When the guy from Roadside Lumber dropped this little pile of wood in the driveway, I smiled. So small. So unassuming. How much chaos could it cause? Since the plan was to gut Otis Chandler's mobile home so the floors would, finally, all be the same height (more on that when the jackhammer stops) and put in hardwood and generally bring the place into the 20th century, (yeah, yeah, we're now in the 21st, but this trailer is a 1973 Meteor and I'm a realist) I knew it would be messy. This messy:

The walls are gone, which means the roof has no support, which is why those two-by-fours stand in the middle of the room, hoisted by a hydraulic jack. That's what's holding up the roof. Yep. Even the cats won't go near it. And when the walls came down and the carpet came up, oh Lord did we find scary things. Holes in the sub-floor that looked right onto the dank, dark, ground. A breeze blew through. You could hear wildlife down there, I swear. The ceiling fared no better. Big drippy spots, pale and puckered like the gills of a mushroom. I wanted to cry. The contractor just smiled. "I’ve seen worse," he said.

They're at work again today. I'm outta there.