Taking a Break

 "My God, Miss Ann - how have you done this?"

That was Rik looking at the barn today.  He came by for some stuff I had set aside that he could use.  He looked around.  "The last time I was here there were just paths you could walk through."
Now there are wide open areas.  Nothing is stored on the floor any more.  I pointed out what he couldn't see - all the cabinets and drawers (except for the last two) are empty.
So I have two cabinets and one tool chest to go through, and a few more trips to the dump.  I'd like to finish by the end of this weekend, except that I might not.  I forced myself not to do any of it today.

Why?  Because I have been hauling and lifting and dragging hundreds of pounds of stuff, and any day now I'm going to find a note on my pillow from my back reading "I can't handle this any more - I'm leaving."

Here's a sample.  Bob saved anything metal - from old coax cable to rusted jacks.  There was also a large number of rusty tools.  I have taken several loads of metal to the dump - that stuff gets heavy.  The dump is only open three days a week.  In between times I just drag it to the front of the barn.  It got to be quite the stack.  Then serendipity hit on the local FaceBook page: someone posted that they were a scrapper, and would be happy to come by and haul off any metal scrap.  Here's my scrap piled into his trailer.  Remember that I had dragged all of this out of the various recesses in the barn.

There was also an equally huge stack of various lumber, intermixed with wheel rims, ax heads, plexiglass, chunks of drywall and hardie board.  I dragged it all out and sorted it.  The metal will go to Brian (the guy who took the above load).  Plexiglass to the re-use site at the dump. The miscellaneous stuff will go to the dump.  A quite large pile of small wood pieces, pieces with splits or rot, delaminated plywood, etc. got dragged to the burn pit and burned.  All the usable stuff got sorted according to type and size and restacked (neatly).

The end result of all this is that I've been taking a lot of ibuprofen.  I had been having a lot of problem with my left hip anyway (my chiropractor thinks I somehow pulled a piriformis muscle.

So I took today off (swept the deck, baked bread, made a big pot of root vegetable soup, did laundry - but no heavy lifting).  

I also should take a psychological break.  I had a dream a few nights ago and Bob was looking in the barn and going "What the hell?"  I was crying and saying I was so so sorry, but "please try to understand - you died."

But hitting this so hard in the last month has been satisfying and sad, cathartic, giving me a sense of accomplishment but also sadness.  I think it's because it's hitting me that it's coming up four years now.  I've been working on the barn in bits and pieces, but it was always just too overwhelming - yet hanging over my head that I should do something about all of this.  Well, it's almost done.  I feel lighter.

But sore.  Time for ibuprofen and bed.