DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Some friends bought a house in Santa Rosa, spitting distance from Annadel State Park. They’re doing a major remodel in the few days before they have to move in: new flooring, paint everywhere, new bathroom, on and an. We stopped by on Saturday to help out and were surprised to see a crew of six guys at work. I say this is surprising because I’ve been waiting two months for an electrician to even call me back, and yet my friend had managed to assemble a big work crew on a week’s notice. There was scarcely a place to park, what with the debris box (no relation) and pickup trucks and so on.

Along the side of the house were two ~25 sq. ft. concrete pads that were destined for the landfill. My friend, the new homeowner, had spent an hour earlier in the day trying to break out the smaller of the two pads. He’d managed to remove about 1/5th of it before he wore out. We surveyed it, thinking that renting powertools (e.g., a Bobcat) might be a less-exhausting approach.

But then I ran out of things to do, and the prospect of wailing away with a sledgehammer for a few minutes appealed to me. I borrowed a pair of ridiculous looking wrap-around rainbow-hued sunglasses for eye protection, hefted the sledgehammer, and proceeded to beat the snot out of the concrete. (In most cases, that’s just a figure of speech, but I did a double-take when the sledgehammer came down with a wet plop sound, and gobs of white goo sprayed out from the point of impact. Apparently, someone from the work crew had set the sledgehammer head in a mound of sheetrock mud.)

My friend thinks I went crazy, shattering my way through the remaining 4/5 of the concrete, but I think I was just high on endorphins. Also I was compensating for the dorky shades. And I was using muscle groups I don’t normally employ when I sit in my basement cave pecking away at an ergo-board designed specifically to limit movement to the barest minimum. I found a rhythm in pulling the weight overhead and slamming it down into the rock. It was tiring, but it felt good. And I realized I have a talent for demolition (another possible post-dot-com profession? Must start a list.).

Some guys would have worn work gloves for this task, but not me. Not because I’m so manly that I don’t need them, but because I left mine at home — I’d never have guessed I’d be making like a convict and breaking rock on a Saturday afternoon. And, probably, because I haven’t done enough yardwork in the past 10 years to remember that repeated motions with tool handles cause friction burns. So as you can imagine, I sprouted a blister on each hand (left palm, right thumb), and until they heal I’ll look as if I’d been trying to overzealously “rub one out,” as my buddy Andrew would say.

The wounds are painless, except when I inadvertently drip lemon juice on them at lunchtime. The real pity is that we didn’t attack the second concrete pad too — so my friend will end up renting tools after all.