Workin Hard for a Living

Today's blog: Hard Work/Labor  Last night I told my mom to wake me up when she left for work(7:45) in hopes that I could get my sleeping habits back on track.(Been sleeping in til 9/10 some days...one time I would have considered that early.)  I stayed up really late(3am watching stupid tv shows and playing video games) so that I knew I would be really tired today.  I was thinking that I was just gonna go play disc golf and walk at Ballard Park then maybe swim, play racquetball and work on stuff for my mom around the house.  Well I got a call about 830 from my dad on my way to Phillips Lawn and Garden Center to buy discs...he said why don't you come in and help Charles(his 71 year old handy man at the funeral home...they don't make him like him any more) do some stuff.  So immediately after I got through Oprah- walking 2.75 miles and playing 18 holes of disc golf(had fun Laura) I headed for the funeral home.  I thought I would just help him by vacuuming or washing windows but it was one of those days I would eventually be exhausted with very quickly.  My job: mow the whole funeral home lot with Charles and put down grave markers in Tupelo and Okolona(Boones Chapel Cemetery actually but only people that I'll talk about in this blog will know where that is.)  After doing these odd jobs seeing people working outside at Phillips, watching farmers look over their crops on the highway, and going to Marvins to get concrete mixture I figured why not blog about hard work/labor today.  On to Good, Bad and Funny.
Hard Work/Labor

1. Good: Plenty of good comes out of Labor work.  You have a feeling of accomplishment when your day is done.(Not saying that other jobs don't but this is a different type of feeling...It's like "man I'm physically exhausted but the world is better for what I did today"...No one with a desk job can get this feeling.) You get to work outdoors.  Most of the guys and girls that do this type of work are "do-it-all" types.(Kind of like a swiss army knife)  They can do everything from build fences to fix your carburetor.  Another great thing about people that work these jobs is that the "good ones" hardly ever complain about the hardships that they go through that other people would whine about in the first 5 minutes of the job.  We should all be thankful for these people.(Construction workers, janitors, mechanics, farmers etc...)  Imagine what the world would be like if no one did these jobs?(Not exactly a head scratcher)
2. Bad: Some bad things about Labor work: Hours are long(I mean seriously some people work from sun up to sun down), weather(for instance today it was so hot and humid I felt like I was wrapped in one of those blankets(these) that cheap hotels have while at a nursing home on christmas day......I always take them off..well for that matter I usually just use the sheet.), sometimes long-time workers are unkind or impatient with rookies(I mean how am I supposed to know what corrugated wire brushes are supposed to look like? Stop getting so mad), lastly most of these people are stubborn and only let you do things if it's done their way.It makes sense but for instance today Charles was using post-hole diggers then had to break after 5 turns(which is not many) and told me to have a go at it.  Then I started at it was doing it fine, then he said "you're not doing it right, wiggle it when you grasp the mud" "Oh nevermind I'll do it".(It probably cost us another 20 minutes in the blistering heat...I was doing the same thing he was, just different.)
3. Funny: I'm not going to get into the dialect of some of these guys that work these jobs but I have picked up a few words that I like to use from working with Charles and at construction a few summers back.(Loud: used to talk about a strange or bad smell not sound or Might: means alot like I'm a might hungry)  Also some of these guys get so serious about the stories they tell you, no matter how far-fetched they sound, you think "this guy is telling the truth."(Charles told me a crazy story about an armadillo in his septic tank last week...it was outrageous and the damndest thing I'd ever heard but I believed him)  Also these guys always eat lunch in like 5 minutes and then stare at you when you are still eating yours.  Sometimes lunch to them are "nabs".  Not acceptable for me.  Lastly, the funniest thing to me about labor work is this: where is it written into law that you have to wear pants at all times?  How these guys and girls have pants instead of shorts on in this heat is beyond me and to top it all off it's usually the same pair they wear everyday.

Link of the day: I leave you with George Strait (Your welcome Wesley McCullough)

Thanks for reading and pat yourself on the back if read this whole thing...it was really long.  Guess I just wanted to put in hard work on it to be consistent today.(Haha that was so cheesy)

McKinley