Weekend Intelligence: A One Car Garage

Inertia is rough: it's one thing to want to do something, but making all the preparations to actually get that something to happen is a completely different matter. While the outdoorsy bug has bitten, there are a lot of things that have to be done to make it possible to go on a trip. All things that I decided to try to knock out this weekend. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

Backing up a few steps, I had wanted to go fishing this weekend, weather permitting. Well, it didn't: it rained and hard this weekend. When it became clear that it wasn't going to happen, after updating the few folks that had said they'd be interested in going out, one of DeAnn's friends said they were planning a camping trip to Pace Bend Park for the next weekend. Awesome! All I need to do is get my stuff in order...

After staying up entirely too late on Friday night, and the subsequent rousting at the crack of dawn by Clara being Clara, we decide we'll get some of the things we'll need at the weekly supply run. I think I may have successfully given the bug to D; since Clara would need her own gear, it was the perfect opportunity to get all sorts of cute princess camping gear. By the time we got out of the sporting goods, Clara had a Disney Princess sleeping bag, folding chair, fishing pole set and camping flashlight/lantern. We also got new sleeping bags and a new tackle box for the fishing supplies.

It's not that I didn't already have several sleeping bags and a tackle box. It's that these had been stowed away in the portal to the abyss that we call the garage for years. You see, we've been living in this house for going on 4 years now. Even in the beginning, we piled all the things that had been taking up space in the tiny storage closet we had at the apartment. It started out neat enough, but several years of stacking crap on crap turned the garage into a pit of despair. This practice got immeasurably worse during and following the Great Flood. By that point, we weren't even really stacking things neatly anymore; junk was just being thrown on top of the pile. At one point, I couldn't even wheel my grill out to cook on it - it had started to become one with the pit.

To top it off, the Texas wildlife had built their own miniature refuge. It had become it's own sick ecosystem: live bugs and spiders, dirt and grass clippings, insect nests, skeletal remains of small vermin, newts and toads. A feral cat had even once considered it a litter box and left several mementos in the far back. You know you have something to fear when you start to see dead cockroaches. Something that has proven perfectly capable of surviving global cataclysmic events met its end in my garage. Be afraid...

Anyway, the tackle box had long since been destroyed in an avalanche of crap, and this being Texas, God knows what's living in the sleeping bags. The folding chairs were wrapped in cobwebs and the fishing poles were snapped under the weight of falling boxes. The absolutely awesome Goldfish cooler had become buried in the strata of junk, no doubt well on it's way to becoming a diamond. It came down to the fact that if I really wanted to ever go camping and fishing again, I would need to excavate my gear from the garage, which meant cleaning the garage.

/sigh...

Ok... OK! I'll do it! I spent the rest of that day hauling just about everything, scuz and all, into the disinfecting light of day. The entire floor was thoroughly swept twice. All the shelving was wiped down with cleaner. I mounted two brackets to hold hoses and extension cords. Anything that I hauled out that could be salvaged was brushed off and wiped down. The rest was trashed. I found my old ginormous tent, still intact, if not dirty. Most of the folding chairs were OK, too, just needed a good shaking out. Colin's fishing pole was good, but the reel was shot. My fishing pole was shot, but the reel was OK. -.-; The tackle box was crushed to smithereens, but most of the tackle was intact. I had to stop about 5 feet from the back wall because the dumpster was completely full. But at least I can park the car in the garage now. I haven't been able to do that since... well... never.

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful after that. I was hurting something fierce the next day, but it was worth it. If I can find a nice day next week, I'll have Colin help me look for the base tarpaulins, set up the tent and seal the seams for the season. It's gonna be a rocking summer, I can feel it!