Iron Run and Bonus Run

Recently we went on (yet) another iron run; this time with some stuff pulled from the attic of the garage, which we've barely gotten to otherwise, probably because though it's quite full (it really does have goat paths) it's contained and hidden and sort of isn't bothering anyone, unlike the stuff in the yard, which is a definite demoralizing eyesore. And part of what is in there is the old cottage bedroom set that I moved in there when I converted one of the attic bedrooms into my studio room; but that's fine—that's what attics are for, after all. But behind that is of course plenty of hoard.

The weird thing about my father's hoarding is that oftentimes when we peel away the layers we'll find big empty spaces. That sounds kind of contrary to what usually goes on with hoarding, where every cubic inch is filled with stuff. But I think in my father's case, what he'd do is pile something big and flat against things, maybe 'temporarily', then pile more stuff up against that, leaving empty spaces behind the big flat thing, since it has to lean a bit. He did this especially in the upstairs garage, which has some vertical joists; also there isn't really a floor in the eaves, since he never got around to that. So only a few things got put up in eaves proper, since they were difficult to get to; everything else was put in the middle and the eaves are this (mostly) big empty space. It is odd, I know, that a hoarder wouldn't just fill it all up; but hoarders aren't exactly organized, or logical.

So Tara was up in there and pulled some stuff out, including some random pipes that were so long we weren't sure how they got in there in the first place (they went out through the window, at any rate) and this old box spring, which unlike modern box springs which are all box and no springs was all springs and no box. You can see it in the trailer, here:

I believe Tara cut the thing in half with her trusty Sawzall. I guess it didn't fit in the trailer otherwise. That, or she needed to work some anger out, who knows.

Speaking of the garage attic, one day not too long ago I noticed that Smudge the feral mommy-cat hadn't showed up at the chow bowl for a couple of days. That wouldn't be that unusual for say Spot, who has been known to wander off for months at a time, but Smudge (who is the mother of Danny, Ratty, and Momo) is the most gregarious of the three, such that I have actually been able to pet her while she's eating (she also purrs like a freight train, which quality she has passed down to her three sons). So I was a little worried.

After a couple of days of not seeing her I was definitely getting a bit anxious, so I walked around the yard calling her—our street, though rural, also has fairly heavy traffic, as it's the only road accessing an island and so every car that goes up the street also comes down the street eventually, and I've buried plenty of stray cats who've been hit. Also we have coyotes. But poking around I saw no sign of her.

Then I thought of the garage. Sometimes when Tara comes by she'll open the door and leave it open; also my mother goes in there once in a while. And Smudge is, like I said, gregarious and unafraid (for a feral cat). She is also, of course, a cat, and we've all heard about their curiosity.

So I poked my head in the garage and called her. Not that they come when called, being feral, but if she was in there I wanted her to know I was there. And not that I was expecting her to come to me, period; in fact I was pretty sure if I was standing in the door she'd go hide. But I stood there and listened, anyway.

And there it was, a little meow, coming from what sounded like right above me. So I went upstairs.

Just in time to see a fluffy tail dart across the goat path and hide in a pile of furniture. Okay.

So I went to get some food to try to lure her out; but first I figured I'd feed her mother and sister, who were right there in the breezeway. And as I noisily poured the chow into their dish down the stairs came Smudge, who meowed delightedly at her family, then dove face first into the chow. I guess she was pretty hungry.

Anyway, mystery solved, with a nice happy ending. Silly cat.

So, the other half of this recent iron run was mostly a tangle of wires from somewhere in the shop, I think, though who knows; it could have come from the garage attic, as there were car parts there too. It was a decent pile though, see:

So all it all it was our usual iron run, the fifty-eighth of its kind, which, yikes. Except now we (well, I) run into a problem—somewhere along the line the receipts got lost. They usually end up in the glove compartment of the bus for the trip home, and then I grab them so that I can update the total here; but they've gone missing. And given how many of these things we've done, and how they honestly are all sort of blurring together, I don't really have a clear idea what I did with it. I could have put it in my pocket, but if I did I never took it out and checking my pockets I haven't found it (not even in a crumpled-up wad that's been through the wash). So I don't know. It was a pretty average run on the smallish side, so I'm going to guess and call it five hundred pounds of iron.

However: in looking for the recent receipts on a whim I looked in Larry the Volvo Station Waggon's glove compartment, just in case well I don't know in case what as I can't see I would have been in that car immediately following an iron run, but hey I looked. And I did find some receipts--from 2009. That's before the blog was started, but what went that day five years ago certainly counts towards the total, so I'll add it in here too. I also know that I haven't added it in the past as all those receipts are in here in the desk drawer. So, waaaaaay back on the sixth of July, 2009, we got rid of 980 pounds of iron, and a decent amount of precious stuff, too, including (if I'm reading the thing correctly) 126 pounds of sheet aluminum. Don't ask me exactly what that was, because there is no way I will remember. There were also apparently more than 200 pounds of electric motors that went that day, so that's good. Maybe someday when this is all cleaned up I'll add up just how much of each 'precious' metal went. I know we've gotten rid of plenty of other electric motors, for example. Did we once have a quarter of a ton of the things?

So then, adding all of that up, we are at our (accounted for) fifty-ninth trip to the scrapyard, and we've gotten rid of 45,480 pounds, or 22.74 tons of scrap iron.

