Oh, my! Not exactly the honeymoon, or the second honeymoon, suite, is it? Please, please, believe me, I swear, that this is actually much worse than usual. And if the mess isn't enough to derail a second honeymoon, that body in the bed is our child.
Well, it was wonderful to have Mick at home, even though it was only for ten days. It was a happy reunion and a sad parting. In between, save for intimate details that no one wants shared, was A LOT of exhausting work.
Case in point, that mess in the picture up above. We used to have an ugly, awkward, monstrosity of an entertainment center in our bedroom. Not something we bought, but had gained and had decided to make use of, even though we both kind of despised it. The dresser in the above picture had once belonged to my dad, definitely the best piece of furniture we own ( no time to attach the mirror before Mick had to leave), even if not to our personal taste. When our belongings from Alaska arrived, we decided to bring in the dresser and banish the entertainment center to the shop. Much easier said than done.
We tackled this chore on the Saturday before Mick left. Because of all our earlier activities, this was more a testament to our strength of will, than our physical strength. But I must say, thank you, God, for making my husband freakishly strong.
Mick, in his sexy, super-strength, reading glasses is beginning to be a common occurrence. I think the man finally needs regular bi-focals, but being both stubborn and cheap, not to mention prone to misplacing small objects, like say, uh glasses, he'll probably stick with just wearing his reading glasses of various strengths for years to come. What I love about Mick is that he is so self-confident, he has no self-consciousness AT ALL about these glasses.
As you can see from the above picture, Mick is holding his beloved chain saw. He must have missed it while in Pelican, and was just forced by circumstances to split all the wood he and Jon worked up. I had been watching the little advertising paper we get for firewood ads for awhile now. We have a wood stove, evidenced by large burn marks in our carpet ( and boy, is that another story), and it helps greatly with our natural gas bill if we regularly burn wood.
When one drives around Oregon, or anywhere else in the Northwest, one will see massive quantities of fallen trees EVERYWHERE. And it brings to mind that saying, "water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink". No one will let you gather that wood. Not anyone. It can be on public land and just forget it. Liability. Vandalism. Potential profit.
So people have to buy their wood, one way or another. The cheapest we've seen was $150 a cord, on up to $220 a cord. That better be pretty L.L. Bean wood for that price. Mick's sister Cheryl had needed a few trees thinned out last year, and will need a few more this year, but that is about it for free wood. Then we saw the add. $60 a cord--U-cut. Marvelous.
Mick enjoys getting wood, the sawing, the hauling, the splitting, the whole deal. I'm not sure what is wrong with him but I think it relates to testosterone. Now, I don't mind getting wood. I enjoy being outside and a little hard work never hurts anyone, does it?
Oh, my God! The pain...Mick's brother Randy brought over his trailer for us to use. It can hold two cord. We planned to get six cord and leave the trailer loaded for Randy. By the way, sorry, Randy. Ambitious plans, out-of-shape back.
Here we are, just getting started. This is the point where Mick realized that he didn't bring a wrench or a screw driver and is trying to make some flimsy little metal clip/ piece of junk work for him. It's also the point where I realized that we'd left the house without ANY water.
The area we were in was beautiful. The weather was in the low 70s. And I became very aware of what not exercising for six weeks does to a person--nothing good. The good news was, the logs had all been pulled right up next to the road, so it was very easy to work on. Besides all the other things we forgot, we also forgot a tape measure, but managed to saw a thick stick to the right length so that everything Mick cut would fit in our stove without having to be cut again.
He couldn't understand why I didn't want to hold that stick for him as he made the cut marks in the logs over and over again. I don't know, call me picky, but there's just something irritating about having a chain saw by my ear and sawdust flying into my eyes and down my shirt, front and back. Mick held the stick himself.
My job was to carry and stack. Over and over and over again. I haven't decided if this is a good job or a bad job for a fat person. A good job if one eats salad. A bad job if one feels compelled to go eat a huge juicy burger when done.
Then there was the danger element. It's a good thing that I know Mick loves me. But in his boundless enthusiasm he almost took me out, more than once. It was almost as if he were bowling and I was the pin. I'm still trying to decide if this tender spot on my left temple was due to a wood mishap, and I'm just concussed and don't remember, or if I had some other sort of accident that now totally escapes my memory. The bruises on arms and legs I just contribute to carrying the wood.
So, Thursday ended and we were exhausted and dehydrated, but two cords richer. Mick split the wood on Friday as I stacked it in the shed. His splitting ability amazes me. He's so good at it that there's no need for me to even try.
