Excavation Done

A little excavator joined the big excavator today. It was interesting to watch them work: the little excavator in the hole and the big excavator scooping out the debris.

By 2pm, the pad was finished.

The huge teeth were done carving out the dirt.

The piles around reached their zenith.

The hole had reached its proper depth.

The pile encroached as far as it would toward the RV.

The excavator cleared a path so it could move up the driveway.

I went down into this space for the first time. It is a great space.

The little excavator had dug out a small ramp in one corner, and I looked out at the view. The netting for the tree nursery is just a few feet away; the tree line and the clearing stretching out. It a new point of view, but I like that point of view.
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As storm clouds approached, I figured it was time to break out the special treats I've been hoarding for a month. Last trip to Costco I bought a box of Haagen-Dazs ice cream bars. I imagined us indulging and dancing on the pad, celebrating a major excavation milestone.

But when I went to get the bars, the box felt strangely light. And there was a funny smell. It took me a minute, but then the realization hit.

The freezer had died. And as I had had no reason to open that particular freezer for the last month, I had no idea. (I wonder now if my strong desire for an ice cream bar earlier this week was a nudge from the Holy Spirit to check the freezer. At the time, I figured it was simply lack of self discipline, and I resisted because I had stocked up in hopes of many celebrations: 30 bars, enough for us all to have five in the next few months. If I took one, it would throw off the fairness.)

I made pizza for dinner, and the boys seemed to appreciate that more than an ice cream bar.

But for me, who emptied the foul fowls (11 broilers, seven stewing hens, four ducks), plus the putrid pig (17 packages of various piglet cuts), plus some sundry stinkers (including bits of two-year-old lamb that had been stuck fast to the bottom, and a professionally wrapped piece of pork that is at least 18 months old); as for me, I missed the ice cream bars.

And I would really appreciate it if I never had to deal with such a mass of waste ever again.

"So it wasn't one-hundred-percent," my grandmother said. "Few things are." (from Homesick, by Jean Fritz)

We read that yesterday, a grandmother's comment to a young girl on her first day of school: she disliked her teacher but she made a friend.

Today wasn't one hundred percent. Few things are. That's life.