To borrow a line from Cormac McCarthy (always a good idea, he's written some of the best), if I ain't a mess I'll do until the mess can get here. See also my back yard.
I've got a dead tree I've been neglecting to take care of. I want to make a bit of folk art sculpture out of the bottom six feet or so, but the 30 or 40 feet above that could fall on my house and that'd be a drag.
I guy knocked on my door last summer and asked me if I'd like him to take out that dead tree for $500. 'What dead tree?' I asked. 'The one with no leaves on it in July that I can see from the street.'
Oh, that tree. I don't know how long it's been dead, I hadn't noticed it any more than I had an extra $500 kicking around waiting for me to hire a tree service.
I do, however, own a chainsaw. It's kind of a baby chainsaw, a 16" job I got at Home Depot a few years ago. They may have had a cheaper model, but I doubt it. I don't remember what I paid, but I remember thinking 'Even I can afford that.' And that was three or four months into my divorce when I was about as broke as I've ever been.
I don't have much of a ladder, but what ladder I had I finally used to reach what I could. I was going to do this when I didn't have my kids, but then I realized that Em is a worrier, and if something kicked back and knocked my ass off the ladder with a running chainsaw in my hands, I was infinitely better off with her watching me out the sliding door to the deck.
If I was home alone, I'd have to trust a neighbor to notice my maimed body and call 9-11, with Em watching, the phone probably in her hand and having dialed the first two digits as she watched, I might have a chance at survival.
Nothing kicked back. I did manage to slip the chain off it's drive gear, but I avoided injury if being coated in sawdust doesn't count as being injured.
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