Yep. And there's still more.

And Another

Last Thursday it was time, again, for an iron run; this time Tara took down these big iron shelf brackets from their spot in the garage, which spot incidentally was covering some windows, because who needs those things. Ah, hoarder logic at its finest. They had been piled up with boards, mostly old junky scraps with nails in them, bits of two by four, that sort of thing. Nothing organized, nothing really useful. I'll bet you're real surprised at that. I sure was.

So with the brackets (which weighed like seventy pounds each) and some assorted other stuff Tara dug out of the usual somewhere, off we went on another iron run. Here's the trailer:

(Picture by Tara.)

There was some stuff in the Bus, too, but Tara didn't get a picture of that. I can't even remember what it was. It all blurs together after a while, honestly.

Can't say there's much really to report, as we made it there and back again without incident, which is always nice and not something I, personally, take for granted given the Bus; but it does add to our totals.

So, last Thursday's iron run makes it the fifty-fifth trip and brings the total up to 44,920 pounds of iron removed since we've been keeping track. That's 22.46 tons, in case you were wondering.

I'm long since past tired of all this.

A Quickie

So while I was in the tub today (because we all know that is how phones work) Tara calls. My mother, bless her heart, actually got the message correct, so when I could I called her back; she wanted to do an iron run today, having poked around in the garage and dug out some stuff, mostly more starters. Well, I had to run to the bank to straighten something out, and then I had to take the cat to the vet (the cat being Rory, who has an infected ear but nothing major), so I didn't think there was going to be time.

But the bank turned out not taking that long, and so when she came by we decided to try after all.

There were a couple old Volkswagen transmissions in this load, as well as a pile of starters and an old aluminum wheel which fetched a bit more than I would have thought; and off we hied, again, and I mean again again again, to the scrapyard. Here's the trailer with the transmissions:

And the starters/alternators in the Bus:

It was a bit of a squeeze, time-wise, but we made it. Tara even went around back to drop off the #1 iron whilst I dealt with the starters at the precious metal building/warehouse/shed. So I regret to say I don't know if today was a smelly day back there in that part of the scrap yard. I really hope it wasn't.

Looking around the garage now I can see that Tara pulled some things out, but it doesn't really look like much has gone. Though the garage had been gotten up to cleaner than it had been, i.e. its former hoarded state, still there's a lot of stuff tucked under and on top of things, stuff that we didn't know what to do with at the time, probably. But now we know, or know a bit better.

So, the totals: the iron part came to 540 pounds; there was a good 224 pounds of automobile starters and another 60 of alternators, with another thirty or so of aluminum and irony aluminum, including that wheel. So that brings our total to 42,480 pounds of iron removed that we've got records for, or 21.24 tons. And it was our fifty-second trip to that place. And like I said, I couldn't really tell that much had been taken out of the garage. So we'll be going back, won't we.

Yup.

Goal

Okay, so: goal time.

The yard is actually pretty close to being completely clean now. That isn't to say that the outbuildings aren't still pretty heavily hoarded, so we'll be working on those for a while longer yet, but the yard itself is I think within reach of being totally cleaned up by the time winter sets in.

So what's left?

As far as cars go, there is a whole Bug over by the shop, next to a half Bug that Tara has already started demolishing. There is also a Bug in the garage which Tara intends to take to her place but has sort of dropped the ball on. There is a silver Saab that Tara wants to fix up that could maybe be switched out for the Bug in the garage, though really that ought to just go to her place too. Then there are a couple of half-pieces of cars, as well as that white Citroën that is half-in and half-out of the downstairs garage. The rest of the cars still on the property are indoors, either in the shop or in the downstairs garage, like a Karmann-Ghia that lives in the shop that could be sold (once we can get to it) and a couple of MGs (I think) in the downstairs garage, one of which a certain mommy-cat had her kittens in.

And no, this is not about how much we can stuff indoors and hide away; the goal is still to get those spaces clean, too, so that's not going to happen.

As far as pure junk goes, there are a couple of piles still of miscellaneous things outside. Mostly they are brittle pointy plastic things that can't be recycled and are too bulky to throw in regular trash bags and so present a bit of a problem. Tara mentioned maybe renting a dumpster, so that might work, and maybe they'll even take the concrete blocks, which would be really nice, because those are a real pain in the ass to get rid of around here as nobody wants them.

Then there are the miscellaneous bits of wood, like more fence posts and some broken-down bits of hideous picket fence that can go (or get burned); there are a couple of downed trees, too, but that's more general non-hoard tidying that ought to happen, you know, the type of 'mess' normal people have to deal with.

And finally then we'd finish some things off, like putting some garage doors on the downstairs garage and finishing off the back of the shop which just needs a trimboard or two and a coat of the new paint color. The shed, too, can get painted, though I'm not going to worry about doors on that right now; let's just get the stuff inside and tidy for now.

I think this is all quite doable. I was surprised, in fact, walking around today, by just how close we already are to having the yard entirely clean. A few years ago I would never have imagined it. And again, that's not what's inside the buildings; that will still need to be sorted and tossed. But having the yard clean would be a real accomplishment.

You're not my father! That's impossible!

Growing up in the 80's recession, we had lots of hand-me-down toys,  toys from the dump, but rarely ever any current must-have toys such as Star Wars action figures. 

