Your tree is in my yard...
I'm not sure I ever expected to start off a conversation with that phrase. Or to be more accurate to have a conversation started with me using that phrase. I have spent the past week running audio for a show so I really have been home almost not at all. 9-5 at the day job and then scooting down to Columbia for 6p-11p show calls.
Durning intermission of the second show on Saturday night. You really gotta love those double headers. If there's anything better than sitting through 3 hours of a high school musical it is A) sitting through a week of 3hr shows (that's right folks your truly has seen Thoroughly Modern Millie 9 times in the last 7 days) or B) Sitting through 2 shows in a single day. But I digress.
During intermission Saturday night I get a call from my neighbor. Immediately I know this can't be a good call. Don't get me wrong, my neighbors are great. They are very kind, but generally we don't talk a whole lot except once and a while over the fence if we happen to be coming and going at the same time or the occasional phone call to check to see if I'm still alive because they have seen no evidence that I live there. Mostly because there are weeks when I'm leaving the house well before they're up and returning well after they've gone to bed and they assume that I've abandoned my home or am rotting in the basement or something.
After the show on Saturday night I swung by my parents to pick up a chainsaw and headed home. Sunday morning I awoke bright and early (much to my chagrin) to go play lumberjack in my neighbor's yard. I cut a 6ft section out of the middle of the felled tree to at least give them access from their front door to the street and then headed off to run another show. There's nothing quite like showing up for work having the lingering scent of pine and gasoline about you. I don't know if people assumed that I was moonlighting as a lumberjack. (unlikely given my distaste for checkered flannel) or moonlighting as a gas station attendant who didn't have time for a shower before work so grabbed the evergreen car freshener off of the rack and gave a quick dab behind the ears before heading off to the next gig. Either way I'm sure there were some odd looks and wrinkled noses.
I was finally able to get back to things last night and finished cutting up the tree and stacking it in my front yard. I'll get some pictures up here in the next couple of days. So now instead of a 30ft long tree sprawled across my neighbor's front yard I have a 10ft x 10ft x 10ft pile of tree stacked in my front yard. All that remains is for me to figure out how to get rid of this pile.
You have no idea how tempting it is to just dump some gas and a lit match on the whole thing and make the problem disappear in a puff of smoke. Somehow I don't think any of my neighbors would be as accepting of a 20ft searing bonfire as they would be to a couple of days of staring at a pile of tree parts. But a guy can dream can't he?