Talking about strength...

         Here is the thing about "strength", and it has very little to do with muscle.  Always, forever in my memory, I have done what I said I was going to do. I have never been late for anything, never been late for work, always got my papers turned in on time, never missed a meeting.  I always get there early. I leave in plenty of time to fix a flat tire on the way: mine or someone else's.  If I say I am going to do something, the world would have to stop to prevent this from happening.  This is part of who I am.  I am this way because my word is good.  It is my greatest asset.  For you, you can count on it as the sun will surely come up tomorrow, but I count on it too.  It is important to me.
     Cancer of course limits what one can do and you learn not to make promises that you cannot keep, but it doesn't stop you from doing anything.  So, I admit, my lists become shorter, but they are still there as an obligation to myself.  If I think today only I can do three things, then I do them.  Even if I don't feel like it.
Even if it makes me miserable.  Even if it makes me sick.  and, especially, even if I don't want to.
     I make my list in the morning when I am at my best and I always make them for tomorrow when I am hoping for a better day.  Tomorrow I will weld for one hour.  Tomorrow I will paint one little painting, and tomorrow I will go out to breakfast.  I will do this no matter what and I can do this crying and miserable or I can do this happy and cheerful, but do it I will.  What happens in reality almost every single time is my one hour of welding will stretch to two or three and I will complete a project, get lost in time, forget about the pain in my hands and for awhile forget all about cancer.  Painting is quiet time, no grinding and obnoxious fumes.  My little painting can become big.  They have a life of their own and become what they need to become, happy to be out of the tube.  That hour will also stretch and I will find myself lost there too.

My Other Blog is Here. 

The breakfast is a fun treat and I have learned to be nice to myself.  It is always with friends, some have cancer and some don't and that is the one subject we never talk about.  We give it no strength.

Right Tools for the Job

I had my construction experience yesterday, tearing down and rebuilding a set of stairs.
They are up now, accurate and perfect, awaiting the wrought iron banister I am to build.
I went into construction 35 years ago. I lost my school teaching job due to a recession and a lay off of over 30 teachers. A friend had a large construction company building motels and huge apartment complexes and hired me as a foreman. I was in charge of a 20 man crew on my first day of work. I knew nothing about building anything. "You know about people," he said, "keep them working and happy." So I did that, for him for a year and then for myself for over 30 years.
There is a hierarchy among construction crews. The guys who could do lay out, the ones who could cut in the rafters were near the top. The guy who made the stairs was at the very top.
Always even, above the boss. There is a lot of math in a set of stairs and you have to know the total picture. What will the final job be? What are the final treads? What will be the top and bottom landing? Carpet? Tile? Hardwood floors? This all affects the outcome and alters the math.
You need a really good saw blade and America doesn't make these any more. We still make construction saw blades that are okay for everyday framing, but for precision work you need a blade "made in Japan." They use better steel and have a pride in their work left over from the Samurai sword making days. If you can imagine a perfect artist's paintbrush versus a house brush that is the difference.
I needed to learn these trades, layout, rafters and stair building if I wanted to stay in this business and make a living at it. I practiced them every night. I went through reams of paper with hypothetical problems, moving the stairs, moving the landings, changing the windows, adding this or that.
So I discovered yesterday that this is all a bit like riding a bicycle and I can still do it. The neuropathy in my hands made it all a slow motion procedure but the brain remembers and I had a great day! After Christmas I will build the railings and that will be a wonderful present to me!

my Steel Website is HERE

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!

I thought I would show you some of my "metal art". The assignment for this job was to create an Entry to this garden. Tradition and protective and Big is what I saw so that is what I did. With metal work my "canvas"is often big. This total "piece" is about 30 feet wide and eleven feet tall.
I have so lost the strength to create this kind of art but it is nice to know that I did a lotof it and it will far outlast me! That is what artists want, isn't
it? Immortality!