First Day of Work

Cameron had his first full day at work at a "real" job. He chose to take the 10 hour day/4 days a week shift. The shift starts at 5am. This means that he needs to plan on getting there by 4:30am because of the length of the commute. It takes 45 minutes to drive there. This morning he needed to be there by 4:30 for last-minute training so he had to leave at 3:30am. GAG! This was hard on me because I was afraid he'd sleep through his alarm. He has a habit of thinking he's awake and he isn't. So I set my alarm for 3am, thinking that if he wasn't up when it went off there's still be time for him to get up and out the door by 3:30. Not to worry. He was up and around by 2:45. I quietly turned off my alarm and when he left, fell back asleep.

It wasn't a very good sleep because I kept waking up with a jolt and had to remember that he'd already left for work in good time. I had programed myself to worry and did a fine job of it all night long. I took a short nap this afternoon and felt guilty because Cameron couldn't.

So you know how your kids come home from some function or overnighter or something and have to share with you every single detail of their time away from you? Cameron didn't even wait to get home. He called on his cell. It was interesting because Mike worked in the green end at the time we were married and for, oh, maybe six years more before he went into management. I was curious about what Cameron would tell me about pulling green chain. One of the first things he complained about was the stench of peeled hemlock. I was transported back in time about twenty years and it was Mike complaining about having to pull hemlock. I guess it's something pretty bad and any slivers you get fester up in a matter of hours.

A quick explanation here for those who aren't familiar with the process of making plywood. The logs are stripped of their bark and sent into a pressurized steam tunnel for an amount of time depending on the type of wood. The purpose of the tunnels is to drive the water into the wood, totally saturating it. The logs then come out of the tunnels and are peeled with a lathe. Just like a wood-shop lathe where the wood spins and you press a knife to it to make the design, the logs spin and are laid against a very long blade (4, 8, or 10 feet long) that has been adjusted for how thick the peel needs to be (measured in millimeters). The log is reduced to a very, very long "ribbon" (called veneer) of very, very thin wood. Here's where the steam is needed. If there isn't much moisture, the wood will break and curl. Soaked with water, it holds together and lays flat. The veneer goes through the clippers and then down a chain where most is removed by machine and some is removed by hand. This is where Cameron is. Yes, it is heavy. In about a week and a half, you'd be silly to challenge him to an arm-wrestling match.

I guess he didn't do too badly and got some encouraging words from his crew. He came home starved and exhausted and ate a large supper, but I couldn't get him to go to bed until about 11:30pm; he was that wound up. He doesn't work until Monday or he'd have gone much earlier. The beauty of working 4/10 is that you get three day weekends.

So endeth his day.