The Tetanus Burger 2013 Year-In-Review

So I guess it's also (long past) time for the 2013 Tetanus Burger Year-in-Review. We didn't get as much done this year as we have in years past; but then again the yard is actually beginning to look decently clean these days, so it feels rather less urgent. Also, there have been other life-type things happening, and that is after all where one's focus ought to properly be, rather than on cleaning up someone else's goddamned mess.

So here's the usual montage of junk run photos; note again that the 'precious' inside-the-Bus shots weren't separate trips.

There is still, of course, plenty more inside various outbuildings (especially the Shop), which we still have to get to, so we'll be here a while yet. But I think this year was the year it actually started looking mostly 'normal' out in the yard. Some of the buildings do need a bit of work (my father wasn't big on finishing things, you know), so there will be that too.

Only one car left the property this year, that Saab I just wrote about. Here's the picture to refresh your memory:

Altogether it came to a little more than a ton and a half of junk iron scrapped (1.62 tons or 3240 pounds), which isn't bad.

Plenty of other things happened too, of course, mainly being that my father, the man who hoarded up the place, died at age 90. I still haven't shed a single tear, or even felt sad, and I don't expect to. He was really not a very good person, though oddly enough if you were (say) one of the Townies sitting down next to him at the coffee shop you'd probably have thought him a perfectly nice person. And in an odd way, he sort of was: I'd even almost call him 'mild' or 'gentle' in some ways. It's hard to explain. I think it comes down to intent on his part. He had no idea that what he was doing was anything other than the right and normal thing to do, and he had absolutely zero insight into his own mind. I really mean that. Absolutely none. It was just what he did, or what he was. The most I think someone who was acquainted with him might think was that he was a bit odd and was one of those old men who could talk your ear off, but who was otherwise harmless.

Well, that's the people who didn't know him, of course. Underneath the first impressions was a man who pretty much never matured past early childhood. I don't mean that facetiously, either; I mean that his view of the world and the things in it, and how he related (or didn't relate) to them was stuck at the understanding of a toddler. He could not understand that other people were not him. He simply was not capable of that kind of insight. Nor was he capable of understanding that the way he believed the world worked was not actually how it did. And that meant that in practice he was a stubborn, miserly (and miserable) bastard who didn't see his family as properly human and who considered his whims more important than the needs of his children. He didn't care that there was no hot water, so when we complained we were just whining. He wasn't cold when the house was set at 55˚ in winter, so that was that. He was the only one who had any rights; when we complained we were trying to take away those rights. Or maybe even that's giving him too much credit. I think to him we really were just these sort of noises in the background. We weren't real. I don't know if anything was real to him. If your view of the world is literally delusional then how do you define reality?

Anyway, I'll not mourn him. Though that's not out of spite (not that I wouldn't be entitled to that). It's just that there was nothing there to mourn.

Actually, I was far more broken up over the deaths of my two older cats. No, not any of the ones who were kittens and featured here on the blog a couple years ago; these were the two who didn't get talked about much here. The first one who died, Sir Isaac Mewton, had a tumor, one he was diagnosed with a couple days after my father's death. I never found out exactly what it was (the local ultrasound guy was on vacation at the time) but both vets I talked to, when talking about the possibilities, just shook their heads sadly, and told me even surgery probably wasn't going to help. So I opted to just let him go without interfering. He got all the treats, and he went outside every day (something he'd been obsessed with for years), and I still don't know if I made the right decision. He died at the end of August, at twelve and a half years old. He was a good, good kitty, Isaac was. Let's see if I can find a picture:

That picture was taken during a bout of pancreatitis a few years back; you can see the shavey spot on his flank where they did the ultrasound that time.

Then my Maude died; she was fifteen but still getting around fine, though she was a little creaky and maybe a bit deaf. One night I realized I hadn't seen her all day, which is not that unusual (she'll hole up on a bed and sleep all day), and so I went looking for her. By the time I was starting to wonder if I should worry I found her, stone cold dead, under the futon upstairs. I had no warning at all; I assume it was something like a heart attack in her sleep. Here's a picture of her, my Maude:

Anyway. I suppose all that (and honestly, I am still in mourning over them) is one reason the cleaning had a bit of a lull. And yes, I'm going to totally change the subject to happier things, now.