I'm sure we would have loved Star Wars figures,  with us being pretty much that perfect age (I was 6 when the first movie came out).     I don't think we were disallowed toys like this on matter of principle but I guess collecting Star Wars figures could get expensive, as I seem to recall them being like $3 each back when they were new.   (I do recall having a C3PO but that was it)

Of course, some years later I guess our hoarder dad saw these trays at the dump and thought they made ideal screw-sorting out trays!  Add to that the insult that 70's/80's Star Wars figures are much sought after these days, so stumbling across these empty cubbies with their tantalizing labels of what's not inside of them.. well it's like finding the empty box to something really cool missing from your childhood and inside is a bunch of dirt and rust, not that toy you wished was inside.

Makes we want to clean out these trays and spend $800 on ebay finding all the guys that go in these trays, just to recapture that lost bit of denied childhood.

"Obi-wan told me enough..  He told me you killed my father!

No.. I am your father!

NoooOOOoooOOOO! "

Yikes.. Imagine if Vader was a hoarder on top of being Dark Lord of the Sith.

-Tara

Satellite Photo

Here's a satellite map of part of the yard, so you all can get a look. I'd date it to May 19-25 2010. I know it's 2010 because the brown and yellow bus is still there (the first car our Rusty took away, and one of the first things I reported here on Tetanus Burger); I can date it to that week because of the various things blooming/leafing out.

Which means that this photo dates from just before we started this blog.



There are quite a few cars there that have since left the property. The two Saabs behind the garage, for example. The bus, of course, has also gone, as has all the junk a little left and below the center; and that little enclosed area to the right of the shed is now empty, though one of the cars is still here, having been moved from where it was but not out yet.

Interesting, isn't it?

Triumphant

I wasn't honestly sure I'd ever see this day. It was just too impossible, too far-fetched, too dreamlike. But remember: with Rusty, all things are possible.

For today was the day the Triumph TR3A, that poor sorry beat-up dry-rotted bondoed mess of a British car that has been hanging out in the upstairs garage since Time Immemorial (or at least since the late 80s), went away. And not only did it go away, someone actually gave us a pile of cash to take it away. That's right; the guy paid us money for it and brought his own trailer. (Well, his buddy's trailer).

Do you believe this? Here it is, out in the sunshine, something it hasn't seen in oh thirty years:



Ostensibly the guy is going to fix it up. Though frankly I've heard that one before. Still, it's no longer my problem, now is it? And for that I say REJOICE.

And here it is, up on the trailer, just prior to going away:



And now for the best part—feast your eyes on that big hunk of empty space. I don't think I have ever seen the garage look like that.



So that puts us at eleven rusty cars out of here, with fifteen left to go. Two more and we'll have gotten half of them out of here. Well, half of them counting from when I started this blog, anyway. If we start from the seventy-eight junk cars that were here when the yard was at its very worst in the mid 90s? That gives us sixty-three down, with fifteen to go. Which, doing the math out of curiosity, means we have gotten rid of 80.8% of the cars here since the mid 90s, and only have 19.2% of them left. That's pretty impressive, even if it's taken more than ten years now. So go us!

ETA: Swapped out the trailer picture because Tara sent me a better one. So if it looks different it's not you.

ETAA:Whoops, did the math wrong on that; I've fixed it above. I subtracted the eleven when it should have been the fifteen left.

Of Cats and Cars

Holy Mother of the Cats—where on Earth do I start with the day known as Today?

I woke up early, which for me means the actual morning, because I was so worried about the cats. There are a couple batches of kittens out there, you see. Of course.

Now before anyone goes all OMGeleventy!!1! on me, let me just say that I've already contacted the local trap-neuter-release people. Because there are going to be some hysterectomies around here dammit.

You may be familiar with Splotch's batch of kittens, the ones charmingly named after various cars, as they were born in the back seat of an MG Midget; I've posted a picture of all four of them a few posts down. But of course Smudge, her sister, also had a batch of four.

She had them, in her infinite wisdom, on top of a pile of wood in the downstairs garage three weeks ago. She moved them shortly after to some place we couldn't find them; but the other day she'd moved them again, back into the downstairs garage. Into the trunk of a Citroën DS, to be precise, which she accessed through where the back seat should have been.

Now though we are cleaning up the yard and getting rid of old rusty cars and in general making decent progress, still, there are places we haven't got to, which includes the downstairs garage. And so this Citroën was of course full to the brim with hunks of metal and rust and sharp edges. And the kittens were there, in the back, on top of it all.

So we (well Tara, mostly) cleaned it all out the day before yesterday, even though she got soaked in a downpour moving pieces of car out and away into the back yard; and we managed to make a nice cozy place inside that car, with no sharp edges, no places they could fall into or out of, and with a nice cardboard box lined with a towel.

Two of the kittens however were not in good shape. One was just tiny, not even really half the size of the others; and the second had some kind of open wound on its neck.

And so I was worried about them, of course. Last night when I last checked the first tiny one was so weak and lethargic I couldn't imagine it living through the night.

It didn't. I buried it this morning, over in the area we have buried all our beloved cats, the ones we've known for years. The poor little thing didn't even get a name, but I put it over there with the others.

Now I do understand that something like one in four kittens just doesn't make it, and that that is how Nature does things. So I was sad, but not surprised.

