I am near tears

My shed caught fire. Thelma and Louise are presumed lost. An electrical transformer on a fluorescent light looks like the cause. After 4 months or so of work I had just today made a successful mold for my foundry. I had been trying for 4 days to get it right. On the way to St Anne's Pain Center this morning I felt this sudden surge that this would a GREAT year.

I can't judge something as important as a year on just one bad day out of 18 so far.

I am vacillating between anger and thanks. Anger being the hardest feeling to modulate.

Get this. I saved a humongous bottle (nearly empty) of Jack Daniels, a small bottle of Kahlua,(new), and 4 Moosehead beers. I had already removed a bottle of Mr Boston Blackberry Brandy earlier. I am not proud of this but Jack, Mr Boston and I will most likely be very close tonight.

My 'Library' of manuals and how to books has hopefully been removed by Louise (the smart Rat) to a safe place. Doubtful at best. I anticipate nightmares. Sometime during the conflagration which lasted 20 minutes or more from discovery to a black, smokey wet climax. Willy, my cat, under quarantine, escaped. Let's hope the rats and he have reached a peace accord.

I have just finished reading "A Wind To Shake The World:The 1938 Hurricane" for anybody who wants to borrow it, email me. A seemingly fitting way to end the day, learning of the hardship of others .

7:00 a.m. Tuesday
Willy had returned in 30 minutes last night. That was good. I did have a dream about the rats. They were all black and there were 3 of them. That meant there was Thelma and Louise and a wild rat. I couldn't determine which one was the 'bad' rat. That's all I remember of the dream.

I went out in my pajamas to survey the mess in daylight. I suppose it could have been worse. I am reminded of a conversation with someone long ago.
Me, "I had a motorcycle accident in which I broke my left clavicle, 2 ribs, bones in my neck, 2 places in my right hip, my pelvis, my left femoral neck, femur and tibula and fibula, my right ankle, my tailbone, I had a collapsed lung and pneumonia along with a head injury."
Person, "Wow. You're lucky!"

Of course he meant I was lucky to be alive, but you can see my irony in his reply.

So I will say, I'm lucky that the fire wasn't worse than it was. I thought I heard some scratching around. Maybe Thelma or Louise? The acrid smell of burnt electronics that I know relates to transformers hangs in the air. The reason I know what burnt transformers smell like is because I worked making them for 3 years.

My drill press, bench grinder and compressor are on the opposite side and below most of the damage. Wooden shelves across the underside of the roof helped the fire spread from the light.

Life lesson: Suspend lights as far from ceilings as possible and leave good air space around their sides.
I wanted to switch from 4 foot lights to those twisty little screw ins. I didn't. My mind is blank as to a sentence to follow that. Maybe "I've got more excuses than a pregnant nun," is fitting.

The aluminum roof melted and buckled in 2 spots. I know that aluminum melts at around 1400 degrees. That fact wasn't on my mind as I opened the shed doors last night and had to get down on my knees to crawl in with a garden house. If it had been freezing there would be nothing left waiting for the Fire Department. It takes 7-10 minutes for emergency vehicles to get down here from the Police and Fire station.

Amid the soot blackened items there is surprising beauty. A stereo speaker cover peeled away from the speaker box as it melted. The backside of it was made with some sort of large mesh material. The mesh is distorted and stretched in a mesmerising pattern as if it were a dancer leaning over backward. A bottle of Seagram's heated to the breaking point now resembles a crown. Supreme irony in that the now missing label had an image of a crown. An aquarium light that was in storage now looks like shiny, dripping molasses. The drips hang 2 feet from the shelf.

I want to get out there and throw out as much as I can, today is garbage day. I feel that I have to start cleaning and rebuilding right away or I may just give up on my shop.

So off I go.

11:30 All I can do is stare. More amazing items catch my eye. A round plastic battery powered wall clock still hanging over my workbench looks for all the world like a Salvador Dali painting. Drooping into an egg shape it's hands stopped at 4:55. A cheap yellow coil of air hose has melted into a flat intricate swirl that reminds me of a Spirograph drawing. A newly started collection of stacked up CD's featuring Stevie Ray Vaughn, Bob Seeger and others have become one blob of plastic. Fusion music.

A box of disposal blue nitrile gloves sits on the work bench. The fingers of the gloves reaching nearly their flash point has the fingers of the pointing up out of the box, curling as if their nearly escaped the box before being overcome.

Out of the black sooty silence I can hear a scratching. As I grab a jar of peanuts and shake it I see a little black face poke out from under the cabinet that held spray paint cans whose caps have melted but thankfully didn't explode. Louise scurries onto the workbench for her treats. Still too afraid to let me pick her up she grabs one nut and retreats behind the television that once was square and now is...sorta' roundish. Maybe Thelma will show too.

I think my major machines are OK. The drill press' caution stickers have melted and curled up on themselves as if they were hiding from the whole mess. My first successful sand mold that had me so happy at 4:00 yesterday is now a sloppy slab of clay in a box. I don't mind about that, it will give me a chance to make it better. Right now I need a sunny day for inspiration. Thanks to anybody who reads this.