So. I figured given all the hullabaloo about the kittens a couple years back, you reader-sorts might like to know how those guys are doing. The younger ones are all fine and happy and still tearing around the house like frisky kittens. I snapped this picture the other night of almost all of them:

In the foreground is the ever-handsome Ratty, of course; behind him on the blanket is Aleister Meowley, and then laid out in a row on the floor front to back are Rory, Maurice and Danny Lyon. There is one more cat here, little Mademoiselle Zéphirine Chattonne-Gris, though Tara says she doesn't believe she actually exists. She's shy, Zeffie, and maybe not as well socialized as the others, though she will come out for me and purr and such. But she does exist, and here's the proof:

She's Rory's littermate, and Aleister's little sister. Like I said, they are all doing quite well, and I am continually surprised and honored by how good-natured they are (even shy Zeffie). They've got some good genes, this family, and they purr loudly and nearly constantly.

The mommy-cats, Spot, Splotch, and Smudge are still hanging around and begging at the door; I give them a cup of chow a day in exchange for depriving them of their uteri. That was the deal I made, and it's a good one; it keeps them around back and hopefully out of the road.

There is another cat who hangs out, a tom I named Mr. Bibb for his little white front; funny thing is once the mommy-cats (whom I call The Grrls) got fixed, the other toms all drifted away, the lure of sex being apparently stronger than the lure of food, which honestly I would not have thought. Mr. Bibb himself drifted away for a while, but then suddenly reappeared not that long ago; but when he came back he was a bit scuffed up and had lost all but four inches of his tail. I can still see the bit of bone sticking out the end. I don't know what happened, though I'd guess a coyote. So he's been hanging out lately, and I have of course renamed him Bob, because I couldn't help it.

I wonder, though. I've seen him back up to things and make the motion to spray; but I never smell anything, and trust me, tom-cat spray is a scent you can't miss. I could have sworn looking at him he was entire, as they say, but I don't know. And when I was petting him the other day I noticed that the tip of his left ear looked a bit flattened, as if it had been cut off; it was a bit rough too, so I couldn't say for sure he didn't just lose it in a fight. But maybe someone else in the neighborhood has been trapping and neutering the local strays.

Anyway, though. The cats are good, and the yard is cleaner.

A Christmas Miracle

Back in December we were also graced with a visit from old friend Rusty Jones; it had been a while since we'd seen him and frankly I was beginning to wonder, like Virginia, if he did indeed exist; but my doubts were baseless, and he proved it by taking another car away. Good old Rusty.

This one though was one of Tara's; it was an old Saab which had been sitting in the driveway for some time before being moved into the garage. Now, while that's not really fooling anyone (least of all me), it did neaten things up a bit outside. In fact, for the first time in never ever there was only one car in the driveway, and when I was out in Larry the Volvo waggon, there were then no cars there. It isn't even really a very big driveway, but my father used to fit nine cars in there back in the day, and he might even have got a couple more cross-ways out by the street (and that doesn't count the cars parked on the side of the road). It's rather strange to think that nowadays people can tell if someone's home or not, just like they can with everyone else.

This Saab had had the transmission blow years ago; I hear they are prone to that, oldish Saabs. And I'm not sure how much I should say about how she got it to her house, but let's just say Triple-A doesn't need to know when exactly that transmission blew. She didn't get any pictures of the tow (I suppose that would have been incriminating evidence) but these two should suffice as proof.

First, there it is in my garage:

And then there it is in her garage:

So that's all right then.

Tara also back in December shuffled some other cars around, such that the last two old (complete-ish) Bugs got put in the garage, ostensibly because she wanted to take them home to restore; I of course have my doubts but then I'm a cynical old curmudgeon who hates the damned things. Which, again, didn't do anything for the total number of cars here but did make the yard look better.

