Ok it's been a while

October 2, 2007
So here what is going ...
Good news...well I guess it is good. I am working. I am working for my father in law in construction. Anyone who knows me, i am not an outside kind of work guy. I am so comfortable with my morning coffee and my monitor and keyboard, doing some kind of damage. Now I get up 7am, out the door by 8, onsite by 8:01(it's a small town). I am working with a man who is about 60 years old name Raphael. To my surprise, I understand 10% of what he says. Please let it be known that I am seriously overwhelmed here spending m whole day on various repair projects. I do not have Carme to rescue me...but despite my comfort zone, I am learning a lot.
It's only been two days but I am ready to quit. It's not that it's hard work. I do get a good work out. I have so far carried 1000X my body weight in debris and concrete. Yes, I am making concrete. I have never made anything solid before except my son and I needed assistance there. So I am learning how to mix concrete by sight. A little more of this and a little more of that...and then it all falls apart 10 years from now!
So my first job was to dig a trench for a drainage pipe for a new sink and toilet in what should be a changing room for their pool. Yummy! The trench was about 3 meters long thru concrete tile floors and 50 centimeters of deep (I just wanted to impress you with my metrics). My second job was to remove a rotted and termite infested door frame. Funny, the only wood in this god forsaken town is infested. Slim pickings around these parts. Everything is made of stone here. Stone and concrete and tiles made of clay (more on that later). So can you imagine the amount of work to be done? A lot of concrete to hold the door in place. The second day, we had three jobs. the first was to build a concrete retaining wall of sorts. Well I did not build it. Raphael did all the building and I did all the watching. Well I did all the concrete mixing and cleaning up. I feel like he is the wizard and I am the apprentice in the movie “Fantasia”. Then we moved onto another house.
This was a house owned by Germans who spoke really bad Spanish. Not that I speak it better but I could understand enough to know they were not conjugating some verbs. I won't bore you with the details, but I made a lot of concrete. The funny part of this story is the wife. Well the whole job she stayed in the house. Right when I was hauling all the debris around (the part I will put in BOLD in my resume), she came out and kept staring at me and smiling. It was noticeable to a point of uncomfortable ness. She just kept nodding and breathing hard. Sure I have had some stray thoughts that would run across some hot to trot bored housewife living the life on the coast of Spain. But this chick was old enough to be my granny. She said something to my father in law in German about "Americano" and just smiled and waved. she laughed and returned to her heavy breathing and staring. I am not sure if she was asthmatic and had cataracts or something. All I know is I am not in any way hoping to be some pool cleaning guy for some old lady.
My last jo of the day was a remodeling job for a bathroom. Every trip I made out to remove debris, I looked to my left and saw sail boats racing up and down the Mediterranean. Quickly reminded me of what I was looking in life. The job began with removing what seemed like a million clay ceramic tiles from the walls all held by cement. Who ever mixed that cement was a genius. With mallet and chisel in hand, Raphael and I went to work. After a stirring rendition of a medley of old Negro spirituals(thank goodness for Black History Month), Raphael politely told me to shut up and get back to work (part of the 10% of Spanish I do know). I think he got ticked off when I passed the fake microphone to him right after I did a split in a James Brown like fashion.
Still I take my sore, bloody (ceramic flies off in sharp edges people), bruised and numb mind to my home to sit and watch American TV (which I downloaded) so I can feel a bit at home. 3 more days and I can smile again. Now I truly work for the weekends.