Hay Storage the Walls and the Roof.

So after putting the posts in the ground and then waiting overnight we arrived bright and early to add on the floor and the roof of our little hay storage barn. Of course that sounds so neat and tidy, but in reality we didn't really have a plan. What we did have was a bunch of wood from the old barn that was stored under a tarp on the old pool deck, an impact driver, a level and a chainsaw.

So we would make a plan, pull out the boards we needed, measure them and then the fucking fun started. Now some of you might remember our adventure with the chicken coup where we brought down our portable generator to make cuts and run power tools. This time we decided that took too damn long, so we cut the boards to length with the motherfucking chainsaw.

You know, like well rounded adults do.

Anyway, since I didn't plan any of this and the hay is growing in the fields, I ran into a problem. None of the old boards from the barn were pressure treated. So in order for them to you know, not rot into the earth like all the previous structures I had to treat them with something. So grabbing the can of preserver I used on the log uprights I started to treat the underside of all the boards. Because once the base boards were down I couldn't reach the bottom of them.

So then the entire project turned into one giant race, where I ran around treating each side of the board before I lost access to it forever. This involved not just treating the bottoms, but also doing the sides and tops of the base boards, and then the bottom and sides of every floor board we laid down. Also, I can assure you, after all that, that cedar stain deck and fence preserver does not really get you high.

At all.

Which was almost but not quite disappointing, because during this paint-a-thon we hit major problem number two. Which is that decade old barn boards made out of oak are as hard as a rock. Or diamonds or someshit. Not only did we have to predrill all the holes in each and every board we would be screwing together, we also lost TWO motherfucking drill bits along the way. Also I learned that if you absentmindedly grab the drill bit after it's done drilling through two inch think oak floor beams, you will burn the ever loving shit out of your hand. Through your glove.

Just take my word on that one will you?

In fact, considering that I am talking about inhaling stain fumes and cutting up lumber with a chainsaw, just- just take my word on all of this.

Don't try this at home is what I am saying.

Moving along, after much swearing and getting stain everywhere, we finished the floor and moved on to the roof. Luckily we still had some left over boards from the chicken coup roof that were just right to go onto this project. Unluckily however was the act of getting them the fuck up there. See, when I cleaned off the site, I was just worried about clearing out enough old barn debris that I could get the holes dug and move around the thing. Except I kinda omitted thinking through a few things. Like ladder clearance. So while the boards could be got up the ladder without death, it took some, ah, creative energy. And by that I mean we did that thing where you try to keep all your weight on one side of the ladder so the damn thing won't fall over on you halfway through. So, it was an adventure.

Then there was the simple matter of trimming the logs off to the correct height. Well for me it was simple because Scott was the one doing it. For him it was terrible. Probably. But in the end we got them all trimmed up and nobody died and the tops didn't fall and crush anybody even though the chickens were all around us watching and muttering things in chicken that I didn't understand.

Then we put the roof boards up and after that it was too late to keep working even though we had hoped to get the metal roof on but that's just life so what the fuck ever. Then we went to visit my grandma and I hung out with my favorite nephew and we went down to the big ol' river that runs through the mountains behind her house and threw rocks in the water until it got too dark and the super no fun rest of the adults made us come back inside.

Because sometimes, life doesn't get any better then that.

Sometimes.

We Paid Someone to Fix the Tire for us.

Yeah. It was not going to happen. We tried. And then we tried. And then we tried some more. We tried for two straight days. In weather that could best be described as winter apocalypse. You know, temperature hovering in the teens, wind gusts of up to forty miles an hour, sideways snow. I am nothing if not committed.

Or maybe I am really, really cheap.

Either way, Scott and I threw in the towel after making exactly zero progress removing that demon hell tire from the rim. We tried everything, we used every pry bar we owned. All our crowbars too. Even the tiny one that is like, six inches tall. We used every product the Internet recommended. We accused each other of doing it wrong. We cursed. We lost feeling in our limbs.

At one point we had every crowbar and pry bar we owned stuck in the thing at the same time. And I mean everyone. The bad part was that was we couldn't even get all of them back out. Anyway we gave up and started calling people. Of course by we I mean Scott because he is the only one capable of answering technical questions. The first place we called did not repair tires, apparently because as we have all learned by now, tires are the devil. However, they did give us the number of someone they knew that fixed this equipment and also made house calls. So Scott called him and explained that we had everything we needed, the tire, the rim and the inner tube, all we needed was to have someone install it.

He said he'd do it for sixty bucks.

SOLD.

He told us to meet him at the base of the mountain, around four thirty, with the tire, and we could follow to him to his garage and he would fix it. So we heaved that goddamned motherfucking tire into the truck and drove off at the appointed time. He said he would be driving a white service truck. Well we sat there for a few minutes freezing our asses off because the truck doesn't have any heat because it doesn't feel that the comfort of it's occupants is a concern and then his truck rolled past. Now my first thought was, he's kinda cute. My second thought was, he is going to murder us both.

When he pulled past, he gave no indication that he was the guy, such as waving or motioning us to follow, he just gave us one long look. It was a look that said something. I just don't know what that something was.

Well, we pulled out and followed him because that backhoe tire was not going to fix itself. Everything was going great we were tooling along, headed down the main road, when he slowed down and turned onto That Road.

