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with cat piss, I'm rarely lucky
Tuesday, September 1 2015
Today's firewood foray was to a place just short of the fruitful salvage spot a third of a mile away on the Gullies Trail. I cut single chunk out of a large long-fallen tree, a chunk that later weighed in at over 60 pounds all by itself. It was slightly more rotten than I prefer my salvaged wood to be, but it was also very dry and was comprised mostly of good solid wood (either Chestnut Oak or American Chestnut). I added several somewhat smaller pieces to this load to make a pack that I could not physically lift using my arms. I couldn't lift it with my body either, though I suspect this had something to do with the awkward way I'd lashed the wood to the pack. By removing a single piece (one that weighed no more than 15 pounds), I was able to get to my feet and walk the load home. It weighed an impressive 145.75 pounds. Had I not removed that one smallish piece, it would have weighed about 160 pounds, which would have been a record (but also, perhaps, physically impossible to carry that distance).
The other day I began working on the the basement floor resurfacing project in ernest, though not immediately on installing the vinyl faux-wood tiles. I started by addressing the nasty drywall on the south wall of the main guest bedroom (formerly a master bedroom). This drywall was glued directly to the concrete block foundation wall and tends to attract condensation throughout the humid months of summer. That moisture leads to mold, which can be bleached away but always returns. Additionally, the surface paper of the drywall has begun to delaminate and wrinkle, despite the fact that it is supposedly that moisture-resistant variety of drywall (the kind that comes wrapped in green paper). I'd removed similar such drywall in that bedroom's closet, eventually resurfacing the bare concrete block wall with a white stucco, a material that has made that wall into something of a mold desert. The plan is to do the same thing to the south wall. But the the other day when I got started on it, the drywall fought me all the way. There was more glue than I'd remembered when I'd been removing drywall in the closet. Part of the problem was that I'd been working on something of an empty stomach, which is never a good idea.
This evening, though, I was well fed, had a podcast to listen to, and was determined to get the rest of that drywall off. By the time I was done, the wall was naked, and nearly all the drywall fasteners were gone as well. There were still ugly patches of glues that will have to be scraped down, but I'll get to that next.
Meanwhile, Gretchen's library now stinks more than it ever has of cat urine. Clearly, the cats have been misuing that room since the last time I was down there. If I'm lucky, they've only been pissing into the part of the carpet that I'm ripping out for the new floor. But with cat piss, I'm rarely lucky. I fear that the cats have been going in there and pissing against all the books from the main guest bedroom that are now temporarily in piles on the floor. Not knowing what else to do, I closed the door to keep the little feline fuckers out.
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