Building a Banker

I've ordered the stone. I decided which kind I wanted, and I made the call and placed the order-- and it was out of stock. So I talked with the guy and we decided on another stone that would be really good for my first adventure into stone sculpting. It ought to ship sometime this week-- 60lbs of Oystershell Alabaster. Very exciting.

So on Sunday, I went to Home Depot to get a bunch of wood. There are a few things you ought to have in your possession if you're going to sculpt stone-- steel tools, some sandbags, and a banker. A banker is a tall, sturdy table on which you can bang away to your heart's content without worrying about your back getting sore from leaning at an odd angle, and without worrying about the table collapsing under the pressure of your sculpting. I'm building a banker.

Home Depot's kind of neat because there is always a guy there who thinks it's a good idea to become your personal expert because he thinks you're cute. My personal expert quickly came to decide that he didn't care how cute I was, but to his credit, he stuck through to the end, no matter how many different things I needed to get. I picked out my wood, and I went to find Delino, who would cut it up for me. Home Depot's kind of neat also because they cut up your wood for you.

Except, well, halfway through cutting my wood, Delino went into Diabetic shock, and had to be carried to the breakroom. His manager told me he'd be okay, but there was no one else to cut my wood for me. So I bought a saw, and went home. A very nice old Mexican man tied my uncut boards to the top of my car. I liked him best.

At home, I set about creating the table top. It's very sturdy, and made me happy to have created it. Then I went about sawing up two 4x4 beams into four 41" pieces for the legs (that's elbow height on me). But... the 4x4s are treated, and impossible to saw, in the normal sense. You can pull the saw back, but you can't push it forward. The teeth get caught in the gooey treatment stuff. I swore a lot that night as I made the first cut. But it came down to the principal of the thing. I had to get through that first cut, because I'd started it. My community and I decided it would be a good idea to find someone with a buzzsaw to make the other three cuts. But I was going to do that first one, come hell or high water.

Actually, neither of those came. It took two hours, but I finished the cut, and then fell on the floor laughing like a madwoman and screaming in triumph. That night, I went up to the chapel and curled up with a notebook and thought about how much I had enjoyed the act of creating something, enjoyed the physical labor of sawing through the unsawable. I figured that as tired as I was, I wouldn't be able to move the next day.

But I could. And I felt great-- sore, but the kind of sore that comes after a good workout, or a satisfying day of work. I decided that I enjoyed the process of creating, even with its stumbling blocks, as much if not more than having created something. I decided, I could complain about sawing through the beams, or I could saw through the beams.

I finished the third cut last night. I am loving this. Making something. Putting things together. Starting with 2x4s and 4x4s and 2x8s and screws and bolts, and ending up with a banker. Good times.



In other news, my Great Aunt Rose died yesterday. In 1999, just before I went to Spain, she gave me a ukulele. It had been in her closet for fifty years. She bought it just before her arthritis developed, and couldn't play it afterwards. I'm taking that uke to a coffee shop tomorrow night, and I'm playing a set for her. It's not much, but it's something I can do.

May she rest in peace.