Here's the dark red Bug, partway towards the garage:

I don't remember now why it got hung up in that spot for a bit, maybe the ground was too squishy to move it properly or something, but some time later, Christmas afternoon in fact, Tara moved it the rest of the way to the garage by towing it with the Bus. Except there was a problem.

I wasn't there, so I didn't see it. (Nor did I hear it). But in the process of dragging it up the hill by the studio into the driveway she parked the Bus on the hill, and then put it in gear, which is what you do when you don't want a standard transmission car to roll. You know, since the 'emergency brake', if it even exists in an old Volkswagen, is pretty much completely useless.

It's not even that big a hill, it really isn't. We're not talking Filbert Street here, just a bit of an incline. But instead of keeping the Bus stationary like it's supposed to, the thing up and rolled right down the hill. Yes, it had to turn the transmission to do it. I guess that wasn't a big deal, though I'd never heard of such a thing. And then, of course, it crashed right into the corner of the studio.

The studio was just fine; it takes more than some wandering Bus to damage that old overbuilt thing. But the Bus, well:

Tara was rather sheepishly upset by it, though honestly I'm not sure it makes that much of a difference. Perhaps the irony is that it was the one spot on it that did not already have a dent (or hole) in it. At any rate luckily the windshield was undamaged. That's something, I guess.

So with the Saab gone we are now at ten cars left, most of which are inside at this point. Just one more and we'll be into the single digits, which is an idea that has been frankly inconceivable for most of my life. I should very much like to see it; but even better will be the day when there is only one car here, the car that we are actually using.

The Tetanus Burger 2012 Year-In-Review

Hey kids, it's that time again! Time for our annual round-up of what-all went away in the year freshly passed.

This year it's true we didn't get as much done as in years past; I think there are several reasons for that. One, it's just hard work and we're tired of it; two, we do actually have lives outside of cleaning up after our hoarder father; and three, I suspect that we've been doing jobs more or less in order of easy to difficult, meaning the things that are left are getting to be the problematic thorny sorts of things, or the ones that have been put off because X has to happen before Y can before Z, for example you can't really clean out something deep inside until you clean out the outside leading to it, that sort of thing. I mean maybe. On the whole it's all pretty problematic. Don't think, however, it's because we're running out of stuff to junk. Oh ho no.

Oh, also Larry, our redoubtable Volvo station waggon and our hitherto primary means of haulin', was out of commission for a time and a solution (i.e. a trailer) had to be figured out. That didn't help, I'm sure. Still, we did a fair amount of iron runs. Witness the below:

Given the trailer some of those were double loads, with both the trailer and the Bus filled up. All told it came to 5560 pounds of iron removed, or 2.78 tons, which is a little more than half last year's total.

As for cars leaving as per our Rusty's countdown, we only managed to get three out of here. We did, however, pass the half-way mark given the number that was here at the beginning of this blog and are down to eleven left, some of which are indoors and so not visible.

Good riddance, and Rusty say GOODBYE!

We also did several VW shows, which helped both get rid of stuff and put some cash in our pockets; I suppose I should mention that Tara has been quietly selling stuff on the side through ads on some VW fora, especially seats, which is good as they are kind of a pain to get rid of. (Basically they can go to the scrapyard with the iron, but you have to get them down to the metal; otherwise no one will take them.) So that's good too.

I wonder how long it will take to be done with this. It is such an odd idea, to someone who's lived here all my life (more or less); in some ways I simply cannot imagine this yard being clean. And while the goal is specific--to get the yard clean--I'm not sure I know what that means, or at least I don't know exactly the scope of the project, not really. We have just been cleaning whatever is there in front of us. There isn't really a set plan. Which can be fine; I mean obviously it's working. But I don't know what the real goal is, or how to really go about doing it, like with steps or markers for how far we've come and how far we have to go. I've been managing it a little, like with Rusty's countdown on the side, but that kind of goal-making is something that I think I was simply never taught, if not actively discouraged from learning. Because to a hoarder a clean yard or a clean house is an unthinkable horror. And part of keeping things as they are is to make sure the other people don't, or can't think of it either.

