Life as a Pile

Before the kidney stone hit I took a picture of the small assembly of tools used to build the cabin. They are few. It is remarkable what one can do with a few good tools. Amazingly, I have gone through about 15,000 collated nails with the nail gun during construction.

Thursday AM I go in for the surgical procedure. I'm not looking forward to it but realize the alternative would be worse if this goes into sepsis. No one is surprised there is a tussle with insurance. We are out of our HMO area and they so far haven't approved treatment. I reason with them that people don't stay home all the time. The person in customer service is nice but only a messenger. They hide the person who makes the decision so you can't talk to them.

We arrived in Juneau with basically the shirts on our backs and two toothbrushes. So Paulette got to do a little shopping. She got herself some nice simple outfits. She grabbed a package of new underwear for me. Next morning when I showered I went to put some on and knew there was something wrong. They were size 42. I can normally wear 36.

I think of the stacks of lumber we had when we started the cabin. There were about six of them that stood 3.5 feet tall. Today we are down to a few small piles with almost no lumber left in them. I think of what I am going through in light of that. Sometimes life deals us a pile and we get to try to make something constructive of it.