Monday, June 4, 2007

I love my full-face respirator!!!!

Today was a two-beer day. Two dump runs. The Poughkeepsie dump has one (1) scale, which means: you pull up, wait for the unintelligible prompt to pull forward, then the next unintelligible prompt to "C'mon up," from George. (See belt buckle.) Then you back up to the dumpster, empty the load, and .... drive right back to the above mentioned scale. Repeat unintelligble prompts. Pull up to the big house and meet George in the flesh. He calls me kid, which I love. Kid Jodi. Kid. Kid pays George (well, the city of Poughkeepsie) and she and the truck leave.

(It bears mentioning here that said TRUCK belongs to M. Lake. Name of said truck is La Bomba. La Bomba has, courtesy of M. Lake's BOYFRIEND, an air horn that plays ... well, "La Bamba.")

After the dump, we broke out the reciprocating saws (a.k.a. saws-alls) and proceeded to rip through studs, nails, rotting pipes and not-so-rotting pipes to release the tub (bathtub, that is) from its rotting stage. Now, mind you - we're just two girls. It was a big heavy tub, probably from the 1920s.

We are so damned smart. Really. If it had been guys doing the job, they'd still be down there, standing around discussing it (at least five guys) and be trying to put the door back on its hinges. However, because we are girls, and smarter, it took us maybe half an hour. That's right. Not half the day, half an hour. Whee! It was an amazing performance of ingenuity, brilliance and a wee bit o' brawn.

Next - the toilet, enough said.

Then the floor, and shit howdy we ripped that sucker out in about five minutes. Back slapping, high fives ... oh SHIT - the ceiling! On what does one stand, exactly, to tear out the ceiling when the floor has ceased to exist. The subfloor is rotted, and there is a three (note from Mary - I think it's more like six) foot drop to rubbish and ultimately, dirt? We hope? Okay, so the ceiling. Oh the ceiling. Balancing on hastily arranged loose two-by-sixes, Mary started poking holes with a badass crowbar (favorite new tool for demo), and the ceiling came down quite easily. So did the rats' nest. All over Mary.

(Note from Jodi: Please remember Rat Room, Seattle. Ugh. Now Mary feels my pain, a little.)

Did you know that rats have an appetite for exhaust fan ductwork? Jodi shut off the power to the basement, and we started ripping wires out. When ready to snip the wires to the overhead light and fan, Jodi panicked and shut off power to the entire house (along with the cold water, but that's another story). Wires were safely clipped and the wild guess of what wire went where in the junction box was successful. Phew. Nothing exploded, flooded or caught fire - good day!

Then Mary - hereafter to be referred to as Lakey - went upstairs to take a shower. Remember the cold water thing? Ow! Meanwhile, Jodi was heaving hundreds of pounds of debris into the bed of La Bomba. Rose, the darling eighty year old neighbor from across the street, appeared in her bare feet, asking urgently, "Does the white one come back? It went that way - will it come back?" The White One, also known as Little Fucker, also known as Rumpus was nowhere to be seen. Uh oh. The damned dog came running -- upon the fourth or fifth "RUMPUS!!!" -- covered in green and yellow stains.... Hopefully none of which are poison ivy, which grows rampantly everywhere here, including Jodi and Alicia's yard, porch, etc. FYI: Jodi is shockingly, dreadfully ALLERGIC to poison ivy. (But I'm just SURE the rash I have currently is NOT poison ivy....) So, anyway, Rumpus is back and in trouble.

Beans, franks, brown bread for supper. Life is good.