I'm A Lumberjack And I'm OK

Beware of Daddy Sheep who call you saying that they have a great idea for "blog fodder." It sounds good. You might even be tempted.

However, you will soon find yourself swatting away flies in the woods and wondering just how you evolved into a lumberjack...

Daddy Sheep needed some help clearing brush on the Sheepish Estate and suggested that I might like to help. I'm not really one for manual labor. It's not that I'm against it per se. I support it. I just prefer to observe rather than to actually participate. But I had the time and I like to think I'm a good daughter, not to mention a good sport. I also couldn't foist the whole thing off on Baby Brother Sheep since he'd already taken a turn out in the back forty and his job involved the dragging of mighty trees.

Plus, I took some cold medicine yesterday so I didn't really have any knitting of note going on. I figured I could use the outing. Besides, how hard could it be, really?

So I donned my work gloves, doused myself in mosquito repellent and headed out into the puckerbrush to do my daughterly duty. I figured I'd take it slow and it would be a piece of cake!

Thirty minutes later, I was giving some serious thought to sacrificing a piece of my future inheritance so that we could just hire some strapping young lads to come do this for us. I'd even volunteer to serve lemonade and wipe their manly brows...

After an hour, I was thinking how Agent Orange really got a bad rap. What's the big deal, really? Chemicals are our friends...

Ninety minutes passed and I was ready to approach Daddy Sheep with the idea that selling the house might be the best option in the long run.

Fortunately, I wasn't dealing with the Daddy Sheep from my childhood. That Daddy was of the opinion that hard work never killed anyone and, even if it did, we would have the privilege of shuffling off this mortal coil after having built character.

This newer, retired version is a kinder, gentler boss who appreciates the value of lemonade breaks and sees the noon hour as a good time to knock off for the day so we don't miss our naps. This fits in better with my overall view of manual labor so the whole thing worked out pretty well.

Plus I got a free lunch and Mommy Sheep gave me a bag of her homemade caramel corn. I was hot, sweaty, sunburned, exhausted and carrying a bag of sugar coated popcorn. If you look at it in just the right light and squint a little bit, it's really no different than a day at the county fair...

Not such a great day for knitting though. My hands were a little sore from wrestling with the pricker bushes and yanking on uncooperative vines who thought that remaining where they were was the way to go. Nature apparently has some issues with "change." It also doesn't much care that you have a few projects nearing completion and that you will need working fingers to make the yarn magic happen.

I'll knit tomorrow. For today, I will have to be happy with the satisfaction of a job well done, an early nap and caramel corn.

We lumberjacks are tough like that.

SA