You'd Best Watch Your Step, By Cracky!

 Doo, doo, doo, lookin' out my back door!

Hick is replacing rotten boards on the back porch, just outside the kitchen door. They're only fifteen years old. According to Hick, they should not have rotted. It's due to his homebuilding carpenter not leaving a gap between the boards like he should have. A pencil-width would suffice, according to Hick. Except that suffice part. Hick would never use a word like suffice.

This is the part of the porch that veers around to the right side of the picture, past the kitchen nook sticky-outy part, that is not under roof. The porch, not the kitchen. What kind of kitchen would that be, without a roof? Not Val's kind of kitchen. She needs a proper kitchen, to use for warming things in the oven, or heating them in the microwave.

Hick and his apprentice, The Pony, spent all afternoon prying up boards, tossing them over the brink, and screwing down new planks. According to Hick, the nonexistent cracks of the rotten boards were "...full of cat hair and dog hair. The water couldn't seep through. So they rotted." By tomorrow, I'm sure my sweet, sweet Juno will be the sole fur purveyor for all boards rotten.

I hope the animals have good night vision. The cats are wont to hop up on the porch rail and tightrope walk while taunting the dogs. The dogs take a shortcut from the house of Juno by the kitchen door around to their food dishes on the other side. I'm sure they will be leery of the opening. That's about a ten-foot drop.

The internet was slow today, my friends. Slow. Like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli. Oh, wait. That's the angry sea. Not the slow internet. Hick was not exactly driving Titleist golf balls off the back deck. But my internet has really been slow tonight. Twelve minutes to load that picture. You're welcome.

Hopefully nobody will decipher my location, and show up to fall through that hole, just to sue me for an attractive nuisance. Except it's not all that attractive. I suppose I need orange cones and yellow tape to cordon off the area. Everybody's out to gain a quick buck these days, maimed limbs be darned.

I will be relieved when this project is over.