Da Pain, Da Pain

You ever have one of those days when right before you're about to settle into bed, you are suddenly overcome by an entertainingly voluminous amount of flatulence? Though, for some reason, you think the entertainment value is a lot higher than maybe your spouse thinks it is? Well, I had one of those night last night.

See, it started out as a day like any other day. Meaning, I was removing My Beloved from My Precious (I've decided to name my tractor), since all that hype about a foot of snow turned out to be nothing more than an attempt to get me to waste hours of my life getting ready for the snow only to have barely a flake fall, and none whatsoever hit the ground, so that I could then waste even more time converting back to mowing capabilities. And while I was doing that, The Mrs. was cooking up grand schemes about how we could start yet another project in the yard before finishing the mulching project we had started the day before.

We had begun mulching the planting beds on Saturday, as I mentioned in the previous post, and we had a bit more to do in the front and all of the back to go. But instead of finishing that, The Mrs. decided that we should get some dirt to fill in the two "aborted" ponds in the back. One had already been mostly filled in with sand and turned into a pumpkin patch before we bought the house, but the other sat with some rock in the bottom, collecting rainwater. I called it "the West Nile garden". See, as the woman-reasoning went, we would want to mulch over the filled-in ponds, which would then be planting beds, so how could we dream about finishing the mulching before filling in the ponds?

There's no arguing with woman-logic, as there is nothing to argue against. It's like screaming at the wind to stop blowing. Or something like that. It's not as tasty an analogy as I know you, my faithful, mouth-breathing readers have probably become accustomed to. Just pretend you're reading The JohnnyB and keep moving. I know I will.

So I guestimated up how much dirt we needed to fill in the one pond, then I doubled it to account for the other. I guestimated because, being a man, I'm supposed to be good with that spacial kinda stuff, and it was a long long walk to the garage to get the tape measure, and the amount of dirt I needed exceeded the capacity of my pickup bed, so I would be making multiple trips anyways.

For the record, we had exactly 1 wheelbarrow full of extra dirt when the job was done. Damn good guestimator I am. However, we've since added on additional dirt requirements, so I'll probably end up going back for more next week anyways.

Now, I know a bit about dirt. I know that it weighs about 1 ton per cubic yard. A cubic yard is the size of a "standard" bucket on a front loader. It is also the volume that will fit in the back of my pickup, which, being primarily used for commuting, is one of those pickups with four doors and a back seat that take up 1/3 of the damned bed volume. However, I also know that my payload capacity is around 1400 lbs, which is less than a ton. Plus, that includes driver and passengers, and I had along with me The Mrs., The Childrens, and FreddyC, as going to The Dirt Place is a remarkably exciting event.

So I sent my wife in to negotiate for a half yard at a time. The place in San Schmose had a "small" bucket that was a half yard (though, from what I can tell, it was actually more like 2/3 of a yard, so two small buckets was quite a bit more than a big one), but this place did not. She came out with a story I wasn't very excited with, so I went in to talk to the young chap.

The conversation went like this:

Me, CherkyB: "A yard of dirt weighs about a ton, right?"

Dirt dude: "A-yup."

Me, CherkyB: "I only have a payload capacity of 1200 lbs." (Subtracting only 200 lbs. for family+dog, since I know I can cheat the payload a bit.)

Dirt dude: "There isn't hardly a pickup made that can't take a whole ton."

Me, CherkyB: "Huh? No small pickups or half-tons can take a whole ton."

Dirt dude: "Any F150 can. Hell, even a Ranger can."

Oooo...them's fightin' words. The Dakota can take about 50% more payload than a Ranger, which is the crappiest little toy pickup money can buy.

Me, CherkyB: "You've put a whole yard of dirt in a Ranger?"

Dirt dude: "A-yup. All the time. You won't have no problem, weight-wise."

Me, CherkyB: "OK. Give me a whole yard."

And I didn't have a problem. I felt guilty, having the whole fambly in there while overloaded. But hell, if a Ranger could do it...

So I ended up with two yards of dirt and another yard of mulch. We still need probably two more yards of mulch to finish, since we didn't finish that job having started the dirt job in the middle.

I cooked both lunch and dinner on the new BBQ. I got all four burners going both times. It was fun. But something gave me gas. I had horrible dreams all night that I was in the hospital for exploratory surgery on my abdomen which they had to do without anesthetic in order to figure out what was wrong. Every time I woke up, the belly hurt horribly, so I was never quite sure it wasn't true.

Oh, and the covers were floating up all night, for some reason.