Lakey Sez ...

Another fine day in the city of Poughkeepsie, formerly known as "Uppuqui-ip-ising" by the Wappinger native Americans. We stupid white people somehow managed to warp that into its current permutation. Emphasis on the mutation.

Most of my day (Jodi will write later) was spent, yes, in the abyss. Quite literally IN the abyss, making friends with the dirt and assorted debris that the first builders tossed in there. We found a lot of vertebrae and a few ribs that no doubt belonged to the Dead Cat. (I feel as though we should name it, for some reason.) We also found a toothbrush, which was pretty creepy.
At any rate, we poked all around in the dirt with crowbars, because Jodi said she wanted to know what she was walking on. (I think this has a lot to do with the dream she had about falling into a sinkhole without her cell phone.) Mostly we raked through the rubble and pulled out rotted wood. We also freed the beams that formerly supported all of those layers of flooring, and tomorrow will haul the suckers up to the garage. We've made a very neat lumber pile in there, thank you very much.

It was a beautiful day.
Lakey

Jodi say, "hey."

Lakey was too kind to not mention my girly screams that I burst forth with on oh so many occasions today. Have you ever REALLY experienced completely virgin, uncompressed earth? I.e. have you ever had to walk upon it? Now, I don't mean a dirt pile. I'm talking about light soil that has existed in some encapsulated nether-world whilst wood bits and assorted refuse have decomposed, ceasing to exist and leaving a their stead air pockets, mini-sinkholes that hold grave peril to those brave explorers from the modern above-world whose aggressively defensive crow bar points and tentative toes inch forward in the cobwebby hell that is the abyss floor above the REAL abyss floor. THAT is what I am talking about. Perhaps my paranoia did stem from that dream, some weeks past, BUT THERE WERE REALLY SINKHOLES down there! And the LIVE all black spider that I almost grabbed with my (gloved) hand was really, really BIG and scary. There. Girl screams justified.

Nor did Lakey mention the various (hopefully not life-threatening) strains of molds that we unearthed upon bricks and beams in that oh-so-damp basement floor. Of the two major strains, one is pure white and very slimy, yet fluffy --the other bright yellow and much more delicate and deadly smelling. It burned my nostrils even through a full-face respirator. Yikes. I succeeded in removing all of the apparent offending wood and bricks, hoping for a less stinky day tomorrow.

I apologize for the lack of photos. We accumulated quite a collection of artifacts today, but are making you wait until tomorrow to see them.