The second one though had what looked like two abscesses on its neck. The were large swollen areas about the size of marbles. Now I am not a vet, and though I hear it's not that tricky really to lance a boil I'm just too squeamish. And I couldn't imagine it getting better on its own, and so I figured the little thing would eventually catch a raging fever and slowly die.

But here's the other thing. In my state rabies is not uncommon. And so, by state law, if an animal comes into the vet with a 'wound of unknown origin' it is supposed to either be quarantined for a whole six months, or put down. I didn't for a minute think it was actually an animal bite, as it's too young to have been in a fight, and it's been with its mother all this time and so protected; I can, however, imagine that it fell out of whatever cockamamie nest Smudge thought adequate and cut itself on some sharp bit of something. But bringing it to the vet looked like it might also be a death sentence. How would I quarantine it for six months?

Still, when the choice came down to almost certainly letting it die slowly and miserably if untreated, or possibly being put down quickly and painlessly, I called the vet. They made an appointment for 4pm. I know. It's a feral kitten. But I couldn't abide letting it suffer.

Then Tara came over. You see we were scheduled to do an iron run today, a load of light stuff in the bus. But since we were getting a decently early start, we figured we'd have plenty of time to get back for the appointment.

So we loaded up the bus with old doors and hoods, most of which came from behind the shed, where Tara wants to be able to mow. It's almost there now, but not quite yet. The pictures:

The usual side view, filled up with junk:



And the back:



So, despite all the drama with the kittens, otherwise it was all going along just fine.

We got about halfway to the scrapyard when the gas pedal went all the way to the floor and stayed there. Now luckily it wasn't accelerating or anything; but something had definitely come undone. We coasted to a stop in a parking lot full of trucks, one of which incidentally was a car-carrier full of old rusty things. Could we hook a ride, I wondered?

Now Tara I swear is a miracle worker. She got right down in the dirt under the front of the bus (the gas pedal is after all right there) and found that the throttle cable had come undone. And luckily, luckily there had been a rusty plate attached to the bottom of the bus that had caught the nut and bolt which had held the throttle cable in. So Tara simply bolted the thing back in, and in less than five minutes we were on our way again. Go Tara!

When we got to the scrapyard we drove around back to the light metals pile. The light blond guy who looks like Mark Twain was up sitting in The Claw, tidying up the place and consolidating the piles. At one point he gathered a fistful of what looked like old crumpled chain-link fence, and using it almost like a dustrag, swept the pile together, making sure to get all the little finicky bits. It was a sight, let me tell you.

I was surprised that The Claw, given its size and power, was so well-suited to such delicate work; however it wasn't long before it was back to its natural state, brute force. Here, apparently, is The Claw's method of engine removal:













I stood well back for that, let me tell you.

Even though it was a smallish load today, 'only' 820 pounds, we managed to pass a major milestone in our total. Because today on our thirty-fifth trip we passed fifteen tons. To be exact, we're now up to 30,640 pounds of scrap iron (not including cars), or 15.32 tons of iron removed from the property since we've been keeping track. And there's more set aside already, including a cache of my favorite, buckets of rusty bolts that we uncovered behind a wood pile today.

And we got back in plenty of time, even with the side trip to the fast food joint, and with Tara swinging by the repair shop to pick up her sewing machine.

Except.

When we got home, Smudge of course in her quite finite wisdom had moved her kittens. I don't know if she was reacting to the nice space we made her (they never like that), or if it was because we'd had to handle them some, or if Venus had moved into Scorpio, who knows. Well, there was still one left in the box, but of course it was not the one who needed to go to the vet. Of course not.

We looked everywhere. In the downstairs garage behind the Citroën, in the corner in the Austin-Healey, up in the battery compartment of both that and the MG in front of it, up on the woodpiles under the windows where Smudge had given birth to the things in the first place; nothing.

Then we looked in the shed, where Aleister and the other kittens have been hanging out. Also nothing. We looked and looked and found no sign of them, save for the yellow kitten who was left.

Four o'clock came around. I called the vet, and told them I couldn't come in, since I couldn't find the kitten. I started to worry again.

Tara mowed the lawn a little, and I took Aleister inside where he was safe (the others are little enough that they hide). That didn't last long though as the mower ran out of gas pretty quick.

Then, for some reason, Tara got the idea to look over by the shop.

You have to understand. The shop is on the north edge of the property. It's rather a ways from the downstairs garage, or the shed. Not that far for a human, no, but for a cat, dragging a kitten?

But underneath one of the old bugs there it was, a kitten, the yellow and white one. We listened for mews. After a few minutes we determined that yes, the other one was there. I called the vet back. They could still take us. So Tara fished the poor thing out and we bundled it into the cat carrier and all three (myself, Tara, and my mom, plus I guess the kitten makes four) went down to the vet. And he examined it.

Well. The good news was that it wasn't actually a 'wound of unknown origin.' So the state didn't need to get involved after all, and there was no choice between a lengthy quarantine and putting it down.

But now this is where it gets pretty icky. Because what it was was this:

There are these things called cuterebra. Basically they are a type of botfly larvae that find their way under the skin of some animals (usually they go in through the nose or mouth), mostly rabbits and squirrels, but sometimes also cats. Each 'boil' contained a, well, maggot, basically. You can Google it yourself (I did) if you have the stomach, but I'll warn you there will probably be pictures.

The vet removed them, over in the back room where we couldn't see it, bless him. He asked if I wanted to see the larvae and I said HELL NO, thanks.

