Raking, Baking and Aching

I'm feeling old. I went out to do all the raking yesterday. Jen was sick, so she helped out with deadheading plants, but didn't help with the raking and bagging. So I got to tackle all the leaves on a very windy day. Because of the wind, I had to bag a pile as soon as I had it together, so my back got to start aching earlier. I got the front yard done and about half of the back yard done after raking the from 9 to 4:30. Afterwards, I had a difficult time just laying down on the floor to realign my back. Jen and I both were feeling very decrepit as we hobbled around and moaned.

One place we hobbled to was Smashburger to use up a Groupon I had and reward our hard work with burgers. The burgers and fried pickles were good. Not so good was a fight we witnessed there. I won't go into details, as the police officer who responded said we would likely be called on as witnesses if there's a trial, but two guys started talking trash and one guy threw two milkshakes on the other. Thankfully no punches were thrown. I'm especially grateful, for as aching as I was I was even less inclined to intervene than usual (which is not really at all).

Then I went home and baked two pies (avocado and pumpkin) for our house church today. Now I am up after a night of wind that shook the house, yet somehow managed to not overturn the trash cans I used to bag leaves. And I will be out there later. I need to rake and bag the remaining half of the yard, bring down part of one of our cottonwoods that snapped in the heavy snow, and refill our crawl space now that it is getting its radon abated. Relaxation will have to happen next weekend.