New Found Respect

I have one....a new found respect, that is......for my husband and for all of the firefighters like him that go around wielding and slinging around 1,000 lb 100 ft ladders single handedly. And I'm not exactly speaking of the ones mounted on the back of trucks that are hoisted gracefully upwards by massive hydraulic pumps to death defying, lofty heights reaching heavenward. Though I can say the one Grayson and I fought with did indeed lift us to death defying, lofty, heavenly heights....though at the top they weren't seeming so heavenly as it wobbled and swayed in the tree branches. I do admire the men that climb the 100 ft ladder firefighting husband climbs daily as it wiggles and wobbles and crap in the 30 mile an hour winds that seem to always prevail in this part of Texas. Then those same courageous men proceed to stand on the platform 10 stories off the ground...assuming they made it up there......and aim at something with a nozzle that has some 9,000 gallons of pressure pouring forth from it every second......and then actually try to be any kind of productive and efficient with said nozzle at such heights. Yes, I indeed have great amounts of respect for them. But sticking more to the topic at hand....I have new and great amounts of respect for those of them that can actually carry and manhandle a ladder no less than 50 freakin feet, swinging it around and propping it up on crap and just, in general, proving their manhood in new ways.






This was actually something I have never in my life given any thought to and just considered part of their job. It's what they do....go around carrying larger than life pieces of equipment they might someday need that weigh more than the truck itself...more appropriately......need all of 5 times in their career since legitimate fires seem to come once every 3 years....or 5. The rest of the time they spend running to and from false alarms....at 2am no less. And when toting these ladders around they make it look quite effortless with their muscled up arms and their driver's tans....something it only took about 2 minutes to figure out I do not possess.....both tan and muscles alike.






So we have this swing....this swing that has been broken for no less than a good 4 months. Promises given to fix it but always other things to do taking precedent. Since it hangs in not so neighborly neighbor's yard but actually was indeed hung for our children's benefit by the previous owner it is, a bit, our's. And it is actually quite the miracle that these loving "neighbor's" of our's have not chopped down the tree in its entirety due to the fact it gives life to swings that actually lure children over to it....because, afterall, children must have orginated from hell in their opinion. It is no secret that they actually abhor us living here and think hell itself moved in the day our moving truck showed up. They like their nasty little wienie dog with it's crapped out bad attitude, they like their childless way of life and they love even more being seemingly demonic to little tiny kids. So, when these lovely turdish breed of people come down once or so every month to mow their yard, hunt, maintain their house and fulfill their quota of nastiness for the month we go through this whole scenario of having to deal with them and keep the children corralled off of our shared driveway...and pretend in some form that we do not have nearly as many children as we really do. Dogs bark and chase cats, roosters crow on the property boundary, hens cluck and lay eggs in places they shouldn't, children romp and run and laugh way too loud all while childless neighbors grow more and more appalled and stare with disdain at our lifestyle. I am quite convinced it is a bit like the Griswold's living life year round with the neighbors....and we're the Griswold's.





So it is quite obvious that every month that this swing is not fixed it irks them a bit more each time as they chunk it up into the high branches above and gleefully tangle it all up as they mow under it...despite the fact that Grayson mows under it regularly. So, as the entire family has focused our efforts on moving the business home these past two weeks it involved hard and heavy physical labor on everyone's part as we cleaned all of the carports, the shop, the attic and the playroom....in 100 degree west Texas desert heat. And so it is that each of us has lifted, moved continually from sun up to sun down and sweated as we have worked our way through each day. I lifted and moved tractor tires.....stacking them neatly, I might add, moved furniture, moved massive pieces of Vortex equipment, spent hours of bending, stooping and standing back up with larger than life scraped up pieces of 100 lb Vortex, piling and stuffing them into barrels and then rolling those same barrels...now weighing no less than 500 lbs......and lifting them up and over dumpster rim to dump. I've helped hard working husband move massive metal shop cabinets, tossed 2x4's from one end of the carport to the other, entirely relocated our spare wood pile...the one with enough spare wood that we could quite assuredly build a 2,000 sq ft guest house....or just have a massive bonfire in which, once lit, it would proceed to burn for an entire 7 months if not longer. I've spent an entire hour picking up and relocating the spare metal pile consisting of posts and poles and beams and things, moved refrigerators and freezers and about every other thing you can possibly think of.





