On Saturday, I spent the whole afternoon going back and forth from Home Depot buying railroad ties. Believe me, that\u2019s just as fun as it sounds.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the story.<\/p>\n
We have a paddle tennis court at the far end of our backyard, and there are all sorts of weird shrubs and things surrounding it that may, at one point in their lives, have been recognizable foliage, but now they look like things you might see in the Princess Bride\u2019s fireswamp. I got my handy-dandy chainsaw and hacked all of it down, and we hauled it out to the side of the house to await the city\u2019s spring pickup date, when they\u2019ll pick up and take away anything and everything. But now, with all of the nasty stuff gone, Mrs. Cornell sees an opportunity to grow some tomato plants, but to do that, we need to put down some railroad ties to wall off the dirt from the court.<\/p>\n
Railroad ties are big. They\u2019re heavy. And I dropped one on one of my fingers, which, amazingly, didn\u2019t turn my fingernail black. It caused pain, though, And yelping. Much yelping. Nothing about railroad ties are good. And when you finally heft them out to the back of the house and discover you\u2019ve gotten the wrong size, it\u2019s very difficult to avoid using profanity. Very, very %$&ing difficult, indeed.<\/p>\n
So I lugged them back into the car and drove them back and got the even bigger, heavier railroad ties, and Home Depot offered a hireling to help me load them into the back of my Suburban. He was a college-age kid with a huge scowl on his face.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeeping you busy?\u201d I said, a little too cheerfully.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate this job,\u201d he snarled back. \u201cI\u2019m gonna quit soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
I laughed out loud, appreciative of the brutal honesty. \u201cReally? What are you gonna do instead?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t care,\u201d he said. \u201cAnything else. Just as long as I don\u2019t have to lift any railroad ties.\u201d<\/p>\n
I laughed again. His lousy customer service was truly a breath of fresh air.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you need railroad ties for, anyway?\u201d he muttered.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s for my wife,\u201d I said. \u201cShe wants to grow tomatoes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, yeah?\u201d he snapped. \u201cThen tell her to come get her own railroad ties.\u201d<\/p>\n
I foresee a very interesting marriage in that young man\u2019s future.
________________<\/p>\n
Today was Day Two of the Total Stallionic Body Reinvention. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7:00 AM, I spend a half an hour with a personal trainer in a sort of \u201cBoot Camp\u201d that will get me into shape in four to six weeks.<\/p>\n
In case there was any doubt on this point, I am not in shape now.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that I\u2019m fat so much as that I\u2019m not skinny, at least not the way I used to be. Of course, that\u2019s a pretty high threshold. Growing up, I was ridiculously thin, and I stayed that way for a very long time \u2013 I was 6\u20194\u201d and 175 pounds when I got married at age 26. That\u2019s not just skinny \u2013 that\u2019s Ichabod Crane skinny. I stayed that way until I broke my back right after my 30th birthday. Since then, I\u2019ve been on a safe, effective, and wholly unanticipated weight gain program of about 4 pounds per year. I still have skinny arms and legs and a slim, sexy tuckus, but my gut is spreading and my face is somewhat puffy.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a bad scene. And what really upsets me about this is that it screws up my deal.<\/p>\n
See, the deal was, back in the day, that I looked like a geek and was wildly uncoordinated, but at least I could eat whatever crap I wanted and never gain weight. Now the deal has been broken, and I still look like a geek.<\/p>\n
I kept my end. It\u2019s the universe that\u2019s in breach of contract.<\/p>\n
The first day was aerobic exercise \u2013 stepping up and down, kicking, with some crunches and stuff thrown in. Today was all upper body stuff \u2013 biceps, triceps, and \u201cplanking,\u201d where you hold yourself above the ground on your elbows and make your body as stiff as a board and pray for the earth to open up and swallow you whole.<\/p>\n
I feel closer to John McCain than I ever have before, because right now, I can\u2019t lift my arms above my head.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OnSaturday, I spent the whole afternoon going back and forth from Home Depot buying railroad ties. Believe me, that\u2019s just as fun as it sounds. Here\u2019s the story. We have a paddle tennis court at the far end of our backyard, and there are all sorts of weird shrubs and things surrounding it that may, ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}