How's that working for ya?

I am sitting here nursing a nice cold screw driver. Every now and then I hold the glass to my swollen lips to ease the throbbing....

I spent the late afternoon cutting back the invasive rose hips (aka beach plums). Peter had dreams of being a gentleman farmer, landed gentry. And somehow, I have been cast in the role of field hand. (Just a moment. I need to take another swig of the screw driver. My lips and my scalp are killing me.)

Who knew that the effin’ rose hips are covered with thorns? I never realized that until I started to deal with the little effers. I have already spent several evenings tweezing thorns out of my finger tips and forearms. But this afternoon ended with me running up the drive way followed by a swarm of angry yellow jacks. (Wait. Peter just showed up with dinner from the local Thai restaurant. I wasn’t in the mood to go out for dinner with my lip swollen out far enough to cast a shadow on my dinner plate, my scalp throbbing and the bites on my arms.)

Okay, dinner is over. Back to the yellow jacks. I was cheerfully alternating hacking away at the rose hips and arbor vitae with raking several years of dead leaves out from under some fir trees. The raking stirred up a hornet’s nest—literally. And there I was, running up the driveway, screaming for Peter, and slapping at the cloud of yellow jacks that were in my hair, on my face and on my shirt. Final score: the yellow jacks won with at least 6 hits (2 on my arm, 1 on my back, 1 on the lip, at least 2 on the crown of my head.) Once Peter assessed the damage and determined that I didn’t seem in danger of an allergic reaction to the stings, he declared this field hand’s work was done for the day. I stripped my sweaty, yellow jack-encrusted clothes off in the sunroom and stomped upstairs to shower, shampoo the yellow jacks out of my hair and sulk.

But today was just the topper for the last 3 days. On Saturday, I waged a successful campaign to knock down an old storage shelf in the garage. The shelf was about 4 feet off the ground, 7 feet wide and 30 inches deep. It was supported by four diagonally placed beams braced against the studs in the garage. Whoever installed them was in for the long haul, because the beams were both nailed and screwed into the studs. But I was bound and determined to take out the shelf: It’s too high to use as a work bench, and this was the spot where I want my workbench to go. Peter eyed the screws and nails and opined that this was a losing proposition. He tried to knock the braces out with a 40 pound sledge hammer we found in the garage. He tried to undo do the screws with an electric drill. But kneeling in tight places is not his forte. I can crawl under cabinets and shelves easily, but I don’t have the strength to hold the electric drill in place. Peter shrugged and said, Leave it alone. But I was bound and determined to make that space my own. So, with nothing more than stupidity and determination I threw myself at the shelf. I hammered, pushed, hung on them with all my weight, and finally crow-barred the braces to pull them down…Final score: one for the gipper. The shelf is gone.

After tearing down the shelf, I dragged 2 wood pallets into the garage to stack fire wood. I didn’t know that those pallets are nearly as tall as I am, and weigh at least 50 pounds apiece. I fell twice, entangled with the pallets, in my hell-bent campaign to get them into the garage. But I managed to restack the wood in the garage on the pallets, and then removed a 3 foot by 4 foot stack of fire wood from the kitchen and added it to the stack in the garage. By the end of the day I had a serioulsy black and blue knee, a black and blue patch on my left butt, and a big scrape on my right shoulder blade. It was glorious.

And that brings me back to today. The yellow jack stings just did me in. After a good long shower, I announced to Peter that I want to go home. He suggested the nice cold screw driver, and declared the yard off limits for the rest of our stay here in paradise.