My son, Jeff, is taking part in Movember. Participating men are growing mustaches and raising money to fight the “man” cancers, prostate and testicular. Jeff’s page is here and it’s easy to click to donate.

I'm back from OKC. My sister is better! She was sitting up and eating some and is mostly coherent so Mom sent me home. I got home to find that they have leveled the yard and built the forms for the concrete decking. The drains in the deck are set and the electrical work is finished. The green tags are in place – meaning that the work has been OKd by the inspector.

That red dirt you see is actually sand, probably from the Red River. It's very iron-rich sand. They were supposed to bring the concrete this morning but rain in Dallas has kept them away. It will be Tuesday before the deck gets done.

This morning after my walk I went to Lowe's and bought 250 fence pickets – 1×6's and 1×4's. The helpful folks at Lowe's loaded them into the pickup for me but then I unloaded them from the pickup when I got home. Steve would have done it but he's at work and I want to get as much as I can done today because we don't have a lot of time to work on the fence tomorrow. That meant me doing some manual labor which doesn't hurt me a bit.

I proceeded to cut the boards to the correct lengths with the miter saw. What a great power tool! I used the table saw to cut the 1×4's in half, lengthwise. As I was doing all this cutting I couldn't help but think that the saws were an awful lot like rotary cutters – except that you could cut your hand off with them. I was very careful.

Our garage smells like cedar.

Dave and his co-worker are working on the wall with the waterfall here:

The waterfall will be 2' wide and it's centered in this wall. If you look close you'll see a bright yellow strip of plastic where the water will fall from.

It was chilly and windy – not a good day for this sort of work. But they did it anyway! The back side of the wall is pretty too.

We chose 1' iridescent glass tiles for the front of the wall. They were not easy to install. They aren't all cleaned up yet but they are going to glow in the sunlight.

On another note – my sister, Christy, has been in the hospital for the last week with pancreatitis. My mom kept saying that she didn't need me yet and now she does so I'm going to go tomorrow and will be gone for at least a couple of days. I'll let you know how she is when I get back (or when I'm gone if I have time to post).

Have you been to My Parents Were Awesome? Cracks me up. This is a "Steve", posted by Paige,…

…who reminded me a lot of my own Steve back in the day. Except that my Steve could grow serious hair. He still can.

Sunday was not a day of rest this week. Steve and I spent the day building fence. It doesn't look like much, but those galvanized fence posts represent a lot physical labor – on Steve's part. I cleaned house while he put in the last 2, hardest posts.

There was no time to take photos through the day but we got this far. We have more to do, but at this stage it looks really good. Our pool contractor, Bill, and Dave the stone man both said it looked professional!

We all worked on Saturday. Dave and his co-worker were back. I didn't take as many pictures because I was working too. Steve took out the fence and I dug up and cut back a lot of plants in the front yard. When he needed me for ballast, I stopped to help remove the fence posts. Seriously – it made me feel skinny because I was not really heavy enough to do my job well. We went to Sonic for burgers and tater tots and that helped.

Steve made a big pile of dead fencing in the front yard and I added the cut plants to the pile. We'll call the city on Monday to take it away. Sherman is very good about doing that for a reasonable price.

That's Bob and Virginia's house across the alley. Joan and Jim live in the house to the right.

The stone is really pretty around the edge of the pool. Dave is good at his job – he's thoughtful about the way the stones go together.

By 4:30 we had had all the fun we could stand for one day. Steve has all but 2 of the new fence posts set. We'll do those first thing Sunday morning. My arms feel like they are going to fall off. I moved a pile of bricks and did my best to dig up a bunch of Turks' Caps that were in a bad place. I even pulled out and used the axe! The sun was getting low in the sky and we decided that it was time to quit.

I took this photo mid-afternoon. It shows a nice view of the shallow end of the pool. Once the fence it up, I won't have this view.