Did contractors leave nails in your yard? A magnet sweeper can help

Let me tell you about the time I stepped on a nail. It was Friday, November 20, 2015. I remember the date because it was the night before moving day, the day I spent making dozens of trips from the house to some Relocubes on an injured foot.

I was walking to Walgreens when there was suddenly such a sharp pain in my foot that I started screaming. There was a thick nail sticking out of the bottom of my tennis shoe. It wouldn't budge. A couple of passers-by (in town for a wedding) came over and, thinking it looked like a screw, didn't want to pull it out. They sat with me for a long time while 911 tried to figure out where the alley between Street A and Street B along Avenue C was. I eventually got to the emergency room where they took an x-ray that showed the nail didn't hit any bones. The doctor offered to either give me anesthetic, cut off my shoe, and extract the nail, or just pull it out. "Yank it out," I said. At least I didn't need a tetanus shot, having had one three years earlier after another accident.

Why am I going over this ten years later? A neighbor had their roof replaced a few days ago, and here's what I picked up along their garage, which abuts my yard:

Nails from one side of a ~20 long garage.

Lest you think this contractor left the nails because they were in my yard (not my neighbors'), the very reputable contractor I hired last year to replace some trim didn't sweep my yard for nails, either. Wanting to avoid stepping on another nail, I bought a $12 sweeper and picked up an entire can of nails after they left.

Now $17 with inflation, but cheaper and a lot more fun than an ER visit. Photo from a Home Depot customer review.

To avoid stepping on nails, slowly slide the sweeper along the ground. There's a satisfying "thnk" sound when it picks up a nail. Sometimes it drops the nail--just try again.

Comments

Lowcarb team member said…

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all contractors thought to use one of these sweepers after they had finished a job! Perhaps some of them do?

All the best Jan

July 13, 2025

Lori Miller said…

Construction quality is terrible nowadays.

July 13, 2025

Fasting blood sugar & insulin have crept up!

It's pretty bad when even conventional medicine thinks your blood sugar is high. I had lab tests done last week, as I do every year, and saw things were going in the wrong direction. Photo from Pixabay . Uh-oh. Ideal blood sugar is about 70-90. Your blood sugar can be high because you're stressed or ill, but I felt OK. I can't blame it on cortisol, which was smack in the middle of the normal range. And my A1c, which reflects blood sugar over the past few months, shows that whatever is going on has been happening for a while. My insulin is more than double what it should be. Oddly, my triglycerides, which typically indicate carb consumption, were good. I don't have an explanation for the triglycerides. I should have suspected something was wrong, though. I've felt very tired and a little sad for the past few months. Unlike many people with higher than ideal blood sugar and insulin, I had only gained about three pounds. Regardless of my good weight and triglyceride...

Infrared Light: How much is too much?

It's the sort of thing that sounds like quackery: a pad with tiny red LED lights and a few buttons that's supposed to help you heal, just $30 on ebay. I never would have bought it, but Dr. Davis gave a presentation on infrared light late in 2024. Since I was still suffering from achilles tendonitis after being floxxed , I decided to try it. I wrapped it around my ankle and turned it on the lowest setting for five minutes. Nothing seemed to happen, but the next day, I wrote, My tendonitis is GONE after one 5-minute treatment! I didn’t feel it doing anything, I didn’t think it was going to do anything (at least not that quickly), but for the first time in several months, I’ve gotten out of bed and started walking normally and didn’t have any pain reaching with my left arm. I'd been shuffling around like an 80-year-old woman after getting out of bed in the morning. The tendonitis returned, but it was improved. I eventually had physical therapy for it, and now, apart from a l...

Gym Influencer Doubles Down and Should Have Regretted It

Jennifer Picone isn't the most abusive gym influencer--far from it--but she may be the most annoying. In a video she posted that went viral, she was working out in a gym when another member appeared in the background by the free weights. The member was minding her own business, not looking in Picone's direction, when Picone got up and told her to move. After filming, Picone edited the video with a note about "Gym etiquette lesson #47" and accused the other gym member of "[doing] that 💩 on purpose." Shaming other gym members has gotten to be such a big genre that Joey Swoll has a YouTube channel, with half a million subscribers, dedicated to calling out these content creators. Just for Picone, he took a break from his vacation to tell her to mind her own business. This may be the first time that Joey Swoll has taken one of his followers to task. The fact that she follows him and still doesn't know better than to treat the gym like her personal studio sh...

Stay in your car!

If there's ever a lunatic outside your vehicle, do not engage. Stay in your vehicle. Drive away or call the police. Drive over the curb, lawn or median if necessary; just avoid putting innocent bystanders at risk.* Save yourself from lunatics like a boss. Screen grab from video by Fredrik Sørlie on Youtube . That advice might have saved a 69-year-old delivery driver from being attacked by former NFL player Mark Sanchez, who for unknown reasons was in an alley after midnight in downtown Indianapolis and decided to pick a fight over a parking space. I say might have because I haven't seen any video of the attack. But other incidents over the years bear out the safety of staying in your car. A neighbor was assaulted and robbed after she got out of her car after someone followed her home and blocked her driveway. And remember Reginald Denny from the LA riots? The victim maced and stabbed Sanchez, but suffered a bad cut to his face and tongue and looks like he was badly beaten. Bo...

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food

Here's a funny AMV(1) on what it's like to be depressed, apathetic and overly sensitive. Note: explicit (but funny) lyrics in the video. Hearing this song brought a startling realization: I used to be emo, but with normal clothes. Sulking, sobbing and writing poetry were my hobbies. When I was a kid, my mother said that she wouldn't know what to do to punish me if I had done something wrong. And yet things got worse. Over a two-week period in 1996, my best friend moved away, I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my appetite and lived on a daily bagel, cream cheese and a Coke for the next few months. I had tried counseling, and didn't find it helpful; in fact, I found reviving painful memories was pointless. Not thinking about them, on the other hand, worked wonders. Later on, so did studying philosophy and learning to think through emotions instead of just riding through them. But what's blown away all the techniques is diet. Since I s...

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog