Why do kids like to throw the gravel, on a tar and gravel roof, off of the roof? I remember being told not to do it as a kid, so I must have done it but I don’t remember was it was fun.

My nieces were on the roof with me: one was helping and asking all sorts of questions and the other was helping and throwing the pea gravel off of the roof. When she wasn’t throwing the gravel from the roof, she was moving it around with a small crowbar.

They were both happy when I “built a ramp” from them to get from the roof to the doorway. There is about a four foot drop from the doorway to the roof, I was getting in and out by stepping on a bucket of roofing cement but it was hard for their littler legs to span the gap, so I set a 2x6x8’ plank of wood from the threshold of the door to the roof.

“Look at the ramp, Timmy built for us,” they would yell to whoever would hear. I thought ‘built’ was an overstatement.

“Timmy, why are you taking the stairs down?”


“Timmy, when are you going to fix the leak?”

"Timmy, why do you need two different types of screws?”

“Timmy, why did you need to use the little nails?”


“Timmy, why are the screws different colors?”

I gave an answer to all of her questions, even when the answer was ‘I don’t know.”

I forget the questions that I didn’t know the answer to.

Later, I smiled when she was able to brag to her mother that she helped me build the stairs.


I drove around Sunday taking photos of things that may disappear soon because a contract has expired.


I’m still having a hard time motivating myself but I fired up the design program anyway, I tossed all the elements on the size paper I was going to print to and moved things around. It was designed around some politician’s pride.