Adventures in Domesticity

Yesterday was one of those days which I can look back at and say without any doubt, "dammit - we got something DONE!" I felt like Hannibal after a battle, surveying the destruction and savoring the victory. No, not the general, the colonel. He led the A-Team? No? Nothing? Okay, moving on.

Four months ago (Four?! Allah preserve us!), we moved out of our apartment and office and into a house two hours away from civilization. Then we waited for the cover of night and quietly skulked away, leaving a garage full of chaos, insanity, and boxes of old clothes. Well, yesterday, we opened that garage and brought order and rationality to what was once thought lost forever.

In the space of a two car garage, we had stacked and piled boxes and boxes of samples, inventory, shelves built and unbuilt, rolls of fabric, banker boxes full of bidness, and various tools, tables, and chairs. In short, we had a shitload of shit.

Add to that my father-in-law's collection of old boxes, papers, and mystery packages. He has a slight hoarding problem and yesterday was very hard on the poor guy. I pulled a lot of his stuff out of the garage with the other stuff destined for the dump, but he slowly brought it back inside piece by piece when he thought no one was looking. Apparently, although he agreed to throw it away, he never intended to follow through on that agreement. Silly me, I figured broken cardboard boxes were useless and could be thrown out.

After four hours we got everything squared away and I felt a physical sense of relief. Like I could breathe suddenly. It made it all worth it. And by it I mean scrubbing the piles of rat poop and rat-urine soaked nesting out of the corners. We also ran into a two foot long California King Snake sleeping in a box of extension cords (which made me wonder if it was looking for a snake sex doll...I kept that thought to myself though). Everybody flipped out, but I surprised myself by picking up the box, dumping it on the grass, and then driving the snake away by beating on the ground next to it with a four iron. The snake was actually quite beautiful. Kings are vicious (they eat other snakes, which is how they got their name), but they're not poisonous. I didn't get a picture, but here's a reference:




We're supposed to hit the living room today. I wonder what will jump out at us in there?