Hoarders are some nasty pieces of work.

V-Dubious

Oh my darling Rusty. How I missed you. But like they say absence just makes the heart grow fonder (actually I think the psychological term might be intermittent reinforcement.)

So today our steadfast Rusty Hunk showed up to take away another rusty hunk (of rusty rust), this time one of the old, much-loathed Volkswagen Bugs, this one being especially hated by me because I used to actually drive the damned thing. Oh, the fond memories of cruising along well under the speed limit while everyone else swooshed by me since if you tried to go fifty in it the steering wheel would shudder horribly and it would feel like it was about to break apart like the Enterprise at Warp Eleven (She canna take any more Capt'n!!!)

Oh did I say fond? Actually I meant that other four-letter word that begins with an F.

Here's the damned thing, after we dragged it out from behind the shop. It took quite a bit of abusing Larry the Volvo station waggon to get it there to where the ramp truck could reach it, but that was as good as it was going to get. You can probably make out the skid/drag/burn marks in the background (the latter made by Larry as he repeatedly spun out, as he has just an atrocious lack of traction):

(Pictures taken today by Tara.)

It was yellow, once upon a time, though it's hard to tell now what with all the greeny Xanthoparmelia lichens on it. Yes, it's been sitting there that long.

As we were dragging it out I was the one chosen to sit in it and attempt to steer. For some reason though I wasn't thinking, though I should have known; for as I placed my foot upon the floor, lo! the rust parted and it went right through to the ground beneath.

When José came by with the ramp truck today he gave it the usual look, but seemed resigned to taking it. Here he is doing I'm not quite sure what, probably trying to find something solid to attach a chain to:



And here it is going away, hurrah!



When we got to the junkyard though the big scale was broken so they had to guess; they said something like a ton. If we'd gotten rid of it last week we might have made a bit more, as the price of iron crashed this week, so we didn't make anywhere near as much as usual. But that's okay. The thing is out of my yard, and one just can't put a price on the psychological benefits.

Here's a before, from last summer or autumn I think:



And today's after:



And so we are now at fifteen junk cars out of here, with eleven to go. Two more and we'll be in the single digits, which, really, I don't think I could have even imagined a few years ago. But it looks like it's happening.

That's nothing short of a miracle.

Tipping Point

So today was the day of days, O wonder and splendour! Today we passed the half-way mark in the number of cars removed from the yard. Today we got rid of car number fourteen. Rusty be praised.

Well, okay, that's only counting since the beginning of this blog, which we started in June 2010. If we go by the number of cars here in the yard at its worst, we've gotten rid of sixty-six cars, or a good 84.6%, which is pretty damned impressive if you ask me.

Today's sacrifice to the Gods of clean yards was the old brown Saab over by my (poor neglected) vegetable garden. It was, in fact, the old junker under which a certain batch of kittens hid once upon a time; but such sentimental concerns did not save its rusty self from the scrapyard. Mind you, to a hoarder, that would have been a perfectly valid reason to keep it, forever. And you know I'm not kidding.

It was a little tricky to tell just how rusty it was, as the thing had been painted rust-brown to begin with; but I'm pretty sure it was, like almost all the other cars in the yard (including the fiberglass ones), the inevitable rusty hunk of rusty rust.

But it went, and that patch of grass can get started on growing in again. Here's the before:



And the after, yay!



And there it is up on the ramp truck. The guy taking it away, José, gave it the usual dubious look. It is a little surprising he found something solid enough in the front to hook the chain to. But he did, and away it went.



So like I said, that makes fourteen down, with twelve left to go in our Mr. Rusty Jones's countdown. I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that means the single digits are in sight. And that is good news!

Lucky Thirteen

You know, our Rusty Jones is so determined, so tireless, so ruthless in his quest to rid this yard of rusty cars, that he won't even let a little thing like February in New England stop him. Now, granted, this has been an uncommonly mild winter so far, but still. Nothing much usually happens here in February.

