Well it's July and I'm getting ready to head back to Iowa to wrap up a bunch of business, so I figured I'd better get this narrative back on track. I've spent the time recovering, along with clearing underbrush (endless blackberry), maintaining the woodpile, cleaning and repairing the roof, doing house maintenance, tending the vegetable gardens, and performing household chores while Frau works.
As I said in the prior entry, in April LL Spurge and PM 3D gave me notice in April, three months earlier than I'd intended to give them for an end-of-August departure. The June deadline stole two months from us, so Boy and I were scrambling. Spurge and 3D had been planning this since last year. The routine for 10 years had been that 3D sent me a new lease in August, and I ignored it. We spent the vast bulk of our time there as a monthly rental. This time, though, instead of the lease running through the following August, 3D inserted a March termination date. When she gave me the notice in April, she noted the lease had already expired and they were being generous by allowing us to stay through June. I quickly added Spurge and 3D to the list of assholes who will meet untimely ends should I ever be diagnosed with an unfortunate condition, and I started working the problem.
First I moved a bunch of stuff back into the storage units, which was disappointing but freed up most of two rooms for staging items for what I knew would be a multi-destination move. Then I got on the issue of what to do with Boy. Fortunately, a problem arose that allowed me to solve two in one stroke. Li'l Sis informed me it was no longer possible to insure the farmhouse without someone living there. I ran it past Boy, and he agreed to move there. I knew I would have to get there and clean it out first as I knew it was a mess. That proved a gross understatement.
I left 7 May and drove straight through (Yes, straight through. Until I had the farmhouse ready and was out of Rottenwood Depths, I knew I did not have the leisure for overnight travel.) and arrived at the farm on 8 May. For a lesser mortal, what I found there would have been soul-destroying. The outbuildings were all gone, except for the metal bones of the boxcar and the rubble pile of the old garage lying on its former contents. Antique implements were standing around, and everything was decaying from exposure.
Inside the house was worse, much worse. The place was stuffed full of stuff, piles of nonsense everywhere, with little pathways through it all in the dining room, living room, and parlor. Grandma's desk was buried in piles of financial and medical records. Everything in the basement was rotting. The main bedroom upstairs that Sperm Donor had used reeked of piss because he had become incontinent and regularly soaked the mattress. He'd wrecked Mom's mattress in the parlor in a similar fashion. And there were dead mice (deados) everywhere. Li'l Sis had simply had the exterminators put poison stations everywhere, and there were desiccated carcasses practically carpeting the place. Hells, there were two in the washing machine.
We had a 20-yard Dumpster scheduled, but it wasn't there yet, so I went to work on what I could. I cleared a small space in the living room to set up a cot, then I cleaned the kitchen so there was a place to store and prepare food. I cleared out the office area and other spaces by dragging all the papers out west of the house to where the chicken coop once was and burning them. Several yards of it. The Dumpster arrived, and I filled it rapidly. The refrigerator hadn't been cleaned since it was moved in, so I cleared all the ancient food out of it and disinfected it. I dumped the smelly mattresses so I could start airing the place out. Hauled a carload of clothes to Mom's nursing home in Wellman (At least they had treated her nicely, which was more than you could say for the fucking asylum in Lone Tree.). And everywhere there were deados and poison stations that had to go. I filled the Dumpster, wrapped up a couple of other things, and on 22 May headed back. Again I drove straight through and arrived on 23 May.
Then things got complicated.
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