Belize Boot Camp and a Hero in the Making
Posted by Heather Harris
It all started with a simple goal: get in bikini shape for Greg and my 10 year anniversary trip to Belize. Usually this means "Dance Party", an exercise routine done in the privacy of my home with all of the curtains drawn wherein I flail around the house to loud music while the kids create strange, fine motor tasks for me to do like untying knots on a Barbie dress. I like to think it's a bit like the Biathlon.
Anyway, I decided to skip the dance routine and go out in the yard to actually accomplish something with my workout. This led me to an oh so simple task that quickly morphed into three-day weekend hell. I thought, " Why don't I unearth the debris pile that has been lurking near the creek since time immemorial and get rid of it." I'd already tried this in the summer, but the grass and weeds were so intertwined among the stumps, logs, and tree limbs that it was impossible. However, on a crisp January morning, with the sinuous vines and reeds lying long dead on the grass, it seemed like a good idea to give it another go. This was actually the easiest part of the weekend: Pick up a stump, drag it CrossFit style to another location, repeat. Very straightforward. The only problem was that while I unearthed one pile, I was just creating another, larger, less decomposed pile on the other side of the yard. A monster, if you will, had arisen,ready for battle.
When Greg got home, I mentioned that maybe we should rent a wood chipper this weekend to kill the beast. Not knowing what I was up to while he was at work, he looked into the yard and rolled his eyes. "It should just take a few hours, " I said sweetly, "and a wood chipper should be fun!" And then I got an idea. An awful idea. A wonderful, awful idea. "As long as we have a wood chipper, we should prune the apple tree."
Prune is a hilarious euphemism for what this tree needed. I checked out a book from the library called, "Easy Pruning". I flipped to the page on apple trees and it showed a nice little man in British woolens with hand clippers snipping peacefully at a tree no taller than himself that had been lovingly nurtured since it was a seedling. The freakish, miscreation of a fruit tree towering over our yard had been planted thirty years ago and left to the dominion of the apple maggots.
Clippers were not going to do anything. We needed a chainsaw. And thus began a series of unfortunate events that would take five blog posts to expound upon, so let me give you the lowlights in one sentence: Chainsaw stuck in tree, chisel used to get it out, massive tree limbs strung out all over yard, Greg leaves to get wood chipper, truck won't start, jumper cables won't reach battery, remove battery from other car, truck starts, wood chipper running, Greg moves it to "a better location", chipper and truck get stuck in the mud of our back yard, 24 hours later truck and chipper out of mud, great jubilation, wood is chipped into mammoth pile of mulch, truck and chipper momentarily get stuck in mud again, dark despair descends, it's free!, great jubilation.
And this brings me to one of the many lessons learned this weekend: Greg is a hero in the making. When all of us girls get married, we imagine that we are joining our lives with a man that can solve all of our problems, just like our Dad. Our car won't start, Dad drives up, wiggles a few cables, and we're back on the road in minutes. Pipe is leaking, call Dad up, he brings over a big manly wrench and tightens a few thing-a-ma-jigs and leak stops!Two days into marriage and we realize we didn't marry our Dad. In fact, this guy we are spending the rest of our lives with barely knows more than us! How could we have been so stupid! And why the heck doesn't he know how to do all this stuff? Then we reluctantly resign ourselves to actually having to help solve all of these annoying problems of life with our mate.
But then Greg said something remarkable as we joyfully embraced by the freed wood chipper. He said "You know, when we were first married, there is no way I could have done all this stuff!" And then I had an epiphany: Our Dads were just as stupid as our husbands are! They only knew how to save the day for their little girls because they had battled all of these ridiculous problems side-by-side with their mate when we were too young to be paying any attention. During all of this mayhem, Lily, our 6 year old, was in the house happily turning our living room into a gypsy camp. She had absolutely no clue what war was being waged beyond the sliding-glass door.