So last week Rusty came and took away the old blue Saab 99, the one whose paint is officially called Caroline Blue, and so therefore the car has been called after it Caroline. I mean duh. This was another one that Tara hauled off to her own yard, and, while I disapprove I suppose in general, still, she's legally an adult and it's neither my business nor, and this is important, is it my problem.

So off Caroline went, out of my yard!

Here she is ready to go, up in the driveway, after being pulled up there with Tara's new Bug:



Here's a before picture from last summer, of where she was on the north side of the shed:



And the after, though it's not quite the same view. You can see we've also cleaned up around the area in general since:



And that, my friends, puts us as thirteen cars out of here and thirteen cars left, since we started this blog, anyway. If we count from the mid-nineties, well, I don't know but it's whatever seventy-eight minus thirteen is, more or less. My count, incidentally, may be a little off, as there are some, well, half cars here that I'm not sure how to tally. But for now I'm going to say we're at an even split, with fifty percent of the (recent) goal met. And that's pretty damned good!

On the kitten front (the lingering business that is taking so much of my time believe it or not), now it's just Zéphirine the shy kitten in the dining room. And with her brothers out of there, it was only a couple days before she decided she was lonely and came out begging for me to pet her. So she has, astonishingly, turned a corner, and in fact will now climb into my lap and demand to be pet. She's still pretty shy, though, and needs more work, but putting her back out as feral is thankfully no longer an option. She also has a home lined up, a friend of my mother's who knows cats and knows she's a shy one, which is good because I'm not sure she'll ever be up to the level of being able to handle a shelter situation, with all the other animals and the noise and smells and such. That friend won't be able to take her until the middle of March, which actually works out fine since that will give me time to get her solidly tame.

So there's a light at the end of that tunnel, finally, and yay!

The Tetanus Burger 2011 Year-In-Review

Figured an annual tradition was the way to go, though I'm a week late. So let's see what we got accomplished last year, in our ongoing cleanup at the Best Little Hoardhouse in Massachusetts.

First up, our visits from Rusty Jones, when Rusty tooketh away a total of seven rusty hunks of rusty rust. I will admit that's not as many as I'd hoped, but, still, progress is progress:



Next a montage of all the iron and other junk metal we got out of here in 2011, featuring our stalwart Larry the Volvo station waggon and Tara's old red bus, who were admittedly somewhat worse for wear from all the haulin':



So I pulled out all the receipts (or at least the ones I could find) and added them up. Oy. Math.

So for the iron, the rusty hunks of rusty rust, the bulk of the metal we hauled out of here, the total comes to 9080 pounds, or 4.54 tons, and twelve trips to the scrapyard. Surprisingly enough my back (and Tara's as far as I know) seems to be okay.

Next the precious totals:

190 pounds of electric motors
109 pounds of sheet aluminum
77 pounds of magnesium
74 pounds of batteries
66 pounds of insulated copper
56 pounds of stainless steel
51 pounds of brass
48 pounds of aluminum wheels
18 pounds of insulated aluminum
14 pounds of copper
11 pounds of irony aluminum
7 pounds of transformers
7 pounds of irony aluminum radiators
7 pounds of zinc
and three and a half cats. Speaking of which—

I figured they deserved their own montage. They were (still are, since they are not all out of here yet) also a lot of work.



Top row: the one who started it all, grrrr, Spot the cat, with her first (that I know of anyway) two kittens, Splotch, and Smudge. You can probably figure out how they all got their names. Those are older pictures; they are since missing the the tips of their left ears, and their reproductive organs yay.

New row: Aleister Meowley, Spot's next (single kitten in the litter far as I know) one, then Splotch's batch: Morris Minor (since killed) and Austin.

Then in the next row, Healey and Spridget. Last in that row the first of Smudge's set, Ratty, who, is, yes, curled up in the chow bowl. Why? Because he's Ratty.

Then it's the other two from that litter, Danny Lyon and Maurice, back when he was Snotty. And then it's Rory, who is still in my dining room with his two littermates.

