I used to be able to go to a Lab just a short distance from our house. I would sign in, wait not more than 15 minutes while the technician completed the paperwork, get my blood drawn, and be on my way. Sadly, the Lab on Keene Drive closed because they lost their lease, and the powers-that-be decided not to relocate that Lab. So-o-o-o-o, the next closest lab is in the local hospital. The last time I went there, I waited quite a while to get blood drawn. Today I waited 50 minutes for a two-minute procedure! They only have three rooms to complete blood work, and I swear only two of them ever are staffed. Once I finally got into the draw room, the phlebotomist had to spend another 10 minutes just logging me in and filling in the correct tests to perform on the samples she drew. Rather than waste her time doing that, don't you think that they could train someone to do that kind of paperwork ahead of time (during the 50 minutes we all had to wait!) so the trained phlebotomists could just do the skilled part of the procedure at the end? She should have been able to come into the room, ask my name and date of birth, pull up the completed paperwork now on the computer, hit one button to print out the labels for my work, and draw the correct number of vials of blood. Efficiency is apparently not part of that department!
After our wait, we returned home to start our prep work for the north side concrete addition. Rick received a call that our "shed" box and the concrete we ordered yesterday would be delivered between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. While I finished some inside housework, Rick started to dig the trench for the additional concrete.
Our back yard is a shambles. We now need dirt in the area we dug out for our first shed attempt, so Rick wheelbarrowed the dirt to that area and dumped it. The dirt is filled with stones, so it all needed to be sifted to remove those stones. Since two people could not work comfortably on the narrow north side of the house, Rick dug while I sifted.
Once he got the dirt out, we framed the area for the concrete pour tomorrow. We had purchased re-bar to tie the slabs together, so Rick drilled into our older slabs and inserted the re-bar. Then he put in the frames. We have to make sure that the slabs we pour tomorrow are lower than the current slabs so the water continues to drain away from the house. We do not need puddles when it rains, and we are just getting into the rainy season in Florida.
Rick finished his geometric shape: two long, narrow rectangles.
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| The sections will widen the area enough so we can fit a storage shed next to the HVAC unit. |
I ended up making geometric shapes of my own: tall pyramids (triangles) of sifted dirt. I don't want to knock them down yet since we may need to scoop some up to fill in the area in front of the new slab once it dries. We also may need some dirt around the patio once the rain settles that area also.
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| The sifted mounds of dirt look like we have ants on steroids in our back yard. Those mounds will eventually be smoothed down into useable yard before we leave for the summer. |
After lunch today, as promised, the delivery man brought us our large box of shed materials and 13 bags of Sakrete. They all are stowed safely away in the garage for our morning workout tomorrow.
We were able to walk on the new patio for the first time today. The edges are 8 inches deep, so they are going to take longer to cure than the inside which only is four inches deep. We removed the sandy grit on the top of the patio with a broom today. The seed pods that fell on the patio left small colored circles. I hope that those either wash off or wear off eventually. If not, I guess that is God's artistic addition to our patio. I plan to bring the camping rug back to Florida when we drive down in the fall. We might as well use it here. It is doing no good sitting on a shelf in our basement in Wisconsin.
We are excited to have a dry, level place on which to sit next year. Slowly, we are making Gladys a comfortable place to live.
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