In our cleanup endeavors and my hours upon hours of days spent outside in the sweltering sun of the Texas summer the broken swing in the rarely ever there neighbor's yard began to get on my nerves. Something about being hot and productive and having to look at crap that's still not fixed that just begins to hit one the wrong way. And the more I looked at it the more irritated about it I grew. So, with exhausted husband sleeping one afternoon I rounded up Grayson and the 2 of us set off to right the swing and link the broken chain back together. And, do I even have to say, the break in the chain was located high up in 30 ft treetop where chain meets branch? It would've just been way too easy otherwise. The high break seemed easy enough...this same massive ladder I had just moved and placed into its new spot, neatly up against the wall with the other 15 ladders we have going would no doubt do the job quite well. With Grayson and I on opposite ends we cheerfully hoisted it up and easily carried it to its destination...laughing and chatting as we went...blissfully ignorant of what exactly lay before us.





It didn't take me long to figure out that this 90 ft ladder or so has these little claw feet that dig irritatingly into the ground for no apparent reason other than to just make the job at hand even more difficult than it was to begin with. So, we prop it up like the experts we are...without raising it beforehand I might add....and then try to move it into place. It is safe to say that claw feet proved to be a bit of a hindrance in this endeavor. So, we lay it back down and scoot it into what we now think is more of an appropriate position....and then lift. Still cheerful at this point as we troubleshoot our way through it all. With it kind of close enough....and let it be known that when dealing with death defying heights "kind of close enough" should never be part of your conversation. It either is close enough or it isn't. There is no "kind of" to the scenario. So, once propped up at only about 1/3 of the height it needed to be and 5 feet away from its designated target spot it took us all of about 3 minutes to figure out we had no way of actually raising the ladder to the necessary treetop heights. In my ingenuity, I decide it has to be raised to the appropriate height before ever lifting it into position. Once again we lower it to the ground.......and then proceed with it in a horizontal position to raise it to it's fullest extended height....and then try to lift it in the general direction of the treetop. Our efforts at this point turned into a bit of a downward spiral...and I had every hope that ladder hoisting husband would not walk out at the moment......or in the next 30 minutes that followed, for that matter.





With it swinging around at treetop worthy heights....no less than 75 feet, I'm thinking......we raise it....or more aptly put....we attempted to raise it as it proceeded to hit every branch the tree has ever grown or thought about growing. It did manage to get about 3/4 of the way to it's destination before it came crashing back down on us. It was a bit top heavy...in addition to the tree branches not entirely aiding our cause. Since I happened to be on the end intended to go up I happened to be the one trying to catch it as it came down. Yep....so that didn't go so well. I was quite convinced I'd managed to take baby out with that one and had to go in and listen for a heartbeat to assure myself I had not just done fatal damage to the unborn that lay innocently within and completely at the mercy of my unyielding determination to the get the job done. At this point I am quite sure that any normal person would've been wise and just given up but by this time I had a battle to win and a point to make to myself. I could do this. I freakin would do this. It is quite safe to say the ladder was winning but no one in their right mind can just walk away in defeat....so I set out even more determinedly to wage war with the treetop, the swing and the ladder that was apparently out to murder everyone in it's path. My shoulder still sports a black and blue bruise from where it came crashing down on me before ricocheting off and bouncing off the protruding stomach before seeing fit to land with a heavy thud onto my big toe. With no other solution..besides waking sleeping husband..which I absolutely refused to do since it was my battle at this point....we extended it once again, since it'd lost a few notches of height in the fall.....and once again lifted it back up into the air. We did manage to get it up there this time around but it was only about 5 feet away from where the broken chain sat. I proposed the idea to Grayson that he just climb it and then crawl down the branch and straddle it as he fixed the chain that would then be below him. Since it didn't seem anyone could survive a fall from that height I quickly surmised that probably wasn't our best option. The only solution was to dig the claw feet out of the ground....again......and move it...fully extended if at all possible. Trying to manhandle a ladder about 8 times one's height with it standing fully erected into position proved to be quite a feat....a feat that wasn't quite won and once more it came crashing down. That time I just ran out from under it and let it fall. Lesson learned on that end the first time. The good news is that any ladder that height takes a long time to ever hit the ground so I had plenty of time to move out of it's path. I was quite sure by this point that tool loving husband wouldn't be quite so appreciative of the mistreatment of his equipment that was taking place outside. All the more reason for him to remain blissfully unaware...and just awake to a gloriously repaired swing swaying gracefully in the wind. Given the 4 months it had gone unfixed I pretty much knew he could care less about it.....but I cared and I would revel in seeing a fixed swing, so we carried on...convincing myself that this really mattered to him.



