Uff

Such a day! The one you later say had the best May skies and the kindest May temperatures. The one that lets you take all your work outside (if you are in a situation where your work can be done outside). The one that, when you bike, has you pass others enjoying the kindness of spring.





I biked for coffee and passed even more beauty and bounty and loveliness.










And then, evening set in. The time for Ed and I to retrieve the Janesville Ramada Inn insulation boards (the Ramada Inn came down to make room for a Menards; the insulation went up on Craig's list). Ed has purchased 130 boards in an effort to make the Writer’s Shed very warm.

You may ask – how big are these boards?
Ed would answer: everything in American construction is 4 by 8.

So, if you stack 130 boards, say on a trailer, say in 2 stacks, how tall would the stacks be? Ohhhhh, maybe 8 feet tall (each). (For the curious reader.)

We drive past beauty.






We enter hell. The seller lives on property that has the skeletons of everyone’s past life. Piles, everywhere. Old machines, old containers, old everything, littered, stacked, cast to the side.





The seller is not home yet and so we wonder around the place.
Ed comments – it's depressing.
For real! I mean, this place is dehumanizing. It is a terror of junk collection gone amuck. And the cats. Many cats. Sickly cats. Lethargic, sickly cats.

We wait close to an hour and suddenly the seller is back. As is his teenage daughter who saunters into the (cluttered) house as if the place was normal.

The seller helps with the loading of the insulation, but Ed rejects many of the boards. After an hour of this, I am hitting a low point. And it’s getting dark. And there is rain noise in the distance. We take 59 boards today and will come back for the rest in a day or two (without me – please, without me!).

Ed navigates his buddy’s pick up and twenty foot trailer (poorly) and I am sure now that I am staring death in its face. Or maybe I'm just tired and hungry and wishing I were in a nice clean place where I can soak the fiberglass out of my hands (no, the boards have none; who knows where those creepy glass bits came from).

Miraculously, we get backs safely to Ed’s farm where we unload the damn lot of them (I am very much in a cursing mode by now) and head back to the city where thank God, Dane Pub and Brewery still serves dinner at 10.