"Cherry, please!"

God's given me a Pie in the sky.
How did I not see this before?!

They say that you sometimes forget to look up

to thank...

Today I remembered.

And I was shown what I am thankful for.

12th July: Father, Daughter Time

Time with my Dad over the years has been spent on some kind of a project or another. Whether it be tiling the kitchen floor together, or fixing a chimney to the roof; passing him tools while he works on a car, putting up new walls or laying a brick boarder around one of the garden beds. We have tried our hands at many different tasks, and this weekend came as no exception.

We had to cut through the concrete floor of the 'Daily Pie' shop to relocate the positioning of the drains. The cutter that we hired for the job was much like a chainsaw, only with a circular blade. Along with filling the whole gallery area with fumes, more fascinatingly this blade makes the most enchanting sound. Under the thumping of the motor, and the grinding of blade to cement, it sounds like a haunting whistling. It was not just one pitch either, but an array of harmonising chimes, that could be heard as though far away; The music didn't belong there, able to be heard beneath the loudness, the echo, and the wonderful bright orange ear-muffs upon my head. But with head down, and eyes front on the job, I pictured a small village on a hill side, and for some reason some monks, with this tune playing over the whole valley.

There was also an amount of jack-hammering done, in conjunction with the cutter. One can not help but feel powerful with one of those in your hands.

As well as relocating where the drains needed to be, we had to also locate where exactly said drain came out. This brought with it the adventure of having to uncover the grease-trap. The lid upon which is made out of 10mm solid steal plate. Lifting it (I can only imagine) is much like opening up a coffin. Not the scary part of finding a body, but the smell is enough to empty your stomach of its contents, and take any appetite away for a good week. Nasty!

Mapping out were the water came out was time consuming to say the least. When you are working with pipes that haven't been used in the past 10 years there is a certain amount of 'who knows what' build up which needs to be flushed out.

We soon discovered what we feared, one particular drain point was blocked beyond a simple flushing. Out of said hole was pulled (without getting into too much detail) the better part of a ten litre bucket worth of solid fat and gunk. I now refere to a certain brick of the 'fat and gunk' that was removed as 'beef wellington'.

I have found that at such occasions one reacts in one of two ways... Either you remove yourself quickly from the scene, with hand over mouth and a tear of utter disgust in your eye OR you find yourself getting on with the job of cleaning/removing while making a ridicules amount of corny jokes.

As the picture might indicate, I went with option two. As I was the only one with arm long enough, and narrow enough to fit in said hole.

At this point I would just like to mention how thankful I am that my Dad isn't a plumber! That it wasn't the family business I grew up in. I don't think I could handle that everyday!

After spending my weekend in such a manner it brought to mind a question... What do other daughters do with their Dad's?