So here's the whole story behind the "person" I took with me up to the property in the mountains.
I have a friend. I have known her since we were teenagers, though there was a good 20 - 25 year period we had no communication at all. Facebook actually brought us back together again. We talked for a while on Facebook and then I went to her house several times a year or more ago and was visiting her and her kids. She has a daughter and a son, both teenagers.
She is divorced and I guess the dad isn't exactly a good role model. I wouldn't know, to be honest, I met him once and was only there for a few minutes and there is no way of me coming up with my own, good judgment of the character of the man without spending much more time around him - of which I have no desire to do so a non sequitur.
Well, we kinda drifted off again, though talked sporadically online through Facebook here and there. She calls me up a week or so ago and tells me she has some medical condition that doctors so far haven't been able to diagnose. It leaves her dizzy and having to lay down and not being able to do much of anything. Sounded like vertigo to me, but supposedly they ruled it out.
Well, the first thing she asks me is she has a favor to ask me. No clue. Out of the blue. Keep an open mind, so I said, "well, okay, what do you neet?". She goes into this situation where her son does not have any male input into his life - apparently dad isn't around much and when he is, it's not exactly a good male role model - and would I be able to take him up to the property with me to help install the fence? I don't know how she even knew I was going to install a fence up there, I have been wanting to do it but I wanted help, actually. I have said something about that fence here on my blog, but she doesn't know about this blog - I don't really spread this around too much to anyone. I'm not interested in having the entire world reading it. I feel a bit more liberty to speak freely here than I would in much other internet venues and that simply because I don't go around telling people, "hey, read my blog, it's really cool!".
In reality, it is long, drawn out and reveals a lot of me and what is going on inside of me. But I do have some really cool readers that have been coming for a long time : )
Apprehension at first. I don't really know this kid. He's 17 years old and she is basically going to force him to go up there with me. I'm wondering what kind of time I am going to have with a person that might not even want to be there and being together with a person that he doesn't know, either, for an entire weekend and on top of that, having to visit my good friend, Manual Labor, for much of it. But I pretty much decided quickly that the help would be good, if the help was good, lol, in putting that fence up.
Let's fast forward beyond the in-between stuff and all the talk. I show up at their house on Friday afternoon, I'm ready to go. I had talked to him before but not at any great length and it had been a while. We have lunch at Mary's house and then leave. I was very quickly put at ease with this kid. A really cool kid, in the Boy Scouts and going for the Eagle Scout ranking. That says something in itself. You aren't going to be doing that with a bad attitude or whatever, which is what I was afraid of. Great personality, we hit it off, talked the entire time drive up there. Arrived at the property and I had a lot to do. Not putting up the fence, either, that was to wait until the next day. I'm talking all the stuff to get everything fired up and running.
He was glad to see that I have satellite TV up there, namely, Direct TV with a lot of channels. We ended up watching The Walking Dead - zombie show but realistic, much more so than much of it's predecessors, and then realized they don't have TV at their house. Basically, if you want TV anymore, you have to pay for it.
Anyway, Saturday morning comes around, I have to go to Payson to get those T stakes, they call them, those are the green stakes you will see along highways with barbed wire fence attached to them. But, I was installing a metal version of fencing painted green. It's the same as the fencing going around my mom's trailer up there and she wants everything to look the same, which I don't blame her and didn't bother me, isn't any more expensive than chain link so no big deal. Well, we get into town, get those stakes, get some stuff for the tire for the wheelbarrow to fix it, get some breakfast and then had back.
But we took another route back and it took quite a while, but we passed right by the entrance to one of the scout camps he goes to during the summer.
Anyway, we got the entire fence up and ready to use excepting the gates, which I don't have. We also installed a weather-proof electrical outlet cover, semi-permanently installed the satellite dish and other things. I have no idea whether I had any good "influence" on him and I'm not sure that this kid needed it anyway. But, moms tend to see things that others won't and she thought it important for him to have some male influence beyond his regular life which is, during the summer and when away from the Boy Scouts, mostly on the computer.
Got quite a lot more done this weekend than I expected. But, that's because I had help, lol.
And now? The weekend just about over. Brought back a steak and some salad that was leftover from last night's meal, I don't have to cook anything for dinner : )
ben
