Working with Mike's Wood

If you know my mother and didn't wish her a happy birthday yesterday, I demand you drop what you're doing and call her now and pester her with happy birthday wishes! Poor Mommy was all alone on her birthday. Not even a cake or fresh dinner or anything. :(

Did you call? Okay, then you may proceed to read this post if you want to.

Yesterday was my first full day chopping wood up in Hope. We left at 7:00 in the morning and didn't get back in town until 3:30 in the afternoon, and then we started splitting the wood we had gathered up there. My boss, Mike, is really cool, even if he is a dirty old man. We were driving on the highway, took the turnoff toward Hope, and Mike immediately pulled the car over and he and the other guy, Rick, both hopped out. I wasn't sure what was going on, so I jumped out of the car and ran around to the other side of the car to ask Mike what we were doing. He looked at me, grinned widely and said, "Wizz time!!!" So of course, my face turned bright red and I turned around really fast and walked to the front of the truck and pouted while Rick and Mike finished their business. Then Mike came up to the front, clapped me on the shoulder and called, "Hey Rick, didja see that? Lint Monkey was trying to help me!"

I was sorely tempted to say, "Yeah, I figured you might need help finding it," but I didn't. I should have, though. He would've gotten a kick out of it.

I started out loading quartered logs into the trailer we hitched up to the back of the four-wheeler, then driving down to the truck and unloading them. It was cold and rainy, "pouring" by this area's definition (which means "steady rain" by Weyers Cave's definition). I wanted to prove I could work as hard as a man could, or at least as hard as a boy, so I tried to work as quickly and efficiently as possible, and it wasn't even an hour before I started sweating, despite the cold. (Really cold for summertime, too, as in it actually snowed on the mountains.) But it was raining, so I was getting wet anyway. Nice way to rehydrate. We didn't have to stop and drink. Ha. But I couldn't even tell how much of the water was sweat and how much was rain. Then I licked my lips (nervous habit). Yep. Definitely sweat.

Driving the four-wheeler was interesting too, with all the mud. I was doing pretty well, but then the chainsaw broke, so we figured we would just load what we had and go home (we still filled both the truck and the trailer, at least). So Mike drove the four-wheeler, and I rode with him and helped him load and unload the logs. That man tore around like a hyperactive teenager, I swear! The four-wheeler kicked mud up ten feet in the air, and by the time we got in the truck to go home, I had mud in my hair, on my face, and in a layer about an inch thick coating the front of my pants. I seriously regretted having done laundry just the day before until I started to wonder if I would ruin whatever other clothes I tried to put the muddy ones in with. Glad doing laundry here is free. :D I had so much mud in my hair that it was starting to turn brown again. See, Mom, aren't you glad I have this job?

I had a lot of fun. Didn't shoot anything (I doubt I ever will), didn't chop my foot off... Mike sliced his finger pretty good on the chainsaw, though. It broke and he was trying to fix it, so it wasn't running or anything, but those chains are sharp even if they're not moving. He bled pretty good, too. I saw the blood on the chainsaw right after I managed to stop a rolling log with my shin, and after that, I felt like my smarting shin really wasn't a big deal anymore.

Everyone was pretty exhausted after our first trip up to Hope. Mike was hoping to make a second trip, but the first one took a lot longer than we expected, partly because of the chainsaw, partly because I'm a girl and new and out of shape and slow, and partly because they were doing road construction, so our hour drive turned into a two hour drive. Each way. So Rick said he was done for the day, and Mike and I agreed that a) we wanted lunch, and b) we wanted dry clothes. So we took a short break for lunch/dinner and then headed back to the woodpile to start chopping the wood we had gathered into firewood. I got there more than half an hour before Mike and spent twenty minutes trying to figure out how to start the stupid log splitter. It had plenty of gas, and it was on, but when I yanked on the cord, it would cough a little, and then it would take me two or three minutes to coax the cord back in so I could try starting it again. After ten minutes, I called Mike to see what I was forgetting. He reminded me about the choke (oops), so I turned that on, but it still took me a good ten minutes (three or four more attempts to yank the cord). Rawr! I was glad when Mike showed up and took over chopping the wood, because I think I'm better at bundling it than chopping it anyway. So we worked on that for an hour or two, and then I ran out of room to pile up the bundles by my feet, so I started carrying the bundles over to the big bundle pile where they belong. Mike turned off the log splitter and came to help, and we ended up talking about nerdy martial arts things until his wife showed up. He said he thought about teaching martial arts here, but he could never find anyone to help him, and cover for him when he's out of town. That makes me very sad, because I'm pretty sure a martial arts school here would be pretty successful. Not to mention awesome.

When I got home, I tried to keep moving because I knew once I stopped moving, I wouldn't want to start again. Sure enough, I was really sore and stiff this morning, and it took until maybe two in the afternoon before my muscles realized I needed them to move again. This morning, I tried to reach up to wipe off the top of a high shelf, and my arm got about up to my shoulder before it dropped back to my side of its own volition, saying, "No. Forget it. I'm not doing it." It still hurts anytime I move, but at least I'm mobile. Hopefully enough to go chop and bundle some more wood as soon as I go to the spring and get some good water.

I'm pretty excited too, because I asked Jewel for one of the little plastic crates they get sodas delivered in and she let me have it, so I can put all my bottles in that instead of my backpack. This seems much preferable to me, since I always worry that the glass Sobe bottles I use will break in my pack.

So yes. That's all. Time to go get liquid sustenance and then wrap more wood in plastic so we can sell it.

Toodles!

PS - I saw llamas today!