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The Ramp and Porch Project
by Railroad This past Friday, I decided the weekend was to be a weekend of REST. Only a few things planned to do - vacuuming, doing laundry. And cooking and cleaning out the refrigerator. And....stuff.
Saturday morning I revised the plan to include two more items, after a look at the calendar caused a bit of concern. I realized it was time to replace our wheelchair ramp. With surgery on my uh-huh scheduled for August 2nd, I had to get a ramp planned, bought and built before then. Gulp.
So I went on a hunt for my tape measure. You should understand that I own at least 4 tape measures, all of them the good kind. I have places to keep my tape measures, too. I even have a drawer where I keep all kinds of measuring stuff - calipers, compasses, short rulers, long rulers, machinist's scales, and the really skinny mechanical pencils for marking really tiny and precise marks on really tiny and precise things after measuring to make a really tiny and precise measurement.
Were any of the tape measures at home, waiting to be found, used, and returned to their respective assigned seating? Nope.
Now all of this is my fault; once upon the time when children lived here it was their fault. No, I mean it , it really WAS! But, sadly, I have no one to blame but myself.
Finding something around here involves a lot of walking. Walking with increasing agitation. Usually by the time I've been searching for something for over 15 minutes, the air encircling my head is blue, my ears are red with anger, and my face is white with rage. Very patriotic, but quite unproductive.
I wound up at my workbench in the garage for the third time, hands on hips, huffing and puffing my way to a cry of real rage, when I looked down at the benchtop.
There, in the center of the benchtop, huddled together, trying to look innocent and meek, scared that I might hurt them, were TWO of my tape measures. Resisting the urge to scream anyway, I picked up Mr. Tape Measure and did some measuring.
It's 18 inches from the ground to the level of the back porch. It's 20 feet exactly from the back porch to the driveway in front of the garage. The distance between the two posts where the ramp will be is 3 feet. Armed with this critical information, into the house I went, clearing a special spot on my desktop for Mr. Tape Measure.
Lenny da Wag, seated comfortably in his padded doggy bed next to Mrs. Railroad's desk, had been getting quite a bit of entertainment at my expense, watching me work myself up to some great explosion, only to come in and calmly sit down at my desk, across the room from him. He was grinning and I tried to ignore him. Didn't work. I felt him staring at my back, and finally turned to face him.
He looked at me, then at the tape measure, then back at me. "Right where you left it, huh? What a shocker. What are you doing, anyway? Or do you know what you're doing?"
Then he caught sight of my expression.
"Oops. Sorry. Carry on, you're doing great things, I'm sure." And with that, he curled up and closed his eyes.
What a cool escape! Only animals can do this! If things get a little awkward, close your eyes and take a nap!! They'll forget all about it by the time you wake up!!! We humans should be so lucky. Imagine trying THAT in a meeting room someplace. Oh, the boss would LOVE that.
I turned around and faced my desk again. Time for the decision process. How steep do I want this thing? Recent experience taught me all too well how critical the slope can be. I own no cleated shoes and I have bad knees.
So I lit off the computer, and after a very brief search, found the Federal Accessibility Standards for ramps. You can find it pretty quickly, or you can take my word for it that you don't want to go up more than 1 inch for every 12 inches.
Okay - one inch up means one foot in ramp length. I needed an 18-foot ramp. I also wanted a 4-foot level section in the approximate middle of the ramp, because it's a 3-tiered patio where the ramp will be, and the ramp can allow Mrs. Railroad to ride her wheelchair out and sit on the top tier of the patio in nice weather. Okay, overall length: 22 feet. What's a couple of feet of treated lumber laying on the driveway going to hurt? Nothing.....but I'd better make the railing extend that far or someone (namely me) will trip over it someday.
Next came drawing up the design on the computer.
After that came figuring up all the lumber and hardware needed.
Then came estimating the cost of the job.
And sitting back, I looked at the clock........CRIPES!!! Time to make SUPPER and get Mrs. Railroad's shot! And speaking of shot, that's what happened to Saturday.
One only gets two days between Friday and Monday. This arrangement was determined by a sadistic person many years ago, and nobody has changed it since, probably because we don't have time to do it!
Sunday morning dawned very shortly after Saturday evening ended, and when the alarm went off, Lenny groaned. I rubbed his head briefly and then sat up. He crawled out from under the covers and leaned against my pillow, giving me a blank sleepy-eyed stare.
"I understand," he said, "it's merely rumor, mind you, that some people don't get up at 5 a.m. on Sunday mornings....." (He yawned and licked his lips, and wagged his tail a couple of times.) "....what an amazing fellow you are. Of course I admire you for your fortitude. But I am going back to sleep under these warm covers as soon as you've walked out that door."
And that, dear reader, is precisely what he did.
After the early morning routine was completed (meaning, when it was late morning), I sat at my desk and considered the cost of my grand plan. As soon as that train of thought began, another departed the siding, headed on a collision course with the first: it was time to pay the bills, to see what would be left for ramps and things.
I actually had planned to wait another week for the bills, but the not inconsiderable sum of deck materials from the local deck materials place had me sweating a little.
