10:13

With a high pitched grinding noise and and reverberating bang, Meredith shut the heavy sliding door to the old shed where the Cougar had been parked. The once proud silver paint of the leanto shaped building had flecked off the old wood and there was barely any trace of the red edging her father had so painstakingly added to all the out buildings in the yard. Stepping back she cast her eyes around the old place and realized it had been years since she had really looked at it. Run down and a shadow of its former proud self, she had really neglected the place.

“Time to do something about that I guess,” she mused, “time to get off my keester and see about more than a few things I guess.”

Meredith clasped her collar closed with her left hand, trying to keep out the evening’s chill and bent down to pick up the dinged up and battered old red jerry can. “Last bit of purple in the place. Better do something about that to if I mean to get back to business.” She walked across the gravelled section leaning off tot he left to balance the weight of the gas and tried to keep the old and from infusing her jeans with the smell of gasoline. “I guess I better break out the covies too. Probably need a new pair of rubbers, some good gloves and I might think about trading in the old Minnie for one those bobcat things. No sense wasting time and money on the old tractor when I haven’t got a single PTO implement left. A good bucket on a bobcat and it’ll be just fine for scraping the snow and mucking the pens.”

“Times are a changing and its time I was a changin too. The beaver’d like that.”

Meredith stopped to put the can down and stretched her back out. “Now why the hell did I say that? The beaver would like it. Huh.” She scooped the can up with a swing of her arms and let he momentum spin her around until she was pointed at the shed where the old orange Minneapolis had been parked for too many years. “But the old girl’s not done yet. We both have a bit of work to do before we can call it finished; and I think there’s no call to be trading her in. I can spare a few dollars for the bobcat and we will just her snug in the shed for a few more years. I’d like that; yes indeed I would.”