Those are (bottom row) Flufius Maximus and Mademoiselle Zephirine Chattonne-Gris, and no, I still don't know if she's a she, really. She's been really slow to warm up, though I did get to pet her today for the first time since she's been indoors. Wish me luck with that one. She's proving really, really shy.

All told, that was a lot of work in 2011, wasn't it? Goodness.

One Out One In

Goodness! It's only been three days, yet who should show up again but our Rusty Jones? Our tireless, persistent, ever cheerful Rusty Jones. What a thoroughly decent man.

So today the red Saab convertible's lease on life was up. Or rather, it's lease on its parking spot in my yard was up. This one didn't actually get junked; it was simply moved to Tara's yard, where, since it is after all her car, she can do with it as she will. I suppose technically this could count as churning from Tara's point of view, but from mine I'd say it's all good, since it's no longer here at the Best Little Hoardhouse in Massachusetts, and that's what counts.

About a week ago we moved it to the driveway, to make getting it on a ramp truck easier. Here's the spot over by the shop where it had been for a while. I don't remember how long, but it was long enough to kill the grass under it.



And here it is up on the ramp truck in an action shot of it leaving the driveway:



Woo-hoo!

So that then puts us at twelve cars down, with fourteen to go. One more and we'll be at an even thirteen/thirteen split. (Why that's my lucky number!) It occurs to me now that if from here on in we can manage to get rid of one car a month, it'll be all done in a year or so. I hadn't thought of that.

*****

Now. On to the important stuff. Or at least the really, really cute stuff.

Because I have a couple more kitten pictures. When last we met, Splotch, Smudge and Spot, the three feral mommy-cats, had had their mommy abilities surgically removed, and all their previous kittens had been fostered and adopted, or were hanging out in the kitchen getting up to no good as permanent residents. That left the last batch of kittens, the ones Spot had sometime in September (though maybe it was October. It all kind of blurs together honestly, and kittens have a way of both slowing down and speeding up Time). At any rate, that's three more kittens to socialize and give up for adoption. The last three, knock on wood.

I feel I must clarify something, though. I got a bit mixed up with them, because two of them look exactly identical and at first I could not tell which was which. So one of them managed to get named twice, the bigger of the two extremely fluffy kittens. That was the one whose face looked like the grouchy old tom-cat Old Scratch, so I'd called him Young Scratch; he was also however the bigger of the two and I'd also named him Fizgig, not realizing he was the same kitten.

I am about 90% certain that that twice-named kitten is male. It is surprisingly hard to tell, because, seriously, his butt is just way too fluffy. It's all just a haze of grey fur which is hiding important details like oh the possible presence of testicles. But I got him to play a little and roll over and I think I spotted some.

The third of the three however has been quite shy and I still don't know. So it's 50-50 with that one. Though I'm paranoid it may never warm up to me; it really is quite shy. If it's male, then that's not a big deal; it'll just be a tom-cat, which, while not ideal, is still okay; if it's female, though, I will have to trap it and spay it or the whole thing starts all over again.

I do think that probably with some more work it will come around. I have played with it a bit, so the process is already under way. It's really a very dainty little thing, with a face that is much sweeter than Young Scratch's; if it's a girl, I shall call it Mademoiselle Zéphirine Chatonne-Gris. If it's a boy I'll have to come up with something else I guess.

Anyway last week I managed to entice Rory into walking into the cat carrier. I promptly shut the door on him then, though he didn't like that at all, hoo boy, and brought him into the house to the dining room, which is where we'd had the other kittens over the summer as it's out of the way and can be easily closed off from the rest of the house. Rory of course promptly spent the next twenty-four hours or so hiding in a corner, poor little guy.

I was worried about him, a bit, though I know that cats hate being moved into a new environment and it can take them a while to get used to it. Place and familiarity are so very important to them.

I needn't have worried, though. By the next night he was curled up in my lap, purring himself to sleep, and in the not quite a week since he's been inside he's really become a first-rate house kitten. He instantly knew just what the litterbox was for, I can walk around all tall and up on my twos and not freak him out, I can even pick him up now and he'll just purr and purr and purr.

