good worker

Yesterday's plopping rain drops -- drops that seemed to beg for a degree or two more cold so they could turn into sloppy snow -- have moved on today. Splunge, splunge, splunge -- the non-word tickles across my mental tongue. Skies are grey today. Lowering. But the splunge is elsewhere, I guess.

Out back, my neighbor Joe's son Matt has been doing a good job shoring up the deck I no longer have the wherewithal to attack. The uprights are slip-sliding off the concrete pilings. A good job means he is thinking of the best options, the ramifications of cost, and a willingness to do well what he promised to do at all. Thinking on my behalf and then delivering -- that's a good worker.

I am at pains to pay him well for a job I am pleased with -- a job in the middle of a middle-class-and-better community that construction workers are not shy about gouging. None of the work is exactly rocket science, but those around here willing to make rocket science out of simple repairs seems unending.

It's happy-making to find a good worker and not just someone with a cap-toothed smile and a fruit suit who talks about a project and uses phrases like "moving forward" ... but lacks the understanding/willingness/sweat glands that go with a hammer.