Ti-Erd!

Written last Thursday night:

Lordy, lordy, but I'm tired tonight.  I felt like I could have crawled into bed for the night about 6:00 tonight.  VERY unlike me!  But, I worked hard, too, and got a lot done.

In preparation for it maybe going to The Peanut's house for a while, I had to access the portable sawmill built and shared between Swamp River Ridge and The Peanut and Bunny's family.  It was parked in the Back 40, and the amount of weeds and saplings growing around up and through it aren't even funny!  But, before I could even think about trying to pull it out, I had to do some logging.

When I went to jump into the truck, I found this:

I bought a chocolate milkshake on the way home the other night, and this is what the heat in the cab of the 1-Ton (and direct sunlight) did to the plastic!  Hot, eh?

Back to the work at hand, I put the truck into reverse and headed up the hill from the parking area, backwards.  Suddenly, I felt a . . . well, it's no better described as BAD . . . jolt and sound.

File this under Stoopid.  You can't tell at ALL in this picture, but that rear tire is dangling about 4" off the ground!

I remember that the ex once ran over a chainsaw with this truck, and I couldn't understand how he could have forgotten that it was sitting in the driveway.  Kind of like . . . how could someone forget she'd left a couple huge, honkin' logs in the middle of the driveway from mowing the day before?  Logs that were invisible as she drove backwards with the high tailgate up?  Until 1 of the 4 wheels was off the ground.  Yup, NUTHIN' BUT talent!  Geez, what an idiot.

 After I took care of THAT little problem, I was at the Y in the driveway where the road to the trapper cabin splits off.  During one of the summer's big storms, this poplar had gone down, effectively blocking the road.

Here's the 'Before'.

And, the 'After' - the branches loaded into the truck to haul to the burn pile, and most of the rest of the tree cut into smaller lengths waiting to be cut again into stove-length pieces.

After I'd unloaded the branches onto the burn pile, it was further up the trapper cabin road to this tree that'd been hung up on others for an age.  In order for me to pull the long length of the sawmill out, this had to come down.  So, I hooked up the steel cable, and . . . 

The bugs are still bad, and any work outside still requires head-to-toe coverage . . . which is oh, so fun in the heat.  (Mama & Papa Pea don't have any more bugs at their place which doesn't seem quite FAIR!  But, I do live in the woods . . . .)

See what I meant about the area being overgrown?!  There's the top of the blade / engine assembly.  Beyond that is a car, a pick-up, AND a Suburban!

Here, when I was turning the truck around, you can see how tall the fireweed is:  2-3' higher than the hood!!

Now I've trampled down the undergrowth (OVERgrowth?!) enough that you can see the tongue end of the trailer at the left side of the picture.

I'd hoped I'd be able to lift the trailer into place by hand, but that body is made out of STEEL (which is good)!  So, I had to resort to the oh-so-handy jack.

It didn't take me too many tries to get the truck lined up and the trailer hitch on.  I helped / watched Papa Pea do it SO many times when I was growing up!!

And, there's the sawmill at the bottom of the trapper cabin driveway.  GEEZ, I need to mow that road!  Can't even tell it IS a road!  Maybe I'll sneak some breaks away from the computer today to do so.

It's now Wednesday, the 17th, and it's taken me this whole past week to finish the above post!  But, now that this is done, I can update you on some of the other stuff that's happened since then.

The sawmill was hauled away on Saturday although I wasn't around to see my friends take it.  It was a busy, busy in-town at the office or nannying weekend.  On Monday, the first day of my weekend, I was SO exhausted and grumpy that I couldn't even see straight.  I even snapped at the dogs - a sure sign that I'm not in "a good place".  I didn't get much done that day but a 1/2 pint of jam made from some leftover blueberries and raspberries that weren't enough to do much of anything else with.  Got a big batch of dishes done, too, and more dog food made up.  (HOW does a single person end up with SO many dishes??!!  I guess that's the down side to making food - including the dogs' - from scratch.)  Then I finally gave the rest of my day over to my current good audio book ('Hard Truth' by Nevada Barr) and stayed up WAY too late rolling a hugely jumbled mess of yarn into a compact ball.  You "yarnies" know what I mean:  the fine, expensive skein of wool that your mother offers to help you roll when you first get it . . . to which you reply, "Oh no, I'll be able to keep it this way."  HA!  I ended up cutting it into a million sections and then tying and rolling those.

I wasn't in a much better space, mentally, yesterday although I did get a lot of work done at the computer.  Of course, today is fairly mild with a blue sky and super high winds:  the perfect weather to get stuff done outside . . . and I am stuck to the computer with necessities, once again.  No outside work for me these past days . . . which I don't like AT ALL.  Grumble, grump.  But, at least my bad mood and aching neck are a million times better today, so that's a HUGE somethin'!

Hope YOU are having a good day today . . . and not stressing about seeing the first of fall's colors begin to appear.  ;)  WHERE . . . has the summer . . . GONE?!