Thursday, July 29th, is a day that lives in infamy around the Hudson house. The reason why? Thursday, July 29th is Dumpster Day in our area of Holladay.
Those of you who haven't ever lived in Salt Lake might not have Dumpster Day in your area, and you may be unfamiliar with this grim spectacle. Let me fill you in. One day a year, the city drops off a free dumpster in front of every other house on a certain street. And on that day, you can go ahead and put anything you need to throw away in that dumpster, assuming your neighbors don't beat you to filling it up. That last part is the catch -- your neighbors also race to put their crap in a dumpster, and once the dumpster's full, you're basically screwed. It's like a slightly more mean-spirited Christmas; you're racing to do stuff before your stupid neighbors do it. It's fierce, tell you what.
So anyway, tomorrow is Dumpster Day for our street, and Kathy decided that she needed to go insane. In preparation for this, Kathy has been cutting down branches on the trees in our yard; even when it looks fine, she cuts them down, because she says stuff about 'balancing the light' and other totally nonsensical stuff. When she assured me there was just 'a couple' branches outside, and then went out to cut some more, I realized exactly what I was in for.
And what I was in for was this:
Those are the branches. From the back yard only.
Kathy had this rocket science idea that we could just set them on a tarp and drag them to the front yard. Never mind that we'd have to pass through two gates that are about three feet wide... there aren't that many branches, right?
The answer is that there's
a ton of branches, holy crap.
After about forty-five minutes of picking them up and moving them to the pile, the time of the dragging came. Kathy turned and looked at me expectantly.
"Go ahead," she said.
Ho ho! I'm a strong guy, but come on now! So I said, "Grab that end and we'll fold it into a taco". This was apparently a difficult idea, because it then took twenty minutes of flailing to get the massive bundle to the front yard. Much shouting and gnashing of teeth occurred. Meanwhile, the dogs (who I love dearly) flailed around in the dirt and filth and just generally got in the way. Oy. Kira came home in time to see us struggling, and go inside and eat a bowl of cereal while watching. Good work, Kira!
So we drag the bundle to the front and set it out on the street. Already the neighbors across the street have set a pile of junk on the side of the road in a Cold War style display of escalation. Luckily, Kathy wasn't about to let that stand, no sir! She also had a ridiculous amount of branches in the front to add to the huge pile. Anyway, we flail around for a while, and get them to the street. Yippie skippy.
Luckily, Kathy didn't ask me to move the dog house. The dog house is a running joke around the house; every time Kathy wants to get rid of it, it turns into a debacle. First, the dog house is about five feet by four feet by five feet. So it's big. Next, it's made from thick wood, tar, shingles... so it's freakin' heavy. Last, the plan usually turns into 'Hey Austin lift that!' Last year, when it was time to move it, we discovered that a swarm of bees (?!?!) had settled inside, so we bug bombed it, and left it there. Besides, it's not like I could move it anyway. Kathy says she's going to ask her brother and a couple other guys to do it... power to them, I guess.
She did have another ridiculous item to move, however. Dragging me back to the backyard, she points at the bane of my backyard existence -- THE MASSIVE BRANCH.
Let's have another pointless divergence and talk about THE MASSIVE BRANCH. THE MASSIVE BRANCH (the name really needs to be capitalized to properly convey the branch's awful size) is the bottom fourth of a massive old tree. I'm not kidding when I say that THE BRANCH is probably twenty feet long, fifteen feet wide, and currently suspended ten feet off the ground. Further, it branches in the middle, and half is branched on top of our roof and
on our power lines while the other half dangles in the air. The only reason it hasn't fallen is because A) it's supported by our roof, and B) it's supported by another branch of the enormous tree. Really, THE MASSIVE BRANCH is something that yard care professionals (or somebody with a chainsaw, twenty foot ladder, and four guys) should take care of.
Back to the story -- Kathy walks back to THE MASSIVE BRANCH and points at it indignantly.
"We need to take that down," she says.
'We' is an interesting word around the house when it comes to heavy stuff. When something weighs over 50 pounds, 'we' means 'Austin'. I proceeded to make this face:
So I look upward, and immediately say, "We need a chainsaw or we can't do it." This, of course, makes Kathy put her hands angrily on her hips and glare. "No really, Mom, I don't think we can do this."
Men will understand when I say this: Kathy took my acceptance of reality as a challenge. Maybe it's this awful 'Girl Pow-ah!' thing, but when I say 'No that's impossible really' Kathy takes it as 'My name is Austin and I'm a big lazy bum so sisters are going to have to do it for themselves'. So she marches right over with her tiny hedge clippers, and starts gnawing at the massive branch.
Keep this in mind, the main body of the branch is about as thick as my forearm. It's THICK. So Kathy idly chomping at it with small little shears doesn't do anything. So she takes a step back, looks up, and says, "I'm going to knock it down".
WOOOOOAH NELLY. Remember when I said it was stuck over power lines?! Yeah... and Kathy's jiggling it up and down as the wires bend and pull. So I give a shout and say, "Hey, you're gonna knock out the power," which causes her to stop. Kathy takes a step back. I suggested that we call the power company and ask them to trim around the power line, so we're gonna do that instead. It's a lot better than trying to pull down a massive 200 pound branch by hand.
Anyway, the 'thirty minute diversion' turned into an hour-and-a-half sweatfest. I eagerly await tomorrow when some fool (read: not me) is going to have to move all this stuff into the dumpster itself while fighting Joe Boringwhite across the street to get it into the dumpster.
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