Haulin'

After DH picked up his newly assigned small SUV, he immediately put in a request to 'borrow' one of the fleet trucks because, as he stated on his request form he had "all ready made several plans requiring a truck (his previously assigned vehicle) for the coming week."  Thankfully, that request was granted and, while he wasn't 'given' the EV truck back, he did get to 'borrow' a one ton diesel pickup for a week.

We decided that we had to make the most of having a truck during that time period, even if it wasn't exactly all things we'd planned to do right then (if it needed doing in the next 1-3 weeks, we rewrote the schedule to be NOW).

So, on the first day he had the truck, after work DH hauled: 

• a free treadmill he had found on Craigslist over the weekend,
• a load of free oak firewood.

On the second day he hauled home another load of that free oak.

On the third day he hauled, you guessed it, a third load of that firewood.

On the fourth day, he got up early, got his work computer crunching some numbers and running a data analysis (so he was 'working') then headed up to his Mom's house (which is a 3 hour drive), where (after calling in to a work meeting and setting the computer to running another analysis) he loaded up and brought home:

• about 4 dozen 1" x 6" x 8' roughsawn pine boards
• four 1" x 12" x 8' roughsawn pine planks
• about eight 2" x 4" x 8' roughsawn pine boards
• two of our kayaks he'd left up there earlier in the summer (the ill-fated trip that resulted in a totaled blue truck)
• several milk crates holding boxes of cereal, bags of mini-muffins, a few jars of pickles, a jar of peanut butter, a box of elbow macaroni, 2 jugs of tomato juice, 3 cinnamon bundt cakes, 6 ears of corn and a giant head of cabbage that were leftover from the weekly food pantry delivery that his Mom helps distribute locally.  All of which she wanted DH to pass along to our kids and their families rather than throwing it out.
• a half-bushel of canning tomatoes he picked up from a fruit market on his way home.

On the fifth day he had the truck, he hauled a hay wagon with 68 bales of hay on it that I'd purchased from a local farmer.  After we unloaded the hay into the loft of my barn, he hauled the hay wagon back to its home a mile or so away.

On the sixth day (which was Saturday) he had the truck, he hauled three trailerloads and four truckbeds-ful of more free oak firewood.  

On the seventh day he had the truck, he hauled: 

• another free treadmill (I'm thinking there's going to be a treadmill post appearing on this blog in the next few weeks)
• a pallet of horse bedding
• lumber for the final tack room project (a shelf on each of the two 16' long walls, at about 7' high, for storing the horse-related stuff that is seasonal in nature, or just plain extra. )
• Our mower, back to DD1's house to mow their lawn because their mower died again (mower issue previously mentioned here). . . 

Phew!  It was a busy week. And rereading what I just wrote, it brings to mind The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  Except nobody turned into a beautiful butterfly at the end.  They were just very, very tired.  And a little bit sore.  And had a bunch of stuff to put away, redistribute, can, cut/split/stack, and build.  Plus, DH had to give back the nice hefty truck and drive the smallish SUV again.