I'm Too Exhausted to Think of a Title.

The wind howled all day today. Rain overnight turned our excavated material into boot sticking mud that seemed to add 10 pounds to each foot. By afternoon a cold front appeared and the temperature dropped; snow fell shortly thereafter but not enough to accumulate. To keep warm I wore long johns, two long sleeved shirts, bib overalls, a jacket, coveralls, a visi-vest, a hard hat liner, a hard hat, and gortex lined work boots. Still I had to keep moving to stay warm, and today there was plenty of reasons to move.

I shovelled more gravel today than I should have, ran a plate tamper more than I should have, and lifted concrete risers more than I should have. At the end of the day I thought I’d hurt my back, but after a hot shower I found out I had only hurt many, many muscles. It was the kind of day that makes you want to skip dinner and go to sleep, like someone lost in the wilderness about to succumb to hypothermia maybe; or like someone working in Saskatchewan in October.

Luckily we were saved at the last moment by Baba’s "Drive-Thru" Perogies.

Day Off

A day off today. My alarm was not set but I still woke at six.

Day’s off, when you’re on the road, are for laundry. There is a laundry mat next to the hotel I will spend some time in today. You have to pack enough clothes to make it through a week of work because there’s no time for laundry after work; just dinner and sleep. And you have to pack the right clothes for whatever weather you may encounter. I think my body is finally adjusting to the 20 degree shift in temperature we experienced in transition between Red Deer and Saskatoon. The shorts in my suitcase seem so out of place now. The crew laughed at me when I told them in Red Deer I packed long underwear for this trip. That seems so long ago but only seven days have passed; one week since I arrived in Saskatoon and did laundry.

Drunks

Drunks in the hallway of the hotel woke me up this morning at 3:30 and I haven't been able to go back to sleep. I fantasized about opening the door and letting go a barrage of punches into the guy who kept yelling "dude" again and again to his friends. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pockets in my sleeping attire and so nowhere to put my room key. I would have certainly locked myself out of my room and been stranded in the hallway in my underwear with the bloody corpse of “dude” at my feet. Then I would have had to go down to reception to get a new key made, still in my underwear, and tell them to send someone upstairs to clean up the mess on the second floor.

I suppose could have dressed into proper ass-kicking clothes, but by the time I could have laced up my steel toed boots “dude” would have been gone. Instead I put a pillow on my head to muffle the sound and tried to sleep while wondering if prison would have been quieter than the Best Western Harvest Inn.