Eventually we did get it up there in the right spot after fighting with it way too many minutes. Grayson climbed it and zippy tied the chain back together since that was the only fix I could come up with. It would take a trip to the hardware store to buy the right device to link it all back together so my sudden urge of repairman spontaneity called for zippy ties. I am quite convinced these things are to women what duct tape is to men. Life would not be the same without them. They will zippy any broken thing back together and fix most all of life. So far I have managed to zippy tie a cabinet door back on, rig an entire farm gate with chicken wire using nothing but these amazing little novelties, rig a dress back together that was missing a button and needed a quick fix, hang keys, hang ornaments, hang heat lamps, secure wound up rolls of fencing, wrap and secure bundles of wood together and all sorts of other things I can't exactly think of at the current moment. Though I will say I have been known to duct tape a dress hem back in place on more than one occasion when the girls go ripping their's out...which they seem to be quite adept at doing. It was neon orange duct tape at that. It's all we had on hand...but it worked.


So, Grayson zipped about 8 of the multifunctional zippy ties on there for good measure. My motto is if 2 is good 15 ought to be entirely better. He climbed back down from his perch high above the ground and we stood in awe and surveyed our accomplishment....that had now taken no less than 45 minutes to attain. To be on the safe side he, of course, was urged to give it a test try to make sure it was safe for the little ones to use. He got about 3 swings into it before getting a little too confident and bouncing on it, saying we had indeed succeeded. On the 2nd bounce it all came down. I can honestly say that had I known it was gonna fall I might would've been ok with not test proofing it. At least it HAD BEEN off the ground and at least it had looked good. Did I mention that we'd taken the ladder down....so confident were we in our success??? Another 3 rounds of fighting with the ladder and another 2 times of having it come right back down on top of us. Eventually we got it back up there and this time I just climbed the thing. And I must say, when you're up there blowing around in the wind it's just never a good thing. One is not really meant to defy gravity to such extents....especially when 19 weeks pregnant and weighing a bit more than usual. All the more to thud with when you hit the ground. Once I quickly figured out I had no inclination to even lean over to zip the things on there I clamoured back down and Grayson resumed his perch once again to go through the routine all over again. This time he was given instructions to zippy about 20 of them on there...in which it didn't take long to learn that only about 12 would fit through the link. Needless to say....we didn't give that one a test try once it was rigged back up there. The insane part???? Now we get to do it all over again since I, like any good handyman, picked up the right piece to link it back up properly.



After hearing stories of our escapade from little tiny tale bearers, ladder swinging husband has recommended I sit this round out and let he and Grayson do the linking back together this time around. I figure if it goes longer than 4 or 5 days without being fixed Grayson and I will be back at it again. Maybe if I get out there with them I'll be given some much needed ladder instruction. Until then....my ladder abilities fall entirely short of passing any physical agility test. And I don't really savor the day we go digging it back out.


And, on a side note, I am quite convinced this was about the most meaningless post ever...except to admit that I hate ladders...really just hate them....about like I hate making bread and cooking.....and I stand in absolute awe of those that deal daily with their murderous ways. On to more meaningul, life changing events.