2002-03-28-6:13 a.m.

I'm draggin' ass today...(and for me that's a lot of ass).

The good news is, I didn't lope off my leg with the chainsaw yesterday.

The semi-bad news goes like this. Yesterday I cut down this tree in the back yard. The tree is right along the property line with my neighbor. The reason I cut it down is it's in a really bad place, and it's growing really fast. My neighbors just moved in and the first thing they did was put up a fence along that side of the house. The way the original fence ran, it went right along the property line. It was one of those two sided fences, so we only needed one. That's where the tree started growing, and eventually it took down the original fence.

So what did my neighbors do when they put up the fence? The put their fence up about a foot behind the tree. Instead of cutting down the tree and rebuilding the fence with us, they left the broken fence broken and put up another one, leaving the tree on our side of it. So....I cut it down. Come to find out yesterday afternoon, the lady of the house over there liked the tree, and I think she was a bit mad when she came home and saw it wasn't there. I felt bad at first but this is what I think:

1. In 2-3 years the tree would have grown so fast and the roots would've destroyed their driveway, so I actually did them a favor.

2. If they liked the tree, they should've talked to us and rebuilt the fence with the tree on their side of it, not ours.

Either way, it's too late now, the tree is history.

The ugly news: Spring cleaning is still alive and well, and once again I get to fire up the chainsaw. Today though, we're going to take down this planting wall that surrounds the front porch. It's like 3 1/2 feet tall and if it were laid straight out I'd say it would run about 30 feet. Take it down, move all the brick to the back yard.

Once again, if I don't write in here soon, you'll know I either loped off a leg or crushed a foot.

Now I'm going hunting for Ibuprophen and caffeine.

d.