Hell is made of cinderblocks

Julianna and a friend Little Jeff (everybody we know is named Jeff, esp. the gay guys) spent the weekend constructing a massive trench in the back yard. Eventually, and I use "eventually" in the sense of "God I hope it's soon," this monstrosity will be filled with topsoil and then planted with ornamentals of various types. Seriously, this thing is 2 cinderblocks high in the front, which is sixteen inches, (and 3 in the back just to conceal more of the ugly wood fence), six feet wide from front to back, and (brace yourself) forty seven feet long.

How many cinderblocks might it take to build the Great Wall of Vancouver, you ask? Well, I can answer that. One hundred ninety-seven. I know this not because I counted each one as it was placed, tempting though that was, but because we had 210 of them delivered to the driveway. That was cool -- Lowe's sends a truck with canvas sides and a really nifty all-terrain forklift hanging from the back, and this big burly broad with a volleyball-team ponytail (if you know what I mean, wink wink) jumps out and climbs into the forklift and whips those pallets of cinderblock right off the truck and into the driveway, lickety damn split. Our neighbor Dave will be relating the story to other neighbors in four-part harmony with diagrams and 8x10 color glossy photographs for years to come.

Anyway there were 13 left over.

I personally had to shift only about ten of them, because I was watching Delia pretty much the whole weekend. She's at that independent forehead-smashing-into-cinderblock age wherein she spends all her time seeking out peril and facing it head-on.