Nantahala Chainsaw Massacre (or Why my husband’s a jerk)

When it’s their time to visit Agumano, some women eat their weight in chocolate, some cry at the drop of a hat, others transform into raging lunatics.  Me, I do all of the above and I cut things down.  Once a month I pull out the loppers and a saw and engage in hand to nature contact.

It happens so often that the neighbors all know the drill by now.

Amy’s in a tree again–she must have her period.
Wow, that’s a lot of felled foliage down by the curb. Is it the middle of the month already?
Wait a minute, didn’t there used to be a shrub there?

A couple of months ago when I was out aggressively trimming the hedges a friend actually rolled down her window as she drove by and asked me if I needed any Midol.

This spring alone I’ve taken out an entire row of azalia bushes on the side of the house because they looked at me weird, battled an obnoxiously large ornamental grass that refuses to die, leveled trees that used to reach our second story windows in the name of “letting in more light,” and reduced a crepe myrtle by my front door to a couple of sticks and a trunk just because.  A woman a few doors down was on a walk when she saw large pieces of the tree sticking out of my yard waste bin.  “Wow,” she said with a dumbfounded look on her face, “Do you not like crepe myrtles or…?”

At one point Steve took to hiding the saw.  But I am not to be deterred.  When he claimed to not know where it was, I borrowed a metal-cutting saw from a neighbor because that was all the neighbor had.  Steve caught me trying to cut down a tree on the side of the house with it, took pity on me, and cut it down for me with the the real saw, which he suddenly remembered the location of (behind the workbench under a tarp).

Despite my immaculate record of not sawing off any appendages in my fifteen plus years of power tool usage, Steve doesn’t let me use the chainsaw any more when he’s not standing right there, and I’m not supposed to handsaw things that are above my head, which is an absurd and useless rule–one that is meant to be broken.  For example, there was this time I was limbing up a large tree in our front yard when I ran out of branches I could reach with the loppers and a step ladder, and yet I still had a yen to cut.  So I waited until after he left for Kindergarten pickup, climbed the tree, and went at it with the handsaw.  I didn’t realize until it was time to get down, though, that in my fervor I had cut off every one of the branches I used to get up there in the first place.  So there I was, stuck in a tree in the front yard with my handsaw.  I had to hitch a ride down on a squirrel’s back.

So you see, if Steve would just let me use the saws whenever I wanted to, then I wouldn’t have to sneak around with them and get myself stuck in trees.  Come to think of it, he’s the irresponsible one here. He knows I can’t help it and that I’m going to saw stuff down no matter what, so he should enable, not handicap me.  In the end it comes down to this: My husband’s a jerk and I’m going to need chocolate, a hankie, a straight jacket and a bigger saw by Wednesday.  This month’s a doozy.

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Just in case you missed it, last Friday’s Animal With a Vice on Shoot Me Pretty was Sheep on a Bender.  Check it out if you’re on Facebook.