Helping at Mom's

After we get home from church and change, we head south to Springfield, to help Mom pack. My sister Main and niece Erin are there, with Mom, surrounded by boxes. My specific job is to empty and take down the shed in the back yard. It's a refreshingly discrete and concrete task, as opposed to all the ambiguities involved in deciding what to pack and what to throw away, decisions that require Mom or Main. So I don't know how Dawn and Erin keep themselves busy without getting in trouble.

The shed was originally constructed with screws, but the screws are pretty much all rusted and just spin and don't come out when I apply the power screwdriver to them. So I end up mostly kicking apart the shed. I use a hammer a little bit, but even better is a short length of two-by that I use as a battering ram. I have some tin snips that I use a couple times too.

The shed is full of dimensional lumber that apparently was once a deck off the back of the house. Glenn saved all the wood, like he saved everything else. There's nails sticking out of the deck wood, and I try pounding them down, but give up after a while. There's just too many boards. There are old lawnmower parts in there too. And two tires from Mom's car three cars ago. And lots of plastic flower pots. Dog dishes. A big old folding sandwich-like sign. Fence parts. Just a lot of junk.

After I remove and separate all the junk and take down the shed I realize that I probably could have just dumped the shed over, over the stuff inside, without moving and separating everything, because the shed doesn't have a floor. But I didn't really know that until after I took stuff out. Then I knock apart the doghouse that none of Mom's dogs would ever use. Then I join the gang inside for pizza.