain link fence in the backyard so Teddy could run free and harass the local wildlife.
We got almost through driving the posts along the back border when she comes out, asking if we were going to leave an access for her to get to the back of her garage. “Uh… we weren’t planning on it, you didn’t mention it when we got your permission.” She argued that if she wanted to do anything to the back of her garage like painting or siding whoever was doing it would have to go all the way around the block to come in through my gate. I had agreed before we did this project that I would worry about mowing the area behind her garage since it was adjacent to my yard and fenced in, then was the time to ask to have a gate put in.
Begrudgingly, we decided to put a gate in for her. When we asked her where she wanted it, she told me more toward her garage end would be good. I told her we would attach it to the endpost, so I would only have to one other post. She has a small rocked in area alongside her garage, and she worried that people could trip when going through that gate. I told her that was tough, I wasn’t going to spend another $50 in materials just so someone wouldn’t have to walk on rocks.
I’m contemplating putting a lock on that gate to prevent people from coming and going. If someone wants to get back there, they can call me to get in… the point is to keep my dog in and if people are always coming and going I have to then worry about them leaving the gate open. I will likely just get a carabiner or something to secure the gate but not lock it. I know she’ll have a litter of puppies if she goes out there and finds that gate locked.
Either way, that was really frustrating.
As a pre-emptive strike, we decided to go talk to my next door neighbors (Norman and Barbara) to make sure they didn’t have any crazy requests like this. My next door neighbors are a genuinely sweet old couple that always want to help us young kids out. Norman made a good point when mentioning that in the past previous owners of our house had to get a truck back to trim the large trees in the rear of my lot. He recommended putting in a double-swing gate, which was a great idea.
We went back to work. There are three garages in the corner of my lot, leaving a small three foot wide expanse around a telephone pole. We were going to stretch a very short length of fence there to keep the dog in, so we set to work clearing away some of the brick and rock rubble by prying it loose with a spike.
It appears that the city backfilled the telephone pole with rocks, brick, and various other masonry garbage. We had to clear the area by hand, so I was digging around in the hole we were working on. I was throwing brick chunks out of the way when all of a sudden I saw mud dripping off my hands. No, wait… that’s not mud. That’s blood. Quite a bit of it.
Upon rinsing my hands off, I got the unabated joy of being able to see the bone and tendons of the second knuckle of my right ring finger. Work ended abruptly on Saturday at this point, since I had to go and get half a dozen stitches at Pekin Hospital.
For the record, there was never any real pain associated with this wound (Warning: picture of injury. Not for the faint of heart). In fact, I spent much of the time when they were admitting me to Urgent Care looking at how my tendon worked (ask Tasha!) I had cut the finger all the way to the bone and nicked the tendon, said the doctor. I had to get a tetnus shot and got a prescription for antibiotics (the same as my dog is on, coincidentally).
That was all the work that we did for Day One.
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