Eventually, I'll Just End Up Ripping Out The Foundation And Building A New House.

Maybe it is turtles all the way down.  I realize that that’s not the best analogy, what with the turtle thingy being a line of logical questioning in an argument against the construct of a First Cause, but I’m really getting a strong vibe of infinite regress on what it’s going to take to get a simple picket fence built.  I’d probably be better off comparing the process to peeling an onion, with each layer representing a barrier to a step in the overall project, and the exposition of one leading only to the recognition of a deeper barr …

Ok, you know what?  What I really should compare to an onion is my ability to form analogies:  it stinks and it makes me cry.

Anyway, here’s a rundown of how I got to where I am currently re: fence-building:

Initial Goal:  Build a picket fence around the perimeter of my yard.  (This will keep the big dog from wandering off when she’s out of sight on the north side of my house, which will ease my stress at wondering what she’s up to over there, which will lower my blood pressure, which will reduce the chance of stroke, which will increase the odds that I stay alive to feed her.  So really, this is all for Indy.)

In a rare instance of forethought, I had purchased the pickets last fall, and had only to cut them in half to prepare them.  The sawing process, however, brought upon the recognition of a necessary precedent step, which brought upon another, and another, etc., et al, ipso facto, e pluribus unum:

If I’m going to build a fence, I need …

1. a clean and uncluttered shop within which to work, which necessitates …


2. a storage shed in the back yard in which to put a lot of my crapola, which requires …


3. digging up the sprinkler system so that the area upon which the shed will sit is no longer watered.

(“But Dead Acorn!” an astute-and-landscaping-savvy reader might say.  “You could just turn the flow off at the sprinkler heads to deactivate them!”  And while yes, that’s technically true, I’m pretty sure that there are some cracks in the system that need to be repaired; plus, I’ve got to dig out some pretty big weeds-turned-trees anyway, and I just know I’ll end up plowing under the whole damned back yard by hand as some sort of self-imposed penance for my general Life Of Sinfulness.  I’m tellin’ ya, being an atheist with overwhelming Catholic guilt is no mean feat.)

So here’s what I had “accomplished” prior to the weekend:

Above:  With my any luck, I’ll  hit the discover natural gas line and get sued by the city live the rich’n’easy life like the Beverly Hillbillies!  FUCK! SWEET!

As of now, the black tarp thingy is gone (the neighbor, understandably not wanting to be able to see into my bombed-out-Beirut of a backyard through the spaces in the fence, inexplicably put that up by taking off each board and stapling it to the back and reattaching it.  I just moved the boards together.  Crazy, I know).  I’ve also removed all of the pipes that aren’t supposed to be there, and turned all of the dirt out to the near side of the steps.  All without any adverse encounters with the 220 volt line that runs buried across it!

I’m pretty sure I’ve reached the center of the onion, as it were, and that I’m now working back outwards, reassembling the onion, reattaching the layers with hot glue and staples so that my pickety dreams will be realiz …

Sweet jeebus, there has to be an online course in analogy creation out there somewhere.