My Cat is Sick and the Car is Dead.

Today, my friends, my most beloved readers, was a terrible, horrible, awful, no good, super fucked up day. So hold on to your butts, because this is going to suck on a level that may not even by scientifically possible. (See Holly's Law of Negativity.)

First off I awoke with the intention of working more on that hay storage shed that I needed only to discover that it was pouring down rain. Which I probably would have known in advance, except my Internet has been cutting in and out because ha ha why not? So anyway I get up and feed all the ungrateful hungry mouths, and then I am petting my cat Emoticon and she looks up and me and then I get one of those chills where it feels like giant spiders are crawling all up and down your spine cause not one but both of her eyes are fucked the shit up.

To explain further, she had always had problems with her right eye being cloudy, but now the whatever the fuck it was had spread to both eyes. So I grabbed the phone and called the vet and told them I was freaked out.

They gave me an appointment at 2:30.

So when I walk back inside to tell Scott, I find him in the middle of freaking out because last night he discovered that the drivers side front tire hub was hot and that probably meant that the wheel bearing was about to blow and KILL US ALL. Which meant that we had to pull the tire off and look at it.

In the rain.

When we had to be at the vets in four hours.

Luckily I had purchased one of those gazebo tent things at a discount store, with the intention of using it to shade me when I did jobs in direct sun because I am part vampire somehow. Except now we were huddled under it while rain dripped off the side onto our legs and butts. So we pulled the tire off, found out the caliper was super tight, beat it off with a sledge hammer, discussed the money this was going to cost, and then tried to remove the piece holding on the wheel bearing thingamajig. Which of course didn't come off. So we tried everything. Then we found that it was being held in place with some sort of clip thing inside of it. So we got some hammers and some pointy things and tried to remove it. Of course nothing seemed to be quite right, so we crammed a screw driver in there and proceed to break the tip off INSIDE the fucking thing.

Then we went inside to discover that it was a Dealer Only Serviceable Part.

Which was pretty much never going to happen. Which meant that we were going to have to go look for another car. In the truck, with the cat, in the rain. You know, the truck where the headlights may or may not work? The truck that we had to unload because it was filled with all the lumber for my hay storage shed?

That truck.

So we unloaded the truck, in the rain and take the cat on down to the vet. So we get to the vets and I bring Emoticon on in and then the vet has a look at her and then puts dye in her eyeballs so she looks like a motherfucking were-cat and then tells me that it looks like she has a somethingorother and if we don't stop the whateverhejustsaid that they could rupture and then in those cases they usually remove the eye.

Cue that record scratching noise.

I need to explain something here. I need to explain that eyeball stuff freaks me out. Like a lot. Like remember that scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise had to chase his own eyes down the hallway? I can't watch that. I don't want to ever think about that ever. I almost died when my friend talked about his laser eye surgery. I feel like barfing right now. It. Freaks. Me. The. Fuck. Out.

So when I came back to planet earth I managed to say calmly that I wasn't very skilled at giving eye drops. Mr. Vet Man said he would take some blood and be back in a minute.

It was the longest minute ever.

I held Emoticon and I kept telling her everything was gonna be okay. I don't think she bought it though because I am fairly sure that I was saying it in the way most people would if they could see the nuclear bomb going off on the horizon.

So the vet came back in and the first words out of his mouth were “you are not going to like this.” Now let me tell you something straight up, when vets say that, they mean it. Because he then proceeded to tell me that I was going to have to give Emoticon three separate eye drops. Two every morning and evening and then one more every six hours.

EVERY. SIX. HOURS.

Ha ha ha every six hours. Haaaa haaaa haaaaaa. Every six hours. Ha haa haaaa haaaaahhh. Six hours. Hah hah. Which means that Emoticon was going to be living in Jack's dog crate for the next week. Which meant that I am going to get a crash course in staring into my cats diseased eyeballs and filling them with various liquids.

Ohsweetjesusgodtakemenow.

Ahem. Anyway. If this isn't love I don't know what is.

So after that we drove around to various used car lots where each one was shadier then the last before giving up and going home where I made a nest for Emoticon in the dog crate. Then of course I had to do home things like getting the eggs and resetting mouse traps, and then we planted tomatoes and raspberry's and weeded the garden a little and at some point we had dinner and I did the dishes and locked up the chickens and then we wrestled all three nightly medications into her eyeballs while she purred and it broke my heart because why does she have to love me so much when I am doing unpleasant things to her?

Sometimes, it's the little things that will break your heart.

Or your car

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.