We returned for another two cord on Saturday morning. This time we brought his tool, water, and some oranges that tasted more like lemons. It went more smoothly. Less damage done to the wife. But I kind of felt like I'd been hit by a train anyway. In any case, it was going to be a total of four cords and not six. No time, no stamina. Maybe this fall. After I recover.
We decided to unload the trailer the following day, Mick's last day at home. But there were still other major tasks that required Mick's help, and if I didn't have it, I'd just have to wait until he comes home this fall, or winter, or whenever he gets to come home again. Namely, we had bedroom furniture to remove and more to move in.
I am 5 foot 4. Mick is 6 foot 3. I don't know what the difference in our reach is, but it had better be considerable or one of us looks really weird. Furniture is easier to manipulate with someone of similar size. But that just wasn't an option. I didn't have enough crap cleared out the day Randy came to visit to have him help Mick. That just left me. With a punky hamstring (but doing so much better now), and a chronically bad back. Oh, and a bad shoulder, weak wrists, and my thumb joints seem to be deteriorating. Poor Mick is married to a mess.
To make the ordeal as much fun as possible, our two-wheeler has a completely flat tire and inner tube.That almost made me cry.
The most direct route was in and out of our back master bedroom door, even though it meant squeezing past the hot tub, you know, the broken one. This required Mick moving the hot tub lid out of the way. It had been propped against the side of the tub. The hot tub is looking pretty ugly because some of the outer boards of the surround had been removed to try and find a pesky leak in the hoses. There just hasn't been time to fix or build a new surround. I'll put that on Mick's list.
So we're moving this ridiculously heavy furniture, and we're ridiculously lop-sided because of our height and strength difference, and as we are squeezing past the hot tub with me containing my whimpers and grunts, a swarm of angry hornets come charging out of the hot tub surround! They zoom around us, threaten us, and then they fly into our bedroom because of course we can't get the dresser in if we don't open the door!
Sam is sitting naked in the middle of the bed watching the spectacle. Miranda is hyper-ventilating in panic and goes running for a fly swatter. I smack one, but being a hornet or wasp or whatever nasty it is, it is struggling to get up and have another go at me. So I stomp it. And stomp it and stomp it and that satanic beast continues to get up. Now Mick, who can't actually see the thing, because we have the ridiculously cumbersome dresser between us, is getting impatient and irritated because he thinks I'm over-reacting. I repeat, he thinks I'M OVER-REACTING.
I am NOT over-reacting. I ignored him and continued my slaughter until I knew that creature of evil was DEAD. Because hornets are like Rasputin. You kill them and kill them again. You turn around and there they are, coming right at you. I am not afraid of bees. Not at all and I've been stung (and have had a reaction, no less), but I'm not afraid of bees. They are benevolent, misunderstood creatures of goodness and light. Not so with hornets and wasps. They are pure evil, minions of Satan. But I don't panic and I don't freak out when I see them; I just try to keep a healthy distance.
Sam used to pick up hornets off of flowers when she was between four and six. She would grab them behind the wings and hold them up with their legs and stingers vibrating in FURY and then she would throw them up in the air and call out, "Good bye, good bye" and wave as they flew off. It was a Winnie the Pooh thing. She only got stung twice. I never know when she's going to relive her old pleasures and I didn't want her picking up wasps in our bedroom.
By the time we were done with wood and furniture removal on Saturday, I really did feel like I'd been hit by a mac truck. Not conducive to romance, but no one was complaining when we collapsed in bed that night. Mick was already snoring along with the dogs. I cursed our lack of a bed frame when I tried to get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. I crawled there to relieve myself. Found the ibuprofin, too.
Sunday we unloaded the last of the wood. Thankfully, Miranda helped. Mick mostly watched, but he'd worked hard in the garden that morning. And as tough as he is, he gets tired, too. He tried to convince me that we could stack wood at our leisure, but there was no way I was going to maneuver that truck and trailer through the tight spaces to get it back in place in front of the shop.
As it turned out, the wood episode ended with Mick saying, "Uh, hon, I'll replace those boards this winter." Those boards are the bottom part of our porch ramp that he completely crunched while getting truck and trailer put away. And he thought I could do it?
So the next list starts: water filter (remember that one? still on the list), hot tub surround, porch ramp, Zeus-proof gate...
Although I had other photos to choose from, I picked this one simply because Miranda now hates to have me take her picture, a very reluctant subject. However, she helped unload the trailer and now she is included.
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