Almost done the upper landing deck for the new ramp.  Sal and I worked all day on it yesterday.  In the rain.  It was good.  Kind of refreshing, actually.

It was pretty funny, too.  Two steps forward, one step back.  All day.  Cha cha cha.  The deck is small but our work-out put was smaller.  We have almost as much to do again today.

One thing is becoming increasingly evident in our lives: our work output is generally diminishing.  What used to take us a day (mostly because we didn’t have a clue) now takes us three days (and we have a bit more of a clue this time!).  Mind you, it is still only a teeny clue but you’d think we’d be quicker, not slower.  Of course, we still don’t know what we are doing.  Not really.  But at least we have some familiarity with tools and materials and such now.  We should be better and we are not.  Could be an ‘age thing’.

Mind you, we have also had conventional expectations of efficiency and deadlines stripped from us as a result of island living these past eight years.  We don’t expect to make the schedule or even make an estimate of it anymore.  “Let’s get on that deck, eh?  With a bit of luck we could finish today.”

“Yeah!  Right!  We’ll get on it and then we’ll go for tea and then we’ll have a bathroom break or a friend will drop in.  Finish today?  You must be mad!”

“You’re right.  Even tho we only have a few boards to do, we haven’t got a hope, do we?  Don’t know what I was thinkin’.”

“Want some tea?”

It is hard to explain.  I have lived and worked in an environment of great expectations all my life til now.  Parents, teachers, bosses, friends, society.  Banks.  It seems that expectations were always being created and I made my fair share of them.  But, out here?  Not so much.  Not anymore, anyway.  If you live out here for any length of time, the ‘construct’ of expectations, the actual ‘mind-set of it, gradually disappears.

“I have got to get the garlic in.  I am already a week or three late.  They should be in the ground right now or else we won’t have garlic next year!  Aaaaarggghhh!!!”

“Go do it, then!”

“Right after my tea.  I will.  For sure.  Then I’ll go to the bathroom.  We’ll finish off the deck and then, for sure, I will plant the garlic.  For sure!”

That was yesterday…………..