She's A Manly-Man

I forgot to add that along with the painting this week, I also had to remove this 30 year old dead tree from our ranch house. It's HUGE! My Dad used to take us kids out to cut wood for the winter. We'd cut enough in one day to last us through the cold months. Dad used to cut the logs and throw them in a heap and we kids had to pick up the logs and stack them into the truck or trailer. If we weren't quick enough and watch very carefully, Dad would throw the log and whack us with it, all in the effort to get it to the heap. (so he said ) I remembered it was hard work, now I remember it's hard, back breaking work! At the end of the day, I had cut down 9 or 10 trees, and cut them into logs. My arms and legs were cramping, I could barely walk. On one of my first large logs I would cut off all the shoots of smaller branches so the large logs would fall smoothly down the tree, for some reason unbeknown to me, I missed one and when the log fell, I got whipped in the back of the head and down my back with a branch. OUCH! That was the angels that were watching over me way of saying Be Careful! And, I was a lot more careful to get everyone off after that. Tanner and Juliann we're my little stacker's of the next generation of slave labor.

Before the day was completely over, I decided I MUST have a fire pit. Tanner and I went down to our "bone yard" (translation: farm junk, dead cows, broken down cars, trucks, and old tires.) And picked an old tractor tire that still had the wheel in it. I took it back to my ranch employees and we had a talk about how long we could burn in it before the tire would start to burn....we all thought it might last a year....the wheel was thick... So, we started up our bonfire and were enjoying the evening, when one ( 1 ) hour later my tire started burning! Very quickly and very smelly! I ran to the house for a small garbage can full of water to put out the fire. Next day, Tanner hauled off the cute tractor tire I picked out and brought me a very industrious tractor wheel that we'll now be using for the fire pit. I think I'll rock it......