Bruised, Battered, But Still Breathing

Did I forget to tell you guys happy new years? I intended to. Really I did. (Of course, you know what they say about good intentions.)

It was a gorgeous day in northeastern Oklahoma -- sunny, nearly seventy degrees, nice breeze. I woke up at four, couldn't get back to sleep, and got up at five. I'll have breakfast, I thought, then load the dishwasher (too tired last night) and get dressed, and by then the sun will be up and I can go outside and get some work done.

Obviously, I'm not normally up this early. The sun didn't come up until something like seven-thirty. I ate my protein-fortified oatmeal. Loaded the dishwasher. Wiped down the counters. Reorganized one cabinet. Rearranged another. Put new liner paper in yet another. Checked e-mail. Got dressed. Let one dog out. Let him in. Let another one . . .

Finally the sky lightened, and I grabbed my brand-new chainsaw and headed out back to clean up the limbs downed in front of my office by the pre-Christmas ice storm. I got two bunches of those cleaned and stacked some firewood, then drove out to my mom's and started work on the limbs clogging her front yard. (Yeah, I still have about six thousand limbs in my yard and at least two trees to take down, but they don't bother me the way they bother Mom.)

I was making pretty good progress when I got to a branch still hung up in the tree. Setting the chainsaw aside, I grabbed hold of it and pulled.

It pulled back.

I pulled harder, thinking, okay, the damn thing's going to come loose and I'm going to fall ten feet back on my butt. No big deal. It's happened more times than I care to admit.

(If my name were Jane, my nickname would probably be Calamity.)

Most of the trees we're dealing with gnarly old oaks -- post oaks, scrub oaks, blackjack oaks -- just different names all meaning "pain in the ass." Each branch has about 200 littler branches attached that go in every direction. They get all tangled up together, and they scratch like hell.

So I pulled on the limb with all my might, and damned if it didn't give. It landed exactly where I wanted it to.

Unfortunately, its gnarly little twiggy fingers pulled another limb down with it.

Right on my face.

I try very hard to never swear around my mother, because 1) she's too old for me to shock her unnecessarily and 2) she may be seventy-five, but she's still my mom. Luckily, she'd gone inside the house before the limb hit me and the curses hit the air. After "oh, shit!" and "fuck me!", my next concern was for my brand-new safety glasses (they were fine) and then my face. (My forehead and nose are all scraped up, but I'll survive.)

After lunch, my sister and her husband joined us, and we got about ninety percent of the storm damage cleaned up. Now there are huge piles of gnarly branches waiting to be burned (and some truly gorgeous cottonwood branches, in varying shades of tan, brown, and green). We even took down the eight-foot trunk of a tree that died years ago but never had the sense to fall.

My face is scraped, my arms are covered with scratches, and I've got a new bruise (or six or eight). But Mom's yard looks great.

I'm thinking mine might have to wait for a wildfire to sweep through. Rachel7:06 PM