Just call me "Michael"

Having finished the work on the church to get the video projection system installed, I returned to the work on the house. The current task is to re-ceil the attic bedroom and finish sealing it off to block the wind that comes through the tiles of the roof. We're putting up roll insulation (foam-aluminum foil combination) to seal out air currents and provide some acoustic insulation, and then tongue-and-groove panelling over that.

One thing you should know about me and any work project: whether it's true, or it only seems so, I manage to hurt myself in some way at least one time each day. Blisters, cuts, scrapes, bruises...some way or another I end up giving something of myself to the job. Blood is usually present to a lesser or greater degree, a sort of blood sacrifice.

While working on the church last week, I was putting away tools and let a steel framing square fall---right down the front of my left shin, and it peeled off that fine layer of skin that looks to be about the thickness of an onion skin. A superficial wound to be sure, but boy, did it sting! It eventually turned into a big, beautiful scab, an inch or so in diameter. The last of the scab fell off yesterday.

Today, I was the one who fell off. A step ladder I was using to put up the ceiling paneling folded under me and my right leg got caught in the works as the ladder collapsed...I could feel the "onion skin" coming off the shin.  I knew I didn't want to raise the leg of my jeans to see it, but when I did about a minute later, there was a 6-inch long "skid mark" down my shin and the whole area had swelled about an inch high. I was able to continue working, but had to work in shorts, as the contact with the leg of my jeans was unbearable.

I thought of a song Abbie said she loved to sing as a little girl. There are many verses relating the misfortunes of an "old man named Michael Finnegan", but one verse, in particular, always struck me as especially funny...until today:

There was an old man called Michael Finnegan
Climbed a tree and barked his shin again
Took off several yards of skin again
Poor old Michael Finnegan....Begin again.

And like poor old Michael Finnegan, tomorrow I get to...

Begin again.