Hello West Virginia Coal Miner, Let Me Thank You For Your Hat...

I certainly hope you've all been taking notes, because at the end of the building spree, there's going to be a quiz. Let's review. Hick has most recently been rebuilding the goat shed that was crushed by the giant tree. Remember? Here's a visual.

Yes, that's the goat shed in the back, under the forked trunk. Never mind that we no longer have any goats. Their whereabouts best remain unpublished. Hick must have a use planned for that new goat shed, but he has not yet revealed it to me.

Other outbuildings, in reverse order of construction: the Sword Shack, the Little Barbershop of Horrors, (down by the creek: the miscellaneous shed for jars, the woodshed, the creekside cabin addition, the outhouse, the minibarn, the main creekside cabin), the two freight containers that will one day be connected with trusses to make a garage, the BARn lean-tos, the BARn loft, the original outhouse, the A-frame cabin up the creek, the towable tool shed. Let's not forget that Hick also built himself a safe room with concrete walls and steel door as part of the basement in the homestead, where he has a glass case and many shelves full of collectibles. So full that we can barely shoehorn ourselves in there during tornado season. AND he has 1/4 of the full basement as a workshop, which is crammed to the gills with his stuff.

I wanted to make sure you were up-to-date on Hick's structures before I reveal his latest plan. A plan which he sprung on me yesterday.

"Val, I know you don't want me to knock out the kitchen wall and add a dining room along the back deck. So I thought of something more useful. We'll take the little freezer out of the laundry room, and move the washer and dryer to the other wall. You've never liked that sink in between them anyway. We'll get rid of that. Then we can build a permanent set of stairs along that wall to get up in the attic. You're a lot more likely to use those stairs than the pull-down ladder."

"I would never use those stairs. Why would I want to go up in the attic?"

"There's a lot of room up there. We could finish it out. We already have old toys and and boxes up there."

"Why would we need to go up there?"

"Because, Val. I could put my stuff up there."

REEEEEEEE! Cue the scratchy phonograph needle. HIS STUFF? What in tarnation can Hick have left to store up there? He has all those outbuilding full of his stuff! I don't need the ceiling to come crashing down on my head, concussing me with stuff like this:

Which Hick got at an auction, and declared to be Thomas Jefferson sitting on a boot. To me, it looks more like Thomas Jefferson taking a crap, being careful to spread out his long-tailed coat. Or this:

Which is apparently the stemware that proctologists prefer for drinking wine. In case you can't tell, the base of it says, "Bottoms up!"

What we need here is an intervention.