I am hoping the next two will be as adaptable. I'm aiming to get Young Scratch inside in the next couple of days.

So anyway, you know you need some pictures. Here is Rory (code name: Rory Adorable) in his grey and white splendor. The grey spot on his right back foot, which envelops one entire toe, just kills me.



And the out-of-focus close-up:



He really is such a good little guy. Whoever adopts him is going to be one lucky, lucky person.

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.

Bug Out

Well it's been a while, I have to say. I was beginning to wonder if maybe our dear old Mr. Jones had forgotten all about us. Why I was fixin' to have my heart broke, I was. But he came through, old stalwart Rusty.

But not before he had a bit of a tease with us. A couple of weeks ago my sister ran into someone interested in buying one of the old Bugs. Now, I'm not sure there's much left to the things, as I'm pretty sure the only thing holding them together at this point is rust molecules and memory, but I wasn't going to argue with someone who would pay us actual money for the thing. Ostensibly the guy is going to make a rat rod out of it, which, if you don't know what those are, is I think a hot rod that looks like a piece of crap. And no, I can't fathom why anyone would want to do that.

But someone does. Someone who cut a check, which cleared. So we moved the thing out from behind the shop up to the driveway, so it could be picked up more easily, without someone having to manoeuver a ramp truck down back.

They were going to pick it up a couple Tuesdays ago.

That Tuesday came and went. Then they were going to pick it up last Saturday.

Well, we had a hurricane coming, and so the Bug stayed where it was.

Now, yes, hurricanes are a bit of an exceptional circumstance. Still, I was a bit worried about it, especially when I heard that the guy was trying to get it home when his wife wasn't looking. Crap, I thought, we've just enabled another hoarder. Or at least an inconsiderate jerk, you know?

I was also worried because it was beginning to sound an awful lot like something that has happened before. My father, way back in the day, once sold a pair of I think Spitfires to some guy. Who paid for them. They even ended up in the driveway, I assume to make it easy for the guy to come and get them.

He never came.

And when I say never, I mean the damned things sat there for ten or fifteen years. I still haven't heard anything from the guy; dude's probably dead.

But it put them in this weird limbo. My father, never one to throw anything out anyway (just in case you hadn't heard), of course couldn't even imagine touching them at all since they were officially someone else's; so there they sat. Couldn't junk 'em, and certainly couldn't move them, since the guy could come by at any time. No, it doesn't make sense. Nothing much did, with my father.

I think we did eventually junk them, finally. At any rate they aren't here now, that's for damned sure.

Of course with this blue Bug I was going to give the guy a bit of a chance. Like I said, I understand about hurricanes. But if I started getting the runaround I was perfectly willing to start charging the guy rent for the use of my driveway, say $100 a week. Yeah, I'm dead serious. I have no patience for that kind of crap anymore, as you may well imagine.

But today when I got back from an appointment the thing was no longer there. I don't recall noticing it when I left, come to think of it, and since yesterday I didn't even get out there to the driveway I'm honestly not sure when it went away. But it's gone now, and that's what counts.

So, here's a before, of the spot over by the shop:



And the after:



I do love me some empty space.

So that puts Rusty's countdown at ten rusty cars down, with sixteen of the damned things to go. We've cracked the double digits, hey. And this one was special (well, to me, anyway), because it was one of those damned old Volkswagens, which you've probably heard by now that I hate hate hate. So it's extra wonderful to see one of those things go.

*****

As for the kittens:

They are all still here, though two of them were scheduled to go last Friday to the no-kill shelter to be adopted out. Except of course the exact two who were to leave miraculously came down with diarrhea the day before. A little too convenient, if you ask me. It's been this whole crazy juggling act where as soon as I think I've got one thing under control another thing pops up, since they can't go anywhere until they get the all-clear healthwise, i.e., no fleas, no eye infections, and have had all their shots and meds. But whatever they had wasn't contagious (I have my suspicions that they chewed on a Christmas cactus they shouldn't have been able to reach), and wasn't even toxic, just disagreeable, since they are now fine and will Gods willing go to a nice lovely home via the posh shelter in the northern part of the state, where, I heard, the last batch of kittens the local shelter brought up there were adopted out within an hour!

