Slow day here. Gabe took off for lacrosse camp for a couple of days during his break. That left Diane and me to work in the yard and try to prepare for the change of season. He didn't feel much like a change of seasons with weather in the mid-30s. We did get out for a good run. And a late Afternoon hike.

The big task for today was to decide What to do with the climber thing. Could we say one more time? Or was it time to burn it ?

 

The climber thing was a big Cedar swingset that we got for the boys when we returned to Vermont from Pittsburgh in 1992. Sam was not even yet born. I remember thinking we were going to go to New Zealand for a postgraduate school vacation, but we Excited to spend the money on a swingset instead. They proved to be a great choice. We spent so many happy hours swinging back and forth on that thing. It was our spaceship, it was our game Center, . The boys and I would swing for hours. We had this strange Wooden horse thing and I would ride with the boys In front of me and we would sing the stupidest songs. My favorite was doggy meat. It went something like this: the doggy meat, the doggie meat ….the dog Geeeee. Meattttttttt

Somewhere over that 20 years though it started to rot away.. Slowly at first. First a rung here, a rope there. A screw would pop out or a bucket would break. But still we would screw it back together and continue to ride. Eventually pieces would fall off. first the slide, then the bucket, then the ladder, Then the tarp, then finally the thing was not safe to ride.At that point Max was away at school, Sam had died, and Gabe was getting pretty big. We took the pieces apart and saved some of them. The ones that had solid wood we used to create a huge crazy chair out of.

 

took many many work telephone calls out on the swings and no one could tell.

What was left of it was guarding max's mud pizza oven. During one of the huge windstorms we had a few months back it blew over and shattered. The question before us was whether we tried to salvage it. But we finally gave up on it and burn it. I voted for salvage. But I have to admit, it didn't. All the main supporting members were broken. There was hardly enough wood to hold the screw. But I was determined.

It wasn't easy, and it wasn't pretty. Diana and I spent about two hours reinforcing the thing with about 100 deck screws, a bunch of scrap wood, and anything else we could find. We had to bring it back into true, reinforce all the major beams and remount the roof. End, was about as strong as it ever was., Which isn't saying much. I know full well that the next major windstorm will probably take it down again but I bought myself some time… I don't have to say goodbye to it yet.

 

It's funny the things we cling to
Time for bed
Night all, night sam

-me