I’ve quietly shaken one of my oldest phobias.

Pretty good so far. I wanted to do everything required to pour the least important pier, just to take the first one slow and make sure I knew where all the mines were hidden.

And it did go pretty well. I ran into the one thing I just knew was going to go wrong; that’s the shortest pier, and I guessed that one 80-pound sack would almost but not quite fill the form – not because I’d done any such calculation or anything, just because it was the most annoying thing I could imagine short of total disaster. And sure enough, the contents of a single sack came to 3″ of the fill line. So I needed a portion of a second sack, and you know you can’t mix just a little concrete.

Hah! But I fended off Uncle Murphy by having second form in place before I did the first pour, just in case I needed a place to put excess. And then I poured the excess into the second form and shoved some rebar stubs in there. It’ll be fine.

And I stood back and admired my work to date, and it occurred to me that I have quietly gotten over one of my oldest, most nagging phobias in a life filled with petty neuroses.

Maybe not a phobia. I don’t actually fear them. An aversion, let’s call it. I’ve always hated construction sites. Hated them. It’s why I went into auto repair*.

My father hated construction sites, and he made his whole living at them. He hated his job, he hated his life, and he wasn’t afraid to let it show. And when I was a little kid and getting dragged around to construction sites with my dad, all I remember from that is mud and mess and huge guys standing around a barrel full of burning scrap early in the winter morning trying to get feeling into their fingers. And I decided that was not for me, no matter what.

But that was a long time ago. Been here at the Gulch ten and a half years now, and it’s been one construction site after another. And you know what? I … wouldn’t go so far as to say I’ve grown to love them. I much prefer finished construction. But a building under construction is no longer a chaotic, inchoate thing to me. No longer frightening, even when I can’t truthfully say I’m completely on top of what I’m doing. No longer just there to torture me. I’ve helped build four houses and a large barn, along with numerous smaller service buildings of various sorts. I’m by no means a master builder, but I’m starting to get it. This addition is by far the most complex structure I did all the planning and will have done most of the construction on, and I’ve got this. That’s a big improvement.

The Lair’s inverter won’t run a circular saw, so now that I finally know all the form dimensions LB and I went back to Landlady’s barn where the building materials are stashed and cut all the remaining form sections.

After lunch I’ll assemble the remaining forms and cut off the excess rebar, and then call a halt for the day. It’s been pretty hot, and I expect to have just enough time to do the above before the afternoon storm rolls through. So that’s ambition enough for the afternoon.

It’s a good start, but I’m still not completely convinced I have enough concrete. It’s gonna be close.

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* Which, it turned out, I also hated.