We've been keeping Aleister and Splotch's batch in the dining room, which given the way this house is built puts the windows in the back right at ground level by the patio. Now, I feel I must publicly apologize to Splotch (well, not that she reads blogs, I don't think) for assuming she was a bad mother. Because she has been outside that dining room window every day looking in on her kittens. She has in fact taken to sleeping on the other side of the screen, on what there is of a windowsill on the outside, and when her kittens mew for whatever reason she brrrrtts! right back, all concerned. She has also, on occasion, left dead mice on that windowsill, even though her kittens can't reach it and have plenty of tasty Kitten Chow of their own. So, I'm sorry I doubted you, Splotch. You are a good, good, mommy-cat.

Another One Bites the Rust

Now I do love me some Rusty Jones, our rust-busting more or less out-of-copyright mascot, even when, especially when, he operates in stealth, as he did today. I went out for an appointment and a round of errands with my mom, and when we got back, POOF!! another car was gone. Oh, Rusty. You can steal my rusty cars anytime. You've already stolen my heart.

This time it was yet another newish black Saab 900; it's tempting to imagine that we're stuck in some kind of chronic hysteresis (no, that's not a gynaecological problem), but, no, these have all been entirely separate newish black Saab 900s. Honest.

Anyway this third one was a little different, in that it was a convertible, with a lovely black cloth top. Well, all right, it might have been lovely once upon a time, perhaps a previous life in which it had egregiously misbehaved, so as to come back looking like this:



Let's get a close-up of that back quarter, shall we?



And that's after Tara scraped most of the lichens off it.

Anyway there it goes up on the ramp truck, hurrah!! and GOODBYE!!!



(Saab pictures by Tara, by the way.)

Now I didn't really get a before for this one, as inexplicably I never got a before of the little fenced-in area for the Saabs (the 'Saab Corral?' Yee-haw! or whatever that translates to in Swedish). But not too long ago there were six Saabs in there. We are down to one left inside it, though two of the Saabs that were in there have just been moved to easier-to-get-to locations in preparation for also leaving the property. Still, that's three that were in there that are now gone.

Here's the closest picture I could find for a before, from last month:



See that bit of headlight just peeking 'round the fence? That's this car. So, the after isn't all that impressive from that angle, but here it is anyway:



You can see that that red one, also a convertible, has been moved. That blue one, named Caroline after the color ('Caroline Blue,' apparently) is now the only one left in there. And hopefully then that means that stockade fence will also come down soon, and the whole thing can start to get mowed and added to the yard.

Here is a better shot of what it looks like in there now, though it's a beforeless after:



You can see the two empty spaces where it and the red one came from. (And my shadow as I take the picture. You see that lush-looking fairytale tree in the back, with the deep green leaves? That's all poison ivy, oh joy.)

So, that brings our dear old Rusty's total to nine cars down with seventeen to go. Though, looking at the cars the other day I think I may have actually miscounted by a couple when I first made the list. It is hard to tell; some of the 'cars' here are really more like half-cars, and what do they count as? So, dammit, I may eventually have to add to that total, which is a little discouraging, though nothing's really changed. Still, so far we have gotten nine junk cars out of here in something like a year, along of course with all the other clean-up and removal of scrap iron, rotten lumber, other junk, &c. So that's all good.

***

And now, because we've got 'em, kitten pictures!

This is Aleister Meowley again. My, look how he's grown!



And now here's the funny thing. Remember when I said that Splotch the cat was not the brightest bulb, and could apparently only count to one when she in fact had had three kittens? Well it turns out she can count better than I can, as she actually had four:



Clockwise from lower left they are: Austin, Healey, Morris Minor, and Spridget. I take no credit (nor blame) for the names; they were Tara's idea.