Saturday, July 23, 2005

Me & power tools? Not a great idea!

This post won't be too profound, but let's just say I'm grateful for a husband who doesn't anger easily. Our hedges between our house and the neighbor's have been way overgrown for quite some time now. Chris finally had some time off, so he decided this was the weekend for tackling the job.

He started out using the chainsaw but quickly discovered that he needed to trim them first. So, he got out the electric trimmers. I had mowed over half the front yard that morning, so I thought I'd like to take a stab at helping with this task too. Chris had had a rough week of work making up some hours from when we went on vacation and he hasn't been feeling particularly wonderful, so I thought I'd be the helpful wife. (I'd done this job before pretty well.)

I climbed up onto the ladder and was swinging the trimmers back & forth thinking how easy it would be to overswing it and cut myself. All of a sudden, I feel this horrible sting on my arm. I mean it really hurt! I exclaim loudly (I won't say exactly what I exclaimed! *blush*) At first, I thought I'd cut myself with the trimmers. Then, I realized I must have gotten stung by a bee. In a span of about 10 seconds, I'm trying to figure out how to turn off the trimmer & climb down off the ladder without a.) dropping & breaking the trimmer and b.) falling & hurting myself even more.

Chris came running over to me because he thought I'd cut myself with the trimmer. I ran inside and put ice on it. It was a really red mark and after some ice time grew white around the area. It stung and Chris wanted to give me Benadryl, but I decided to wait to see if it kept stinging & swelling. It stopped pretty quickly, but my trimming time stopped as well.

This morning, it's a brand new day. I told Chris I'd try it again. Well, apparently, it was a wasp because there was one buzzing around the ladder. Chris killed that one. Then, I later saw two more buzzing around. They were not too happy with us being there. Well, at one point, I got down to move the ladder and decided to tackle a smaller bush closer to the house. I was trimming along when suddenly, the trimmer stopped. I thought I'd just cut into a really thick branch and stalled it a little. "Oh no! Not again," I think. Sure enough, I'd cut into the extension cord! Yes, you read right. I said, "...again..." I had done this last year. Well, Chris had had two 100 ft. cords. I had made that into one 100 ft. cord last year. Now he had zero. So, I got to head off to Home Depot this morning. I had literally rolled out of bed and into some yard clothes before going outside, so I was certainly not looking my best. I chose Home Depot over Wal Mart because I figured there was less chance of me seeing someone I knew there! (I did not realize extension cords were that expensive! arrghh! And noone to blame but myself!)

Chris figured out later that the electricity in half the house was out, too. After a time, he got that back on and said it did exactly what it was supposed to do...turned off so I wouldn't electrocute myself. Yea for that!

Thank you Chris for only getting a little upset and actually joking with me about it more than anything else. Very few husbands would be so great about their wife being so inept with their power tools.

1 comment:

TMK said...

Time to hang up the Power Tools girlfriend! Time to hang them up... good efforts though:)