How Much Wood Can a Woodchuck Chuck?

Wood cutting. It’s not something I grew up doing. The Boyfriend and I have a wood-burning stove in the house and are pretty excited to use it for the first time this winter. Seeing as the cold weather just started and we’ve already used it a lot we’re planning on stocking up on wood.

The last couple of weekends The Boyfriend and I have worked our little tails off. Cleaning, hanging shelves, working outside… everything to get the house together. Last weekend was no different. We bought our wood cutting permits, woke up early, and set out. I was proud of myself. Number one, I don’t wake up early on weekends. It just doesn’t happen. Number two, I woke up early and headed out to do physical labor. And I didn’t bitch about it the whole way. So far we’re looking at a pretty good day.

The Boyfriend and I drove out to the boonies (who am I kidding, we live in the boonies) and finally found a spot to cut. The Boyfriend worked the hot saw (that’s a chain saw for those of you less experienced wood cutters) and I was the gatherer. He cut big logs and I would follow behind him, grabbing three or four of those logs and hauling them back to the truck (down a hill I might add). I was so proud of myself. On my third or fourth trip I was thinking how great I was doing. I was moving fast, hauling a lot of heavy wood, and man was I getting some exercise. I was thinking that at the rate I was going in a couple of hours we would have plenty of wood for the winter. Fast forward a couple trips to the truck… I. Was. Done. Cursing-under-my-breath, dragging-my-feet, kicking-the-wood-done. But, hey, I still got a decent amount of wood to the truck. Those loggers don’t mess around, let me tell you. And really, how much wood can a woodchuck chuck? And where does one go about procuring a woodchuck?

They Boyfriend and I packed up around noon and headed back to the house to relax with a hot bath and some wine. Yeah…. I wish. Instead we headed back to the house to cut up the wood we had just gathered, stack it, clean up, and paint the master bedroom. Oh yeah, did I mention that we planned to gather firewood and paint the master bedroom in the same day? By the time we finished stacking the wood and got around to painting we got about halfway through before we called it a night. The next day we woke early again to finish painting the room. We had one coat and all of the trim left to do. We poured the paint, dipped our rollers, and…. I. Was. Done. I mean, done. Worse than the day before. I put on my best puppy dog face for The Boyfriend and curled up in front of the TV. I thought ‘I’ll just lay down for one episode of Friends’. Four hours later I woke up and the bedroom was painted. When I woke up from my nap The Boyfriend made me a bowl of chili and lit a fire for me. I was feeling guilty for sleeping while he worked so hard, but he was feeling guilty for working me so hard the last couple of weekends. He told me he felt bad that we hadn’t had any downtime and that I deserved some time to just relax, and I fell even more in love with him. That night we did get our hot bath and red wine. It wouldn’t have felt as good without the days of hard work leading up to it.

The Moral of the Story: Today I love my hard-working, understanding, loving boyfriend. And baths. I love baths.

Smoke Bombs

My father and I didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye as I grew up. There was often tension between us and I blamed it on his stubbornness. I realize now it had more to do with the fact that we’re so alike… I inherited his stubbornness. Through all the stubbornness, when I look back I can recall many cherished memories with my father, memories I won’t soon forget. Sitting in a tin boat out on the lake and singing “Suspicious Minds” together. Every time we stopped at a gas station he would buy me a soda and a king sized candy bar of my choice (I never said we were healthy, just happy). I’ll never forget the moment I told him I was calling off the wedding to The Ex. He asked me if I was sure, and when he was certain that I was, he told me that he would handle everything. He did everything he could to protect me from the disaster I had created.

One of my favorite memories of my father was when I was around 8 or 9 years old. There were quite a few kids on my block the same age as me, most of them boys. It used to irritate me that the boys would play with me, but the second my brother came around I was left behind because I was a girl. They would play sports with my brother: football, baseball, basketball… and they always deemed these sports a ‘boys game’. They refused to let me play. I remember one such day. The boy I was playing with that day was my next door neighbor. We’d been playing various games for a couple of hours when my brother returned home (from where, I don’t remember) and asked my companion if he wanted to play football with him. Of course he wanted to. They once again informed me that it was a ‘boy’s game’ and I couldn’t partake. I very maturely accepted this… and ran straight to my father sobbing that it’s wasn’t fair, just wasn’t fair! My father, in an attempt to cheer me up, told me he had something more fun than football. I, of course, didn’t buy it. Parents just don’t understand. That is until he produced the smoke bombs. He had caught my interest. I watched as he lit a smoke bomb, a smoky blue little round thing, and handed it to me. He told me to toss it in the middle of the field where the boys were playing, which I happily did. They boys stopped immediately and came running toward the source of the smoke. (“Cool, smoke bombs!” “Awesome!”) My brother, eager to play, reached for one when my father stopped him and informed him that this was my game and that he and the neighbor boy couldn’t play.

How cool is my dad?

The Moral of the Story: Today I love the feeling that only a father can give you when you realize how much he loves you.

Lobsters and Love

Yesterday, as The Boyfriend and I spend a wonderfully quiet night at home together, I thought about the first time we said ‘I Love You’ to each other.

I had thought about how we would finally tell each other “I Love You”. Would it be over dinner, laughing together, having a great time when he would pause, give me a big kiss, and then say it? Or would it be after dinner, two glasses of red wine in front of the fireplace, cuddled up? Well, as it turns out…. neither.

The Boyfriend’s Sister got tickets to a lobster feed for herself, her man, The Boyfriend and me. I had never been to a lobster feed and was really looking forward to it. The tickets were $50 each but included lobster, all the sides, and all the alcohol you could drink. The feed was a blast. We ate too much, drank too much, and danced the night away. Finally, as the night wound down, we headed back to the car. The Boyfriend’s Sister and I pronounced that we were ready to go to the bar, and the boys were thrilled. They didn’t expect us to make it that long.

Things quickly went downhill from there.

We got in the car, I slumped over The Boyfriend’s shoulder, and The Boyfriend’s Sister had to make a couple pit stops on the way back to (how do I put this delicately?) ralph her guts up. Needless to say there was no bar for us that night. We got back to the house and crawled in bed. As I lay in bed, the walls spinning around me, holding on to The Boyfriend for fear of flying off the bed, I looked into those gorgeous eyes of his. Suddenly I blurted out “Do you love me or not?” Yeah, not quite the romantic moment I had imagined. Luckily when we woke the next morning we were able to laugh at the memory of the night before, kiss each other, and truly tell one another ‘I Love You’.

Later I found out that The Boyfriend’s Sister spent the night with her head in the toilet moaning “There goes my $50 lobster!”

The Moral of the Story: Today I love those not-quite-perfect moments with the ones we love. Don’t those always turn out to be the memories we cherish the most?