So. This is where we are. This kitten is three weeks old yesterday, born to a feral mother. A feral mother who isn't exactly going to be winning any Mother of the Year awards. Why if there were such a thing as KPS (Kitten Protective Services) you bet your ass I'd be reporting her.

And given her natural stupidity I'm pretty sure that if we just put the kitten back with its siblings Smudge would just move them again. I have no idea where exactly she'll move them to, but I'd bet good money it will be some place completely inaccessible, down in the dirt and the rust. And that little kitten we brought to the vet has basically an open wound, one that needs to stay nice and clean, and which will probably heal fairly slowly, as it's rather deep. The vet even gave us antibiotics, though the amount I have to give it is so small there isn't even a line on the syringe.

This kitten mind you is otherwise quite healthy; it mews plenty and is very squirmy and strong, and it's nice and fat and well-fed. And we'd already gone through all the trouble of getting it treated, and so it seems counter-productive at best to just throw it back out in the wild to take its chances.

So I'm bottle-feeding it for the time being. At three weeks old it doesn't require the round-the-clock feedings (seriously, like every two hours) that newborns do; it should be able to start eating some solid food, or even drink the formula from a bowl, in a few days or a week. Still it's a bit of work.

So I guess we have a new cat, in addition to Aleister (that makes four total, which is still totally doable here). Because from what I hear, bottle-fed kittens turn into very lovey and devoted housecats (after all the person feeding them is basically their mother).

What we don't have though, is a name for the little thing. We're pretty sure it's female (it's pretty small still and hard to tell). Tara of course suggested Maggie, which, though I like the sound of Maggie the Moggie, still, ewwwww. The intake form just listed her as 'kitten', which on the typed-up label for the antibiotics ended up as Kitty Mymom'slastname, so perhaps Catherine would work too. Any suggestions?

What a day. I hope the rest of it is peaceful.

The Light Stuff

Well, Tara finally stepped off all those planes (one of them went directly over the house on its way to landing at the airport several dozen miles away; she was like, Hey that's my house down there! Get me a parachute, quick!) and it's back to the old nose to the grindstone here at the Best Little Hoardhouse in Massachusetts. So today we packed up the bus once again with a load of 'light' stuff and a side of precious metals, then hauled ourselves off to the scrapyard. Witness:



And the side view:



The guy in the smelter (I'm not sure if he was the guy who had missed us last time; apparently I didn't miss him nearly as much) got talking to Tara about Volkswagen bits and shared a story about a friend of his whose bus was in a fire. In the front of it, which is very unusual, as the back is where the engine is, and, seriously, one of the first things bus enthusiasts will tell you if you are foolish enough to consider buying/restoring/driving one of the damned things is that you should always carry a fire extinguisher. Because apparently the engines like to set themselves on fire. And, by the way, oh no Tara knows nothing whatsoever about that, and, no, a few years ago when she was futzing around with the brown bus (since 'dearly' departed) she did not suddenly come tearing in the house in a panic screaming something about OMG did we have a fire extinguisher?

Anyway, this guy's friend apparently pissed someone off who then poured gasoline on the front of the friend's newly restored (of course) bus and then threw a match at it. So it may need a dashboard, seats, &c, all of which we probably do have. Then again, he may not actually have pissed someone off. I mean it's not much of a stretch for me to believe that there are people out there who just hate the things and want to see them all crushed into little cubes, hacked up with chainsaws, rolled off cliffs, burnt on pyres, wiped off the face of the planet forever and ever and ever oh my god yes. Why that's not much of a stretch at all, I'd say.

At any rate.

So we got it all weighed, and then went around to the back, dodging heavy equipment that was being driven around way too fast if you ask me damned kids these days till we got to the pile of 'light' iron. The same guy who's been there a bunch of times before was there, and asked (again) if it was all from the same yard. Yes, we told him (again). We don't know his name, but we've decided he looks like Mark Twain, with the very light blond hair and mustache. Well, not that Mark Twain had a mullet, per se. Still, it'd be a great Hallowe'en costume for the guy and would totally work.

All told, we made a decent amount of dough today, as the precious category this time included one and a half catalytic converters. (Yes, one and a half, as one was missing a 'biscuit' or something.) The 'light' iron load was actually more than we thought it would be, coming to 560 pounds, which puts our total for scrap iron removed from the property (since we've been keeping track, remember; before we were hauling it to the scrap yard we were just taking load after load straight to the dump) to 28,560 pounds, or 14.28 tons, and our thirty-third trip there.

The crazy thing about this load was that Tara pulled quite a bit of the stuff out of nowhere; seriously, like bits and pieces that were hanging between the rafters of the downstairs garage. Yes, the ceiling. If there's one thing hoarders can put their clever clever minds to it's figuring out how to store stuff. So it doesn't look like much has changed at all. So yeah, there's still more.

Oh and for those of you who are interested in a cat update, Splotch the Crazy One has since taken her kittens somewhere else. I don't know where, but I trust they are all right. I've been playing with and socializing the other little guy, and he's as normal a house-kitten as can be, and not afraid of me at all. We've decided we will properly adopt him (the other two cats are both over ten years old, and I like to overlap cats, so it's actually getting about time I had a new one). I'm going to take the introductions very slowly and carefully, as I'm not too sure about how Sir Isaac Mewton will react. He can get a little odd about things.

