Top Ten Countdown!

It's wedding season; which means Brinn has 6 million pictures to upload and edit, which also means I Built That blog posts take second priority on the computer time sign-up sheet. It's OK though, because this post is a top ten countdown. People love top ten countdowns -or top anything countdowns- because they literally state how close you are to being done, every step of the way. Conversations should have countdowns.

Anyway, top ten one-line stories (all true, no doubt) from the last 10 days of my life.

10: I built a goat coop on the trailer, then spent a couple hours prying it off the trailer to make room for a pile of canoes.

 9: I put a pile of canoes on the trailer and led a rag-tag group of scallywags down the Mighty James for 4 days.

 8: I came home from leading a rag-tag group of scallywags down the Mighty James for 4 days to find a man wearing a muslin frock and a loin cloth standing in my kitchen.

 7: I may or may not have stepped on a random piece of cut cage wire that skewered my flip-flop straight into the sole of my foot.

 6: I may or may not have dislodged a board from a precariously stacked load of lumber that sent half the pile (approximately 1 billion pounds) into an avalanche that ended directly on top of the same skewered, flip-flopped foot mentioned in number 7.

5: I may or may not have managed to somehow drop a board on my face, leaving a conversation-starting, lightning-bolt-shaped scratch right down the middle of my (ever lengthening) forehead.

4: I had my first stalker (self-proclaimed, I'm sure she's totally not crazy, email me if you still want that coop)!!!

3: I dispatched a skunk that was trying to get in our chicken coop.

2: After trying to get a goat coop back on the trailer for a couple hours -and hurling more than a handtool or two across the yard in the process- I called my neighbor Jerry, who drove his tractor down the hill to help lift the building.

1: (this one's a two-liner, sorry) After spending the afternoon loading the goat coop, I finally pulled out of the drive way; only to be met with waves of pelting rain, an empty tank of gas and a horribly timed hill on a shoulder-less two lane road through the woods. Following what I can only describe as a secondary set of unfortunate miscommunications, I was able to put enough gas in the truck to move it off the road before walking 3+ miles back down the shoulder-less, two lane road through the woods, and pelting rain, and -by the end of it- dark, to our house.

I think I'll make the next post a little sooner.

Georgie insisted on posing while I checked the lighting. Keeper.

The coop part of the Goat Coop. Double-decker inside, fold down ramp, nesting box, outside hatch, enclosed walk-in run, the works.

I think the logs are totally awesome. They gave me more than a few headaches, but look. Just look at it.

Slick little door to the nesting box.

Oh yeah, we did this.

It's supposed to look like that.

At this point, I'm wondering how in the world I got myself into this pickle. Jerry's probably wondering how much trouble it would be to change his phone number.

On a completely unrelated note... we went to Black Dog Salvage today in Roanoke. I'm building a wedding show booth for Brinn and some show pieces for myself (more on that later), so we thought we'd poke around. Let's just say I'm glad they don't accept kids as payment -like the less stringent traveling gypsies I keep looking for- because there is some awesome, awesome stuff in this place. Someday, I will sell something there.

Up next: A coop to New Jersey, a pole barn, all kinds of stuff...

-F.W.