Shake Down

Saturday, November 19, 2011
In which the house is shaken upside down… sort of…

Collette’s stomach ached that morning. 500 staples had done her in. Stapling the bulletin, that is. She had forgotten the inflicted soreness done to specific muscles from the old days before stapling copy machines had been incorporated into the office life… after she had retired, of course.

The day began with heavy work.
After whipping the scrambled eggs, Mom, Dad, and Francis arrived early to pick up a television for Grandma Combs before arranging her new bed and installing a wood burning stove in her apartment.
And the little Silverspoon family began tossing out and giving away.
OLeif got to work on the basement while Collette hauled a truckload out of two bedrooms and the kitchen. It was sort of a satisfying endeavor.
Surprisingly, all the doors and windows were easily able to be opened by mid-morning.
Puck was having a super time, running around collecting, discarding, and saving various items. He wanted to keep the red buckskin-sort-of cowboy vest. However, when he lugged a large lopsided red pillow back inside from the dumpster…
“No, Puck. That goes,” Collette informed him.
Puck looked reluctantly at it…
“But it’s red…” he tried.
The Boy Scouts drove by for their canned goods pick-up, just as Dad returned to transfer two tables to the big green van.
It was a chill 61 inside, but it didn’t feel very much like it.
Once Puck’s room had been completed, and there was little more than a box of baseball items and a dragon costume in his closet, he ran out with a huge grin…
“Mama! Thanks for cleaning all of the spiders out of my closet!”
By 1:30, three rooms were cleaned out, OLeif had a bit of a bleach headache, pumpkin bread was in the oven, the skies were steel-gray, and the wind was up.
And it didn’t take long for the boys to become sidetracked by Minecraft with half the uncles…

The later afternoon was a complete wash. Predictably.
OLeif’s back, head, and stomach hurt. Probably also the result of single-handedly hauling a table and two tons of discarded floor tile up from the basement.
Collette’s stomach hurt even more. Stupid staples…
And Puck was ready for something different.
The evening brought much of the same.
So off went the boxes and bags to church.
OLeif returned with dinner.
It was concluded that he may have suffered a mild form of bleach fume poisoning…
And rain was coming.