We Cleaned Out the Shed, also Timeline Happened

So yesterday, we cleaned out that bastard tool shed. It was an adventure. First off we went in pulled a whole bunch of shit out. Rotting cardboard boxes that were filled with mouse nests and pee. And mouse poop, and once or twice mummified mouse corpses. There were boxes of shit that defied explanation. The real problem was that my dad had filled the shed with everything ever. So knew we were going to have to pull out a set of shelves and rehome the Shopsmith.

The Shopsmith, for those of you that do not know, is a machine that through a few simple* changes becomes a table saw, a band saw, a drill press and a lathe. It's basically a transformer that you have to transform yourself. So it's not so much a robot in disguise as a power tool in disguise. Except that it can cut your hand off. Actually, I guess it's exactly like a Transformer.

Anyways, this thing was sitting in the middle of the floor. So getting to any of the worktables or rolling tool boxes along the walls was like playing a real life version of the game where you have to slide the little plastic squares around to make a picture. This was more like the crazy Japanese version though, because the floor was littered with shit, meaning to move the Shopsmith you had to clear a spot to put it, which meant that we had to put all the crap where the Shopsmith was, which meant that we parked the Shopsmith in front of the chest freezer and cabinet full of air compressor tools and just pretended those things were dead to us.

Of course we had made no plans to get rid of said Shopsmith before we started working because planning for things is hard. So Scott called my uncle and asked if he wanted the shop smith. Except my aunt answered and said that she wanted the Shopsmith for herself. Apparently she had been using my uncles drill press to make Christmas wreaths and had left foam bits all over his garage. He was less then thrilled. I would also like to think that she had yelled as a parting shot as he went off to work “I'll get my own drill press you'll see!”

Sometimes life just works out like that. So we made plans to visit them and have dinner and deliver one Shopsmith.

All I have to say about cleaning out the shed is that, holy hell sweet Jesus my dad was a hoarder. At one point I pulled what looked like a dinged up metal ingot off a shelf and Scott yelled “Put that down it's made of lead!”

And then I yelled “Why did my dad have a lead ingot in his shed!?”

An Scott's like “I don't know but go wash your hands right now!”

Among the other priceless treasures crap we found an old remote controlled car that I remembered having as a child that Scott wanted to play with but we couldn't find the controller, a peanut butter jar filled with bolts, two washers that went somewhere on the brake assembly of a car my dad hadn't owned since I was in middle school (I'm 27), along with instruction manuals for a VW bug, and a Volkswagen Rabbit with these psychedelic hand painted watercolor tie dyed pictures of the cars on the front.

Luckily we were able to make short work of organizing, due to my superior labeling abilities. I labeled everything, because if it's one thing I've learned it's that you will never, ever remember what you put in that box. Never. Ever, Never. Sure you know now, but three months later, not a fucking clue. I labeled one drawer Bunch O' Shit and another box Small Tubes of Crap. Let's just say I wasn't in the best of moods. Finally we were able to shut the doors on the shed and man and women handle the Shopsmith into the back of our truck.

We changed, locked the chickens up and headed off to my uncles house in the dark. Which brings me to my next point. Do you remember when we fixed the lights on the truck? The terrible struggle of replacing the whole wiring harness and fighting it into the dash and then getting it inspected literally the day before the cut off?

Well, guess what started flickering halfway through our journey?

Ha ha haaaa! The headlights. Of course we kept going, because we really wanted to get rid of that Shopsmith. So we show up at my uncles, to find that my dad's older brother is up visiting. My uncle has the look of a man that has been told he has to help unload a Shopsmith tonight. We have dinner, and my dad's older brother reveals he was the one that talked my dad into the buying the thing, which made me yell theatrically “it was you” while I pretended to poke him.

Then we all wrestled the Shopsmith out of the truck and into the pantry where my aunt had a space for it because she is actually prepared for unexpected arrivals of Shopsmiths.

Then we all had some of the beer I brought over to celebrate the shed cleaning sat down and watched the movie Timeline which I will talk about in my next post because that movie picked science up and shattered it all over the floor.

Then we got back in the truck and drove back home, where the headlights flickered on and off the whole time and thank god there was a full moon and there aren't any police officers in Buttfucknowheresville.

After that I took a shower and went to bed because it was like midnight and my day had been long enough thank you very much.

*That part is a lie.