So here's the little guy:



He's got a name, by the way: Aleister Meowley. I can already tell we'll be calling him The Beast around here.

Purring Like A Kitten

I know, I know, you're not supposed to feed stray cats.

But when three very tiny kittens showed up on my doorstep the first week of December, what was I supposed to do? They were born out of season at the beginning of a New England winter. I just didn't see them surviving. So I fed them.

And yes, I know that cat populations tend to increase exponentially, and what that means down the road. Still, I didn't see any options. Well, any moral options.

Two of the three are still here; one of them disappeared around the end of March, and I assume it was killed. The two that are left have been given the working titles of 'Smudge' and 'Splotch' because of their facial markings. Splotch, especially, has this funny face with what looks like a drip of India ink right down her nose.

See?



They aren't exactly tame, Smudge and Splotch, but they do sleep on the doorstep, just by the glass door, where I can see them at night. Splotch will even purr when I talk to her, though she runs away when I approach her outside.

In late March their mother of course had another litter; this time, though, either she only had one, or only one survived. This little guy (or girl; I can't tell yet) is probably just coming up on five weeks old right now, and is the fattest roundest roly-poliest chubbiest thing you will ever see. He is sublimely, ridiculously, outlandishly cute. I mean, I know, that's what kittens do for a living, is be so adorable that you simply cannot resist feeding them. Still, Holy Mother of the Gods, look at this:



So, you're asking, just what-all has this to do with hoarding? Well, because it always comes back to those rusty hunks of rusty rust, the junk cars of this place.

Now Splotch is a little odd. She's not even full grown, yet she's of a distinctly round shape. I figured she was just getting too much chow, and started to cut back (they will all eventually have to revert to catching the mouses all on their own anyhow, or, at least, that is The Plan). My mother, however, wondered if she might be pregnant herself. I have been watching her, with this in mind, but she didn't seem to be getting any bigger.

Last night around midnight when I put some food out in the downstairs breezeway the little grey and white chubby kitten came running up to me. He does this, as he quite likes the chow; and he lets me pat him while he stands there with all four feet in the bowl. He will, in fact, even purr as I pat him. But after he'd eaten a bit he wandered back into the downstairs garage and started mewing. It was strange. What? I asked him, What's wrong? But he kept mewing.

Thing was his mews sounded funny. They sounded, well, double. Like two kittens were mewing at the same time.

So I walked over to where he was. Sure enough, the extra mews were coming from the car, the yellowish MG Midget, one of my dad's junk hoarded cars.

There in the back, where there really isn't a back seat, in an area still filled with rusty junk, were three newborn kittens, fallen down behind the driver's-side seat. I could just about see them.

Splotch not only was pregnant, she'd gone and had her kittens. In the back of a junk car. Of course!

I folded the driver's seat forward a little and fished them out. If I hadn't been able to pull the seat forward I don't know that I would have been able to get to them; as it was there wasn't room for a mother cat to get herself in there to rescue them. They were wet-looking, very squirmy, and still had their umbilical cords. As far as I could tell there were three, and once I put them in a box lined with a blanket they quieted right down.

I couldn't see Splotch anywhere, but I could hear someone growling. So I put the box in the front seat of the MG, not far from where she'd had them, and assumed she would find them once I left.

I then went and looked up everything I could find about newborn kittens. I know that if they are not fed within the first twenty-four hours they won't live, and I was worried. I researched emergency formula, and what it takes (a lot!) to bottle-feed newborn abandoned kittens, just in case it came to that.

When I went out an hour later one of the kittens was gone. I assumed that Splotch had found it and taken it somewhere she thought more suitable. They never like the nice nests humans make for them.

But when I came back just before going to bed the two kittens were still there, and hadn't been moved. Ai yi. And while I figured she wasn't far, how on earth was I to find her amid all the junk that is still there? We've made some inroads in cleaning out the downstairs garage, but there are still corners that are inaccessible. Well, inaccessible to humans.

So I stepped over by the other car, the Citroën by the front of the MG, and just listened.

And there it was. A loud purring. A very loud purring, the kind a mother cat makes when nursing.

It was coming from under the hood of the MG.

You know, where the engine is.

I had no idea how that was even possible, as an engine is not exactly enclosed, and has all these tangled bits and air pockets and just what the Hell? But I went and got a flashlight anyway. Now the front end of that car is missing some bits, having been in an accident; so I could shine some light in there from the front, without opening the hood. I couldn't see anything, but when I aimed the flashlight at certain areas the purr changed to a warning growl.

Eventually I had no choice but to open the hood, though I didn't want to disturb her.

And there she was, up by the dashboard, in what amounted to a little metal box; Tara tells me it is actually the battery compartment, though there is no battery in there now.

I was afraid that she'd take off; but she seemed willing to stay put despite the growling.

So I picked up one of the other newborns, and brought it to her. She growled some more at me, but seemed very interested in the kitten. I wasn't sure quite what to do with it; I thought she might take it herself but apparently she didn't want to get too close to me, so in the end I dropped it next to her. (Turns out it wasn't far at all, just a few inches, though at the time I had no idea where she even was or what it looked like). I did the same with the second kitten, and soon heard little mews and slurping noises.

So, crisis averted.