I STILL PLANNED to do some laundry, vacuum, clean out the refrigerator, and do a few other housewife-type chores. But as many men never learn and most housewives know, plans like these are part of the Running List That Never Ends. If I miss a task today, never fear, it will still be there, possibly in my nightmares tonight, but definitely staring me in the face on tomorrow. So what's the use? I sat down and paid the bills.
Medical bills are like dandelions. You can't predict them any more than you can predict dandelions - you don't know where, you don't know when, and you don't know how big, but they will occur, at the most inopportune time. And always when you have other plans.
So as captain of the Ship of Finance (I was once the loyal first mate to Mrs. Railroad, a captain who distinguished herself by safely piloting us through many a storm), I bore the heavy burden of responsibility with courage, totaling figures and shuffling finances.
And totaling figures and shuffling finances.
And totaling figures and shuffling finances.
And....thinking about taking up drinking again.
But like a steely-eyed captain, I charted our course through the Dire Straits, narrowly missing the rocks of disaster. As it was, by the time all was said and done, one more small thing here or there and the Ship of Finance would be scraping her keel on the Reef of Not Enough Cash.
Once again, I looked up from the desk only to find that the day was again gone. It was time to fix supper for Mrs. Railroad. So much for any other plans.
Later on I joked with her, "Yesterday I did what I used to do - planned a project. Today, I did what you used to do - figured out how to pay for it." Somehow she didn't see the humor in that, and I guess I didn't either.
Monday loomed in the near distance. All too soon the evening was over (but not soon enough in bed to slumber), and all too soon Monday's dawn struck with the merciless beeping of the alarm. Lenny and I agreed to gang up on and murder the cheery fool who'd ask if we had a restful weekend.
Monday was a blur of work and more work, executed in a fog as the loyal but exhausted employee. It's okay, my boss and others have never seen me in any other condition. If ever I have a restful anything prior to coming to work, they will suspect me of drug abuse.
Monday evening my burly son called to tell me he'd be happy to come and help with the ramp and porch. Kids are wonderful, aren't they? Especially after they grow up. A fine, strapping, 25-year-old will be here next weekend to help dear old Dad with the ramp job. I am counting my blessings.
Tuesday morning (this morning) I called the friendly lumber yard and they cheerfully told me that yes, they could deliver all the materials I needed before the weekend - on Thursday, in fact.
Deep down in the recesses of my brain, a little alarm bell began to ring.
Soon thereafter, list in hand, I reported as requested to the cheerful lumber yard's cheerful Commercial Sales Counter. You see, I wanted too much stuff for just anybody to handle. Nope, I was a Commercial Sales customer today.
The little alarm bell was ringing louder.
The cheerful Commercial Sales Person walked with me and my list to collect item numbers for all the hardware. Being pleasant, I apologized for making her walk with me all the way over to the hardware aisle. "That's okay," she said, "this is my job-" (and I was preparing to thank her for caring so much about the customer) "-to make money for the store!" I decided to make agreeable noises instead.
The little alarm bell was ringing quite loudly. I could hear it over the fork lift's backup alarm.
In a little while, she had finished checking the list twice and totaling everything up. Looking at me across the top of my list, she said, "That's funny."
The alarm bell was clanging the clapper to smithereens.
"Your total's a little off." I was hoping my total (cost estimate) was too high by a few bucks. Why would I have any reason to hope that, when my trouble alarm was beating itself to death?
Yep. After checking a few things here and there, the error, a hundred dollar's worth, became clear. I hadn't taken into account two necessities: sales tax and the delivery fee.
"Wow," I said. And I obediently wrote out the check.
In Rogers and Hammerstein's "White Christmas," Bob Wallace of Wallace and Davis decides to move an entire New York show - cast crew, props, orchestra, etc. - to an inn in Vermont, and pay everyone a bonus for working during the Christmas Season. When his accountant tells him how much it's going to cost, he says. "Wow." Phil Davis, his partner, pleads until he can get the definition of "Wow."
"Wow," he explained to his partner, was "somewhere between 'ouch' and 'poiinngg.'"
I can hear the keel of the Ship of Finance dragging across the sharp ridge of folly. Why, oh why, couldn't we wait until we had more money?
That brings us back to the beginning of our story, boys and girls. Beginning one week from tomorrow morning, there will be six weeks in which the weekly invasion and tuberculosis deposits in my bladder will make me feel like taking out the trash is too much lifting. The very thought of deck and ramp construction will make my parts hurt.
This afternoon a 15-pound whirling dervish of Lenny greeted me at the door as I returned from the work-related meetings that had followed close on the heels of my painful stop at the "Home Improvement Center." After the first few seconds of loud barks, he paused for a second and gave me a concerned look. In that second he said, "I want to hear all about it later, but right now..." and he resumed barking and jumping.
Right now Lenny is watching television, seated in my chair and leaning on the arm nearest to Mrs. Railroad, so she won't feel alone, while Dad (that's me) sits in the next room tapping away mysteriously on the keyboard. He probably suspects that something's brewing with me, and he'll likely fix me with his best psychiatrist stare later this evening, and get the whole story. Not wanting me to leave anything out, he'll quote John Wayne and say, "Alright. Let's have it. Give it to me straight. And leave the bark on."
And now, a week later, I'm pleased to report that the porch was re-decked, the ramp was built and almost completed, and nobody was the worse for wear. And Lenny, smiling at me and wagging his tail, says, -- See? I knew you could do it.
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