And as I gaze out at the scene of the battle, imagining spring grass growing in to cover up the tire marks and a post Apocalypse apple tree covered in fruit, I know that when Lily calls up her dad crying, "My car is stuck in the mud!," that he will know the exact number of sandbags, shingles, jacks, and force to get her out in a few minutes and he will forever be her hero. He's starting to look a lot like mine too.
Anyway, I decided to skip the dance routine and go out in the yard to actually accomplish something with my workout. This led me to an oh so simple task that quickly morphed into three-day weekend hell. I thought, " Why don't I unearth the debris pile that has been lurking near the creek since time immemorial and get rid of it." I'd already tried this in the summer, but the grass and weeds were so intertwined among the stumps, logs, and tree limbs that it was impossible. However, on a crisp January morning, with the sinuous vines and reeds lying long dead on the grass, it seemed like a good idea to give it another go. This was actually the easiest part of the weekend: Pick up a stump, drag it CrossFit style to another location, repeat. Very straightforward. The only problem was that while I unearthed one pile, I was just creating another, larger, less decomposed pile on the other side of the yard. A monster, if you will, had arisen,ready for battle.
When Greg got home, I mentioned that maybe we should rent a wood chipper this weekend to kill the beast. Not knowing what I was up to while he was at work, he looked into the yard and rolled his eyes. "It should just take a few hours, " I said sweetly, "and a wood chipper should be fun!" And then I got an idea. An awful idea. A wonderful, awful idea. "As long as we have a wood chipper, we should prune the apple tree."
Prune is a hilarious euphemism for what this tree needed. I checked out a book from the library called, "Easy Pruning". I flipped to the page on apple trees and it showed a nice little man in British woolens with hand clippers snipping peacefully at a tree no taller than himself that had been lovingly nurtured since it was a seedling. The freakish, miscreation of a fruit tree towering over our yard had been planted thirty years ago and left to the dominion of the apple maggots.Clippers were not going to do anything. We needed a chainsaw. And thus began a series of unfortunate events that would take five blog posts to expound upon, so let me give you the lowlights in one sentence: Chainsaw stuck in tree, chisel used to get it out, massive tree limbs strung out all over yard, Greg leaves to get wood chipper, truck won't start, jumper cables won't reach battery, remove battery from other car, truck starts, wood chipper running, Greg moves it to "a better location", chipper and truck get stuck in the mud of our back yard, 24 hours later truck and chipper out of mud, great jubilation, wood is chipped into mammoth pile of mulch, truck and chipper momentarily get stuck in mud again, dark despair descends, it's free!, great jubilation.
And this brings me to one of the many lessons learned this weekend: Greg is a hero in the making. When all of us girls get married, we imagine that we are joining our lives with a man that can solve all of our problems, just like our Dad. Our car won't start, Dad drives up, wiggles a few cables, and we're back on the road in minutes. Pipe is leaking, call Dad up, he brings over a big manly wrench and tightens a few thing-a-ma-jigs and leak stops!Two days into marriage and we realize we didn't marry our Dad. In fact, this guy we are spending the rest of our lives with barely knows more than us! How could we have been so stupid! And why the heck doesn't he know how to do all this stuff? Then we reluctantly resign ourselves to actually having to help solve all of these annoying problems of life with our mate.But then Greg said something remarkable as we joyfully embraced by the freed wood chipper. He said "You know, when we were first married, there is no way I could have done all this stuff!" And then I had an epiphany: Our Dads were just as stupid as our husbands are! They only knew how to save the day for their little girls because they had battled all of these ridiculous problems side-by-side with their mate when we were too young to be paying any attention. During all of this mayhem, Lily, our 6 year old, was in the house happily turning our living room into a gypsy camp. She had absolutely no clue what war was being waged beyond the sliding-glass door.
And as I gaze out at the scene of the battle, imagining spring grass growing in to cover up the tire marks and a post Apocalypse apple tree covered in fruit, I know that when Lily calls up her dad crying, "My car is stuck in the mud!," that he will know the exact number of sandbags, shingles, jacks, and force to get her out in a few minutes and he will forever be her hero. He's starting to look a lot like mine too.
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yes, yes, yes! love you both :)
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