Sunday, March 27

day 10342: my superhero name is… ultimate girl

When I arrived at the beach house late Friday afternoon, I found the boys cranking hard on an ancient carjack trying to pull out forty year old fence posts. There was “no way in hell” that they were going to dig them out by hand. Post #1 came out with only a little difficulty. 30 tons of pressure will do that to you. Post #2 took a considerably greater amount of effort and resulted in a very heavy duty steel carjack bent completely out of shape.

30 tons of pressure will do that to you, too; as will a two feet deep concrete foundation.

So for the lack of a better way (other than to dig by hand), they called it quits for the day, vowing to find a tool that would make their lives a heck of a lot easier.

Easier said than done.

Round TWO… FIGHT!!!

The rented jack didn’t work. The pressure of ripping a hundred somewhat pounds of concrete out of the frozen sand was too much for it to take. Post #3 took an inhuman amount of effort and extraordinary amounts of cussing and swearing and temper tantrums only to discover that forty years ago, the mold used to set the concrete had broken, thus leaking concrete in shapeless blobs, making it all the more difficult for us to try to YANK IT STRAIGHT OUT OF THE GROUND…

It’s kindergarden, really. Big non-circular object will not fit through small circular hole.

Elementary, my dear Watson. Elementary.

But no. The lesson would not be learned. Post #4 was tackled the same way. We looped a piece of chain around the fence post and attached it to the jack. We jacked the jack and jacked some more. But the post would not budge except to bend in a way that forced the pole to break and bits of concrete fluffing through the dirt.

[Insert massive amounts of profanity here.]

Still, he refused to dig. Instead he stormed off into the wild unknowns of the auto repair/hardware store known as Princess Auto never to be seen alive again (or so it felt like).

It was time to take matters into my own hands. Patience is as patience does, and I only have so much of it. I grabbed a shovel and dug.

And dug. And dug…

Little by little, I cleared just enough dirt that I could wiggle the post back and forth. I dug a little, talked to the neighbours, checked to see if Mr. There-has-to-be-a-better-way had finally returned, and dug a little more. I was having a glorious time doing it MY WAY. The way that existed WITHOUT grown men having TEMPER TANTRUMS…

One big heave and out came the post. No help from the hundreds of guys that had jogged and rollerbladed by. I DID IT ALL BY MYSELF.

I CAN DO ANYTHING. I AM A SUPERWOMAN. I AM AMAZING. I AM… damn, but my shoulder was throbbing… but I CAN DO ANYTHING HE CAN DO… I am the incredible, independent woman who showed everyone passing by on the Hamilton beach path that I AM REALLY, REALLY STRONG!

Oh yeah, baby. Post #4 is O-VER!!

The look of surprise and admiration in his eyes when he FINALLY came back carrying a second jack was worth it.

“Wow… oh wow… I can’t believe you did it. How did you lever it out? What did you use?”

I tried not to rub it in. “I didn’t use anything, I just lifted it out.”

“That’s a huge piece of concrete…”

“Yeah, I guess…” (See my attempt at modesty? What I really wanted to say was HELL YEAH, and where the heck were you for the past half an hour?)

“Wow. I’m impressed. Most girls aren’t as cool as you. First the dump and then this. Wow. Other girls would just pretend to help or something, but you… you… you’re the ultimate girl. You ARE the ULTIMATE GIRL!!!”

“Oh yeah, Bay-be…” I Hulk Hogan pose my not so scrawny arms… “HWA… I am ULTIMATE GIRLLLL! GRRRRR!!!”

Post #5 and #6… pshaw… didn’t even break a sweat…

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