Mondays, All the Way Down

I am gainfully employed again.  Hooray.

I am partly of the mind that working for a living is for the birds.  Although, I am also partly of the mind that having something unselfish to do is good for me, and entirely of the mind that being independent and paying my own bills, thank you very much, is also a good thing.  There you go - early morning multitudes.

I am scaffolding again. After six years of teaching and going to school and writing curriculum I am back on the tools and in a harness.  Dear god I am sore and tired.  I had just kind of got used to 40 hours a week on my feet and lifting things (scaffolders move between 2 and 10 tons of gear in a day - how about that?) when we started 10 hour days. Two days later we went to 7 days a week.

I am wholly of the mind that no one ought to work 70 hours a week, even if they do get paid a lot to do it.  But whatever, I am in the minority in the construction, scaffold, pulp, and oil and gas industries on that one.  After 14 days, though, people start to wonder when there will be days off.  We started the 7 day nonsense a full 3 weeks before the actual shutdown, which is supposed to be 35 days long. Last weekend the rumours about days off started; the plant was going to shut down early for cleaning out of vessels and pipes and we were not going to be allowed on site during the process.  Every day, the day after tomorrow was going to be a day off and we might be off as many as five days.  Every day we were told to come to work tomorrow.  I have just been going on the assumption that it is Monday until they tell us it is Friday.

Yesterday was actually Friday. And a good thing too.  It was day 18.  I am getting enough sleep and eating properly; in my old age, I am a bit of a stickler for those things. But I am unused to the hard physical work and my muscles dearly needed the rest. I am much stronger than I was when I went back to work 6 weeks ago, but for the last 18 days, there has been no time for shredded tissues to be rebuilt. I was actually kind of punch drunk. I felt like I was moving and thinking through molasses.  I'm pretty sure something bad would have happened if there had been a day 19.

Tuesday is Monday again.