Useless
I'm sitting on what currently passes for a couch at our place in Phoenicia, watching Zach lug in 10 boxes of blue ceramic tiles from the car. Each box weighs 74 lbs.
The tiles are lovely and will, someday soon, comprise the floor in our nascent kitchen.
At the moment, however, they are dead weight.
Last night, I watched Zach load them from our apartment in Brooklyn into the car. If you've ever watched Olympic weightlifting, you may have seen an event known as the "clean and jerk," in which the weightlifter first snatches the barbell from the floor and holds it in a crouching position before propelling herself or himself into a standing position with the barbell overhead. Zach wasn't lifting the tiles overhead, but in every other respect he was doing the clean and jerk. Oh, and then walking each 74-lb. box out of the apartment and onto the street before finally loading it into the car.
The thing about Olympic weightlifting, though, is that the athletes only lift one barbell at a time, not 10 in a row. And they don't have to walk around with them, either. So you can imagine that this was a rather tiring exercise for Zach. One that he's had to repeat just 12 hours later so that we can use the car for other things on this trip.
I, of course, cannot help.
I, of course, cannot lift things.
Between the recent abdominal surgery (hernia alert!), the string of breast/axilla surgeries (lymphedema alert!), and the resulting ban on exercise (muscle atrophy alert!), I am pretty much useless.
I cannot overstate how maddening it is to be unable to pull my weight, as it were. On our vacation, Zach had to lift my carry-on-sized suitcase into the overhead compartment, carry it on and off the rental-car shuttle buses, and take it in and out of the rental car itself.
I have done a ton of business travel, and carrying my own bag has always been a point of pride. Had always been a point of pride, I guess.
It's not just suitcases or 74-lb. boxes of tile, either. It's grocery bags (unless they are filled with paper towels or potato chips). It's the 5-gallon bottles that go with our water cooler. And the extra boxes of cat litter we keep in the basement. It's the other end of a couch or bookcase whenever we decide to rearrange the furniture. It's firewood up in Phoenicia. And my bag of golf clubs, for whenever I'm allowed to play (er, attempt to learn) again. It's the platters we use when we entertain. And the four other storage boxes on top of the one I really need to get into. It's the bottom of our queen-size mattress when I'm trying to tuck the sheets in. It's the cat carrier, avec cat, when we have to go to the vet.
In short, it is the rare day that passes without my having to abandon a task, or ask for help, or take a chance and try to do it myself when I know that I really shouldn't.
Zach doesn't mind, of course. He's happy to lift and carry whenever I need him to.
But I mind.
I'd like to have carried some of those boxes of tile.
Or at least held up one end as we carried them together.
The tiles are lovely and will, someday soon, comprise the floor in our nascent kitchen.
At the moment, however, they are dead weight.
Last night, I watched Zach load them from our apartment in Brooklyn into the car. If you've ever watched Olympic weightlifting, you may have seen an event known as the "clean and jerk," in which the weightlifter first snatches the barbell from the floor and holds it in a crouching position before propelling herself or himself into a standing position with the barbell overhead. Zach wasn't lifting the tiles overhead, but in every other respect he was doing the clean and jerk. Oh, and then walking each 74-lb. box out of the apartment and onto the street before finally loading it into the car.
The thing about Olympic weightlifting, though, is that the athletes only lift one barbell at a time, not 10 in a row. And they don't have to walk around with them, either. So you can imagine that this was a rather tiring exercise for Zach. One that he's had to repeat just 12 hours later so that we can use the car for other things on this trip.
I, of course, cannot help.
I, of course, cannot lift things.
Between the recent abdominal surgery (hernia alert!), the string of breast/axilla surgeries (lymphedema alert!), and the resulting ban on exercise (muscle atrophy alert!), I am pretty much useless.
I cannot overstate how maddening it is to be unable to pull my weight, as it were. On our vacation, Zach had to lift my carry-on-sized suitcase into the overhead compartment, carry it on and off the rental-car shuttle buses, and take it in and out of the rental car itself.
I have done a ton of business travel, and carrying my own bag has always been a point of pride. Had always been a point of pride, I guess.
It's not just suitcases or 74-lb. boxes of tile, either. It's grocery bags (unless they are filled with paper towels or potato chips). It's the 5-gallon bottles that go with our water cooler. And the extra boxes of cat litter we keep in the basement. It's the other end of a couch or bookcase whenever we decide to rearrange the furniture. It's firewood up in Phoenicia. And my bag of golf clubs, for whenever I'm allowed to play (er, attempt to learn) again. It's the platters we use when we entertain. And the four other storage boxes on top of the one I really need to get into. It's the bottom of our queen-size mattress when I'm trying to tuck the sheets in. It's the cat carrier, avec cat, when we have to go to the vet.
In short, it is the rare day that passes without my having to abandon a task, or ask for help, or take a chance and try to do it myself when I know that I really shouldn't.
Zach doesn't mind, of course. He's happy to lift and carry whenever I need him to.
But I mind.
I'd like to have carried some of those boxes of tile.
Or at least held up one end as we carried them together.
posted by Jody Rosen Knower at 7:27 AM
5 Comments:
I, myself carried 42 boxes of travertine tile from the contactor's truck, up a hill, up a tilted board, and into the addition today... though mine didn't way as much as Zach's. There must be some kind of connection...
oops!! I meant 'weigh', not 'way'
Unless your boxes weighed under 18 pounds each (and I doubt they did), you win on overall weight. And you certainly win for distance and duration! Kudos to getting it done.
...and don't worry, jody, i didn't lift a finger either...caroline
Don't worry Jody, Zach can handle it with his "legs of a god."
Jim
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