I'm guessing though that Splotch is not the brightest bulb. For one thing, apparently she can only count as high as one. For another, really, inside the engine compartment of a rusty old hunk of rusty rust is an appropriate nest? What?

We tried to get some pictures, but I didn't want to disturb her by opening the hood again. I'm afraid she'll relocate and only take one of the kittens with her if I do, to some place I really can't get to. But we did get some video:

Crazy thing. I wish them well.

Points of View

When Tara came by the other day she brought a CD of old pictures of the yard that she'd scanned in; today I walked around outside, to get some pictures from the same points of view for comparison.

When I look at those old photos I am actually shocked. Which you really think I wouldn't be; after all, I lived here, and in fact was living here when most of these pictures were taken. I really should remember it.

I said in a comment a couple posts down that I've blocked it out, how much of a horror this yard was, but that's not quite it; it's that, back then, I didn't know how to see. Not, even, that I was inured to it or had simply grown used to it, though that is probably part of it, but that I was unable to see that it was wrong in the first place. Or rather, I was unable to see the degree to which it was wrong, abnormal, sick, even. Because I did know it was fucked up at the time, even if I was nowhere near being able to articulate how fucked up. Never mind why it was.

And if I'm not remembering the yard as that bad, then I'm not giving myself (and Tara) anywhere near enough credit for cleaning it up. And yes, part of that is that it has been fairly gradual; this has taken us more than a decade now. Well, I say 'us'; really in the first few years, back when our father was still here, it was Tara doing most of the work, at least as far as the cars went, since she for some reason had the patience to deal with Dad. Or maybe that's just another way of not giving myself enough (in this case, any) credit, who knows.

It is always good to pause for a moment in the middle of a project and see how far you've come. Though, really, we are well past the mid-point, I think, at least as the cars go. If there were seventy-eight here originally, and there are only ('only,' ha) twenty-one left, then we are 73% of the way through that part; and as far as the pure junk goes, I'd guess from the pictures that the percentage is about the same, if not greater. We've even made some major strides with the indoor spaces, like the garage, and though the shop is still pretty full, stuff has been moving out of there. So we're, really, I'd guess, something like three quarters done. And that's pretty damned amazing.

So let's see what it looked like then and today. Here's one looking towards the back yard, taken in September of 2001. This was yet another pile of wood, this time piled up and around a large rock. On the left there is a mound of dirt, left over from I'm not sure what, perhaps digging the foundation for the garage in the sixties. When we were kids it had been there for so long that the trees there were big enough to build a tree house in. Said trees are now long gone and the pile itself flattened and used to fill in what was ostensibly a pond my father had dug out, but was mostly an overgrown, damp marshy spot intermittently filled with runoff from the road.



And today. That haphazard pile of wood on that giant mound of charcoal will shortly be burned, just like the rest of it.



Here's the back of the garage again; this is a slightly different picture than one Tara has run before, from May 2001.



And today. Incidentally I put those walls in myself a few years back. One of my strategies upon moving here was to claim previously carred-up and junked-up spaces for new gardens. That way my father couldn't just put another car back in the same spot.



Here's one looking towards the shop, also from May 2001. I'm pretty sure Tara was standing on something, probably a bus roof, to get this. I guess it held; honestly I'm a little surprised.



And today. It's not quite taken from the same angle, but it's close. There are still several Beetles over there, the damned things.



And then one taken from a little further over to the south, and pointed at what were the pen and the pond, from late October 2002:



And today:



That's quite a lot of empty grassy ground exposed, isn't it? And still, I look at that and think What an impossible mess.

March Progress Report

So let's see how we did with those March goals of cleaning up that area in the back from the downstairs garage to the shed, including that woodpile(s). No, we didn't get everything done; but still we did get quite a bit accomplished.

We did another couple of burns (I think; they're all starting to blur together) and will need to do one more, probably, for that area (though we still have stuff in other parts of the yard that will also need to be lit on fire).

Let's look at some befores and afters; I'll start with the original panorama from early March and compare it to the one I took today. That weird black presence in the middle is the shadow of a tree; it's kinda spooky, isn't it?





Then from the south:





Number Seventy-Five there, or how do you say, Numéro Soixante-Quinze is what's left of an old Citroën DS, which Tara helpfully labelled Le Général de Gaulle on the roof in spray paint. Alas, the horn does not play the first few bars of La Marseillaise, although I suppose you could just blast the intro to All You Need Is Love, I mean, not that it's got a radio. Or a horn. Or a floor.

It's all ready to go, whenever the junk guys can be arsed to call Tara back, that is.

We threw away plenty of trash, of course, and will still need to do a tire run; also we're getting towards being able to do another iron run as well. I haven't had any luck finding someone who recycles concrete, though; the place I called didn't seem to want to call me back, either.

Now, fair enough, this was going to depend on the weather, and well, March both came in and went out in a roaringly leonine manner, even passive-aggressively spilling over into April with a snowstorm on the first, no fooling. Driving by the local elementary school the other day the readerboard sign out front said:

SPRING HAS
ARRIVED!

...REALLY?

So altogether I think we did pretty well, and that damned woodpile is finally history; at any rate we're just going to continue on with this part of the yard. Momentum, you know.

I mean, assuming it's actually going to get warmer somewhere in here...

