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I spent the night thinking about the best way to take the shed down. I now knew I was in for a real battle - not the easy knock down job I thought it was going to be. I woke up feeling congested and a little sluggish and achy. Before I took out the tools of destruction, I took a little walk looking in and around the shed. I tried to figure out what was giving this thing its structural strength. There were metal beams that went around the inside perimeter of the shed. One at the top where the roof joined the sides and one located halfway up the sides of the shed. Looking at the screws and bolts hold these bars on, I knew that they were way too rusted to take off the normal (read: unfun) way. But I tried anyway. I was right. I stripped a few screw heads just to be able to say I tried. I took the pointy end of the pickaxe and tried knocking the middle bar off the inside walls. I separated the bar at certain points but all I could think about was the possibility of this rusty thing collapsing on me. Oh, and I was wearing shorts at this point.
I looked a little closer and saw that the bottom of the walls were attached to four metal rails that had been nailed into the wooden base of the shed. But when I say attached, I mean a few atoms of the rusted walls might have still been touching the nuts and bolts of the rail. Especially on the right side of the shed. So I started kicking the bottom of that right wall inward. I was kicking like a child throwing a fit in the corner. The whole right side of the shed came free from the rail. I gave the whole shed a little nudge with my shoulder. Well, suddenly this shed was nearly as sturdy as it was before. I grabbed the edge of the roof on the left side and pulled with all my weight. The metal groaned as I the back right hand corner of the shed lifted of the ground. It took only two more pulls before I got the whole thing to collapse on its side.
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Now, just because I got the thing to come down didn't mean that my job was over. I still had to rip the shed apart to small enough pieces so the town would take it away. Now I needed smaller tools of destruction. I grabbed a regular hammer and a pair of lineman pliers. I basically started bending and pounding the sheet metal until it either broke or separated. As I would pull off a panel, I'd stick it in a pile on the side of the house. I was climbing all over this pile of rusted metal while I was ripping off the panels. As I was reaching over to pull up another panel, I caused the pile to shift and made a nice gash on my left shin. It didn't really hurt that much but it did draw a sizable amount of blood. But now did I have a one-way ticket to Lockjaw City? Of course, I couldn't remember my last tetanus shot. And I was going to leave for Rhode Island tonight after the kids go to sleep. I talked to Claudine about the situation. She said if I did contract tetanus, I had about 48 hours to get the shot before it became more serious. I really didn't want to go to the emergency room and wait for 5 hours. Claudine suggested that I go to one of these immediate care centers. I see them from time to time, but never ever considered going to one of them. But it only took me an hour to get seen by a doctor, cleaned and patched up and given the booster injection. And they took my insurance.
When I got back, I knew I had to get right back to the destruction or I never finish. And I whipped through it. Soon I had it all finished.
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Look at the eagle now! Not so proud are you? In your face, plastic shed ornament!
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Is that a tear trailing down your black, plastic beak? Tough noogies, eagle-boy! You are outta here! All I have to do is drag you and the whole pile to the curb on Wednesday and you will be my eyesore no more!
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