View from the North 40: If it's worth doing ...

Drama and complications are two different things. Drama I actively work to avoid. Complication seems to be second nature.

It started with a simple statement: “I need to get the horses locked up for the summer to let that pasture grow.”

How hard is it to lock three head of tame, broke horses into an already-fenced area? I don’t even have to get halters. I just need to grasp a half of a handful of mane on one horse and lead it into the small pasture. The others will follow. Then I close the gate and we’re done.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Well, you know I can’t be having any of that. Simple is as simple does and I’m no simpleton.

It’s been a week and I still don’t have those horses locked up.

Yes, it is that complicated.

If I’m going to lock them in that enclosure, they will eventually need shelter. I might as well get that section of boards to the attached pen knocked down so they can get to the lean-to. And — oh my sweet-salty margarita — those 6-inch, ring-shank spikes would not pull loose for nothing.

With enough prying and grunting, though, the heads eventually popped off all 15 of spikes. Perfect. So I got the boards pulled down, and the headless spikes pounded safely flat against the posts.

Of course, despite the complications, this was just too simple.

I use the pen to lock up one or all of the horses when I need one handy, so the new opening in the fence needed a gate. I removed a gate from an enclosure where it wasn’t needed any longer and set it aside to be squared up again before rehanging over my new, gaping fence hole.

I would have fixed it right them, but I had decided that, definitely, the main gate to the pen had to be replaced with one that would actually swing open and shut. Fortunately, it only took two trips to the shop for all the tools to do that, 30 seconds to remove one nut and about 15 minutes and a gallon of sweat equity to remove the other rusty nut.

Those 15 minutes were all grunting and prying and jumping on the end of the wrench handle because only my plus-sized behind had the magic and heft to loosen the bolt.

One more trip to the shop for the forklift then I got the gate pulled, picked up and hauled to the scrap heap — and what a welcome relief to see a 2-ton machine doing more work than I was.

At this point, the work had amounted to a reasonable level of hard labor, frustration and aching body parts. Because in my world reasonable labor is unacceptable and I had to fix that.

After the big gate was hauled away, an examination of the post revealed that it was rotted and leaning enough that it had to be replaced, so the two attached panels had to be, well, unattached. One came away with a reasonable level of prying, the other — really fit into my plan to be unreasonable.

The bolts, hard-welded to the panel, had gotten bent over the years and would not pull out through tight-fitting holes, no matter how much prying, hammering, tugging, wiggling grunting and cussing you put into the job.

Tired and frustrated, now, I was just too wrapped up in the moment — and the grand opportunity to argue with my husband about how to get the post, with panel attached, pulled out of the ground and laid out in an open area without bending the expensive panel — to appreciate just how profoundly complicated I had made this project.

I should have taken the time to congratulate myself.

I never give myself enough credit for my talents.

I’m also a little bit ashamed to admit that I gave in, drove to town and bought a post that would fit in the hole left by the old post rather than dig the hole larger to fit one I already had at home. I did that because it was less complicated. I’m not proud of this weakness.

Don’t think less of me for being a quitter.

I still have to get the new post braced, the panels reattached to it and the gate hung, as well as the other gate squared up and rehung where I pulled the boards down. It’s been a week of hammering away at this project, but I think that by Sunday I’ll have my horses locked up. No problem

(If I try hard, though, maybe I can tack another five days of hard labor and cussing into the complications at [email protected].)