Burn Baby Burn

So Tara came by today and lit some stuff on fire. I didn't get pictures of that (well, let's face it, it wasn't all that exciting—basically it was just a camp fire), but I can show you folks the space left by the stuff that has, literally, gone up in smoke:





See that pile of stuff over there on the left in the first picture? See how it is not there in the second picture? O it's gone gone gone. Remember, burning something gets rid of it forever. And yes, that's a lesson a child of a hoarder can really take to heart.

So that's another step towards the March goals. So far so good!

March Plans

All right. Now maybe this is a bad idea; but I'm going to post about it anyway.

So, like I said, it's March now (I mean not like you didn't know), and the weather is showing signs of improving. And while we're still in the lion stage of things just yet, the usual rumor is that by the end of the month things will get rather lamb-like. Which I guess means gentle and soft (and perhaps itchy).

And while I know you can't count on the weather to cooperate, still, Tara has these grand plans for cleaning up the yard this month. Or rather, a specific section of the yard, the one out back that encompasses from by the downstairs garage over to the shed. In that area there are a couple (maybe three, depending on who's counting) cars, some tires, the of course requisite random junk, and a pile or three of anteaten wood.

I took some panoramas today, to document the before aspect of things. This is what it looks like by the downstairs garage (and no, the garage roof is not actually crunchy-broken in half like that):



And this is the part over by the shed:



Now, the reason I'm not sure I should post this is because I don't want to publicly lock myself into something. Like I said, weather here is going to be a major factor, not to mention that she and I do both work, albeit in freelance sorts of things with flexible schedules; also I know sometimes if I set goals and then don't meet them exactly as I wanted to I feel like a failure, even when I get pretty damned close. It's like the team that loses the World Series thinking they suck, when jeez you know they're right there at the top too, aren't they?

But Tara has this plan. Or 'plan,' I should say, as her 'plans' usually involve throwing herself at something with an enthusiasm that so bewilders the laws of physics that they momentarily suspend themselves in pure disbelief; honestly most of the time I just stand back. Well back. Cockamamie is a word that tends to come to mind around my sister.

The thing is they work. Well, so far, and knock on wood and all that, goodness. So, when she said today all the things she wanted to do this month, I was skeptical, as that's a lot to have on one plate; but if anyone can pull it off she can.

So yes, the goal for this month is to clean up all that in the pictures above, which also involves completing a stone wall, and, hopefully, renting a bobcat to move some dirt (and rocks, for the above-mentioned stone wall) around; but, like a lot of things in this place, it's not that simple, and there are all these interlocking things that will then also have to be dealt with, even though they are not strictly in this part of the yard. Like, for example, the fallen-down apple tree that is currently blocking said pile of rocks over by the shop; that will have to be hacked up first. Stuff like that. So we shall see.

I can't promise anything; but I think the impulse to record this, to document the process is outweighing my fear of pressure.

Wish us luck!

Treasures

The past few days Tara and I have been out in the garage and shop picking our way though the junk again. We've tossed more clutch pads, brake drums, suspension rods, and a couple of obviously broken transmissions; and I'm beginning to learn the names for these things, these Volkswagen parts, something I rather resent, actually. I want my brain space for other things. Pleasant things.

But in going through that we ran across all kinds of other stuff, some baffling, some odd, some scarily vintage, as in, whoa, I'll bet this chemical is banned these days. And a lot of the usual things only a hoarder would save, of course.

See, my father saved everything that... well, okay, that sentence doesn't actually need a qualifier, does it. He pretty much just saved everything. What I meant, though, was that he was especially fond of things which could serve as containers in which to store his other stuff.

So for example, digging down into the layers of a box we found this:



That's right, it's an old cupcake tin, now full of bolts and screws and washers and who knows what. (Oooh looky my favorite! Banana nut muffins dusted with cinnamon sugar! Oh, wait, that's banana bolt muffins. And that cinnamon? Is actually rust. YUM.)

But guess what was underneath it?



It's like this sort of fractal hoarding sometimes. He saved all that stuff, so he then had to save all this stuff, but then he didn't have anywhere to put this or that stuff so he had to save old bookcases and shelves and it just never ends. Turtles all the way down, you know?

I mean even to saving stuff like this as a storage container:



Anyone else recognize that? That's right, it's the little plastic package those Cheez 'n' Crackers snacks came in.

I don't actually know when he started the hoarding. They say it tends to be something that appears (or gets worse) with age; but given that my parents were in their forties when they had us kids (my father was forty-six when I was born), it's not like I knew my father when he was young. But judging by some of the stuff we found, it looks like he was hoarding from at least before we were born, since the stuff looks like it had been there for forty years or more, judging by the design of the labels. These for example:



Or there's this box.





Pull-tabs on cans have long since been replaced by the ones that stay attached to the can. So how long ago were they new? And how did you open your beer before that? With a can-opener?

Now for the scary stuff. First this 'rag,' which, honestly, rather gives me the creeps. They don't look quite big enough to be adult-sized.



This next one is, believe it or not, a battery, one that proudly proclaims itself 'leak proof'. (This, by the way, is called irony. Alanis Morissette, listen up.)



More containers:



Genuine Volkswagen windshield washer fluid, in regular and diet.

And then there was this. I have to admit that though I don't really get why anyone would go with this theme, it's kind of fun in a Spy vs. Spy way:



You have to use it whilst humming Love Potion #9, though. Or, I suppose, Revolution #9, well, not that you can hum that, really.

It's a wacky world.