Nasty work

I have been working too hard these past few days. I pulled the boat out of the water, got the mast down, and trailered it home.

Once there the process began on scrapping the bottom after power washing it. What marine life wasn't removed had rotted. It has been hot, dirty and smelly work to scrape and remove barnacles and oysters.

I removed the 700 pound keel after using every brain cell to figure out how to jack up the boat high enough to let the keel all the way down. Somehow that got done without crushing me or the boat. Once the keel was removed, the worst of the marine growth up in the keel slot had to be removed with a flat bar.

Yesterday was comparatively easy because I painted the prepped bottom for 8 hours. Last night I was so stiff and tired that I wondered how I would make it to do another day of labor. But this morning found me feeling limber again.

I feel as if I have had little time to do anything other than hard labor. So at noon I met a sponsee for a cold soda and talked about the seventh step. I needed that meeting. Being on the island and not having C. there has been isolating. I don't think that I did this on purpose, but work became the focus instead of meetings.

A friend came stopped by the other day. He had been splitting up enough oak wood to fill his truck bed.  It was good to talk to him and simply have another soul who appreciated the labor that was done.  We both commiserated on our aches and pains.  He then left to go home to dinner with his wife.  I eventually went inside, fixed a hamburger, and then fell into bed.

The good news is that in another day or so and the boat will be ready.  And in another day or so C. will be coming home.  It has been two weeks since she left.  In those two weeks I haven't managed to mess up anything and have gotten a lot of things done.  Sometimes the nasty work has to be done.  It's not necessarily what I want to be doing but the sense of accomplishment is making me feel good.

I haven't had a lot of time to think about being lonely.  Only at night when the work is done for the day and I lie awake for a few minutes reviewing my day do I think about my solitude.  I know that it would be really easy for me to isolate and just keep working at task after task.  The persecution of self runs strong within me.   But for today, I'm glad to have gotten off the island, had some Al-Anon time, and am actually going out to a Mexican restaurant tonight.  Whooee! A big night on the town for this fellow.