Time-Suck Theater: 3rd Time's a...Something...

Let's shoot back to last week for a moment, when we were going to transform the random concrete landing strips on the backyard into a beautiful garden space by planting a bunch of tulips and lilies around the concrete. My awesome sister-in-law had already helped us out by getting rid of the overgrowth on top of the concrete. Working together this should only take us another reasonable 2 hours. Dig holes, plop in bulbs, cover them up. Easy, right?


Wro......well, actually yeah, it was pretty easy. We got half the bulbs planted when I pulled out the shovel to dig some 6" deep holes for a batch of bulbs that required it. Then, clunk.

Wrong! (You see what's happening here?) All we wanted to do was plant pretty flowers! Apparently this house has other plans...namely, to dig up the parking lot under the entire yard. That might be a bit of hyperbole, but here's the first chunk of concrete I dug up. This is just the beginning. On all sides of the random visible strips are about 5 to 6 feet of buried concrete (with some brick mixed in). I think we'll be leaving the rest of it in place...except for the areas that need to be dug up to plant things. Here's the pile of giant amalgamated concrete and brick blocks we dug up that afternoon...are you kidding me?!?



There were even some random pieces of terra cotta block in here. Yes, this real. In case you don't remember what that is, it's the very strange offspring of cinderblocks and bricks that are used as foundation walls in the mid-20's...like in our basement (as demonstrated by Jessie). Some other shards of ceramic looked a lot like pieces from an old clay smokestack. We just so happen to have roughly 40% of one left in our attic above the kitchen. Sweet.

Task #3: Success! It only took us 4 hours to almost finish a 2 hour job. Yeah. House: 3, Tom and Jessie: 0.

So...we lose. But wait! We did manage to get all of the door sweeps installed. That means no more light and wind gusts coming in under every door to the outside world. w00t. House: 3, Tom and Jessie: an emphatic 1.

However, while I was installing the door sweeps Jessie was filling in some cracks in the foundation with Great Stuff...then she asked me to come look at this:


That half-eaten sheath around those two giant wires is supposed to be protecting the main power feed into our house. The squirrels have other plans, which is not cool. No problem, I'll grab some extra thick dielectric tape and wrap it up before it gets any worse, just a 5 minute delay....right?



Wrong. What is going on here? This is a giant collection of flies just hanging out on the inside of this one basement window next to the electric meter. Words cannot express...I mean seriously, what is this crap? After cleaning that up, it's another 10 minutes of delay...bringing the final score to House: 4...no, 5. Tom and Jessie: 1.


That's all for this edition of Time-Suck Theater. Join us next time...we try to do anything. Yay us.

Tom

Currently listening to "Midnight" by Blindside