Living in the country is wonderful, but there are drawbacks. One of those is that in the course of repairs, property upgrades, and general wear and tear, you accumulate a sizeable amount of junk, either because it might be useful, or because it is too big or too heavy to fit in a dumpster, and you can’t just leave it by the curb until it gets stolen.

So after over two+ decades, my junk pile was too large to sustain. Therefore, after much putting-off, I addressed it this weekend. My timing was terrible; the long, cool, start of summer ended that Saturday, meaning that in addition to mosquitos the size of pigeons, it was humid and in the high 90s.

It took eight hours of wrestling with dirty, heavy, awkward, often sharp-edged junk while mosquitos fed with wild abandon and the air felt like a sauna to rid my property of the mess, and I was very thankful that I hired someone to do it for me.

There was a time when I would have done it myself, but with age comes money, and money lets you hire several someone elses to do the suffering.

Anyway, the place looks great, and the current project stands at 44,000 words rough draft.