Tuesday, December 21, 2010

I am ending the year with a JOB!

This is crazy and wonderful, I am ending the year with a job! I began my chemo last January and continued working until half-way through this voodoo process, about April Fools' Day. Then work became getting dressed and I got all the horrible symptoms of the "cure". I have done nothing monetarily, there is no renumeration in being sick. I turned down an interesting job because I couldn't lift a 20 pound piece of marble! All that is in the past. Except I have neuropathy in my hands. They hurt if I use them and they hurt if I don't.
So, somebody came to me and said, "Jerry, can you..." That is all it takes to wake me up.
During this cancer bout, fight, thing, is the only time in my life I have ever said "no". That was probably the hardest part of the whole experience for me. I had to learn the "can't"word, the worst word in the English language. I had to learn to do nothing.
I was on the job yesterday in my rabbit fur-lined gloves, tearing down a brand new set of stairs. This is a new and very expensive house and the stairs were not built correctly. The last stair and the first stair were different from the rest and I couldn't build a railing on that. The brain assumes. We go up and down steps without thought. To throw in a step that is ff an inch is a tripper and it wouldn't pass the building inspection. I told the homeowner that we can tear it out now or after I have made the railing and then replace both! He is an older guy, like me, and we are two old guys together, fixing this problem that young guys built. A little slower than I used to be but it will be dead right perfect when I am done. I will finish this construction phase today and then I get to build the railings!!
This will be a fun job. It is about 15 feet of stair railings and ten feet of balcony railings with NO rules except the minimum 4" open gap rule required from the building codes. I can do what I like! It is what I dream about. Visions of steel and iron and patterns and obscure bits and pieces from my shop. Things that I find and stuff that goes well together.
For me this is a wonderful Christmas present. There is the money, sure, a necessary evil.
But I am doing something! I am building something. I am creating! I am not my cancer, that is history!

4 comments:

  1. Now is that not someting special. Jerry I want you to know that you are a very special guy and I feel honoured to call you friend. I hope you and yours have alovely christmas and new year. I will raise a glass to you as the year closes and a new one opens. I will be wearing my kilt and in my hand will be a glass of the best scotch I can lay my hands on. To a special friend I say "Slancha" If you have a problem with that ask me.

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  2. I am so proud of you my special friend, you are an amazing and very wonderful man Jerry. Enjoy your job and that wonderful creative feeling - you deserve it! oxoxox

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  3. You go Jerry ! ... !! Your will and determination is a big part of what got you to this place in just one year... I don't have to tell you how much I admire that.
    This is your Christmas present this year, and I wish many more for you, but this is the one you won't forget. !!! It's been in the stars all the while. Merry Christmas Jerry.

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