Friday purge

I didn't post yesterday. The Babaloo and I had found a bottle jack on Craigslist but the seller had been out of town for two weeks and just returned Wednesday. Conveniently, he was only a few minutes away from the library branch where the kids had their last workshop yesterday. We headed that direction early and snagged this, new and unused in its original packaging, for only $20.

12-ton capacity, baby.

We also had time to pop over to an auto parts place.  Their 12-ton bottle jacks were $50. With our savings, we were able to pick up a tire iron and, since we were there, some Rain-X.

$18...

On sale for $4.

Then we dropped the car off with the mechanic to have him look at the A/C again. He called this morning and said all the valves/gaskets were fine, but that a different hose had dry-rotted (I'm not surprised, the car is a 2005) and that they'd replace it and recharge the freon and only charge for a half-hour of labor. I thought it was a decent compromise. When I picked it up today, I had him bring out a flashlight and show me exactly what had been replaced. I don't mind paying him $150 for the repair, but I'll be danged if I get to a new town and have some unknown mechanic snooker me for the same repair. The good news is: I have nice, frosty A/C again. :)

I rearranged the living room this morning so that I can start purging the bookshelves next week, but the big accomplishment today was tackling the dining area. We had four particle board shelves that I'd stacked and used as pantry space because our kitchen cabinets here are stupidly short (like, 10") and I needed somewhere larger to put boxes of cereal and bottles of olive oil. These shelves were given to my family in... 1991?... by another military family that was headed to Japan. They have been hauled from coast to coast and have survived at least seven moves. The humidity here has finally gotten to them, though, and they were dangerously falling apart. My mom had expressed interest in them but when I went to move one of them today, the back and the bottom stretcher fell off and left rusted, exposed nails, and the whole thing started to rack sideways. I couldn't convince the Babaloo they were worth saving. Truthfully, I'd feel miserable if anyone cut themselves and ended up with lockjaw, so they got tossed today. 

I also went through everything in my pantry and checked expiration dates. We had to toss all kinds of salad dressings and sauces. I'm probably more flexible on 'Best Before' dates than the Babaloo is, but even I had to agree that the marinades dated 2010 were sketchy. We took several bags of trash as well as drops of lumber from old projects.

Load one.

Load two. Tetanus shot, anyone?

Then I took dry goods that had been stored on the shelves and packed them into these utility buckets. The Babaloo fussed at me for making noise with a rubber mallet to tap the lids in place. I fussed at him right back, that I couldn't have pantry stuff strewn all over the kitchen when I'm trying to downsize and pack. It was that kind of morning.

Red Beans and Rice didn't miss her.

That's it. If you've been to visit in the last year, you'll appreciate that this is the wall in the dining room where the shelves had been. We'll work on eating down the food in the baskets and then use this wall as space to queue boxes for the move.

We will not eat the bears.