That Road, we had previously discovered, was a horror movie. As in if you ever wanted to combine Wrong Turn and Deliverance with a dash of Blair Witch Project, this would be the road you would go down. It has creepy hundred year old abandoned barns, under the road culvert pipes big enough to hide an ATV in, permanently wet rocky cliff faces, and a lot of scraggly ill kept looking woodlands. Also, it is supposed to be a two lane road, although it is really a one in a half lane road. We were, at least superficially trying to stay on our side, but the vehicles in front of us were just driving in the center because this is the country and that is how we roll.

It also didn't help that the door seals on the truck were going to shit so that whenever the wind blew hard on the passenger side, it would start snowing in the cab.

All in all, I thought it was pretty likely we were going to die.

Then he turned into a driveway of a cute little white house, which turned out to be an easement because we kept driving up what I thought for sure was an access road to a lumber operation but instead turned out to be his driveway. It was almost entirely vertical, heavy wooded, and extremely washed out.

At that point I pretty much knew we were going to get murdered.*

You might be wondering, why at this point I didn't suggest turning around and fleeing for our lives. Well, for one thing, I really hated this tire and someone was going to have to fix it, and two it was almost time for my period and I just didn't give a fuck anymore. I figured that getting cut up and stuffed into trash bags in the woods might not be as bad as this cycle of depression/anger/acne/eating/rage/listlessness that comes with that special time of the month.

Well, Mr. I-don't-talk-much tells us to back on up into the garage and proceeds to hook up a chain hoist to the ceiling to remove the tire from the bed of the truck. Once we backed in we hop out and I think we must have been looking at him weird. To us, who had just women and manhandled the tire into the truck, his method was about as foreign as watching him wave a magic wand at it.

At this point Mr. Mostly Silent asks us how we got the tire into the truck. We told him. He gave us another one of his looks. I am also sure that he also judged us for the two crowbars that were still stuck in the tire. Whatever. Once the tire was up Scott pulled out and let the tire back down and disappeared back into the bowels of his garage.

The garage was, well, a garage, containing what I like to call the project vehicle,** which in this case was some sort of half taken apart skid steer dozer thing, a piles of tools and bolts and cans and of course a bunch of deer skulls.

So pretty much normal.

He returned with some sort of heater that looked like a jet engine. Which he turned on full bore and aimed at the tire. Then pulled the garage door shut behind us. Now, I have to say, at that point I figured we were pretty much doomed.

What followed next was the most efficient display of tire removal I have ever seen. He was always moving, one step flowing neatly into the next. I watched mesmerized as he popped the top of the tire over the rim like it ain't no thing. Scott leaned over to me and said. “Eight minutes.” He had done in what we could not accomplish in TWO DAYS in eight minutes.

At that point I didn't care if he killed me, it would have been an honor.

Also, at some point his son appeared in the process and lent him a hand. Both of them did not really talk. They worked well together, each one right there when the other needed something, ducking and working past each other like a well practiced team.

All in all it took about twenty minutes for Mr. I-have-all-the-right-tools-and-knowledge to install the tube, and reinflate the tire. Then we paid him his sixty bucks even though he said he only wanted fifty because holy crap man that was pretty fucking awesome and then we hopped back in the truck and booked it out of there before it got dark because our headlights only work when they feel like it.

Which is how we got the backhoe tire fixed, boys and girls.

And we didn't even get murdered.

* I wanted to clarify that I did not really think that anything bad was going to happen to us, it's just that this is never something I would do if I did not have a husband to go with me. Yeah, yeah I know, take back the night, whatever, but lets face it, shit happens. So you know. Life.

**Most men that have garages and also know enough to repair there own cars, has one of these. I cannot explain why. It just is.

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.

Strange Cats and the Weather

Remember a few posts back when I said the weather was watching? Plotting against me? I was right, because it's blizzard time now. There I was sitting in the living room playing my video game when the radio announced a murder death blizzard was coming.

5 to 10 inches in the higher elevations (that's us BTW)

Wind gust up to 55 mph.

Overnight lows of 9 degrees.

Travel may be difficult is not impossible due to white out conditions.

We decided to call out of our job that we were supposed to be doing and hunker down. So far we have not received even five inches, but it's impossible to tell for real because the wind keeps blowing the snow around and making little snow tornadoes. All in all it's not a very bad blizzard so far compared to some that we have had.

Except for one thing.

A strange cat showed up.

It was about two days ago. A gray well cared for tabby was strolling around checking things out. I tried calling to it, because I love cats and it was very handsome, but it just ran. It is either a neighbors cat that got loose, or a dump.* Things continued to be peaceful until my male cat Tom Tom Tiger III became aware of the situation. What followed was a series of West Side Story like cat violence.

I'm going assume that all the wailing they are doing is singing. Angry singing.

So periodically during the storm I would hear the angry male cat tango start up as Tommy Tomerson III would drive the stranger off into the woods across the road and then strut around like he owned the place.

Until the newcomer would return! Dastardly fiend!

Then the yowling would start all over again.

You know what I love about life in the country? It's the quiet.

* People who dump pets are just terrible. If you are too poor to afford your pet anymore you should just eat it. BAM! Two problems solved!**

** Don't actually do this. This would be bad. I hate pet dumpers and the stress and horror that pets go through. Dumpers is how I got my outdoor cats. And my dog. I can't take in anymore here people.