You Should See the Other Guy

I swear – 6 foot 5 or so, and laid my husband out on the ground groaning in pain.

It’s not what you think. He’s fine. A little sheepish about being laid out on the ground by the situation, but fine.

It started as a normal day. Admittedly, we were stressed because there was enough water dripping in the garage to have made a mess of the ceiling and so someone was coming to take a look at that, but all in all, it was a normal day.

While waiting for the dude for the leak, I went out into the garden. I swore at some weeds, I grabbed a ripe zucchini off the vine, and checked to see if any tomatoes were turning red yet. I admired the sunflower plant that was coming up from a seed Voldemort had planted – one which I had excitedly spent the last few days talking to Brandus about and telling him how awesome it was that you could tell it apart from the false sunflowers that had sprouted up everywhere all over the yard, along with a couple of odd weeds that strongly resembled young trees taller than Brandus.

Brandus and the Dark One inevitably joined me, and I enjoyed a few minutes of family gardening time while Brandus pulled on his work gloves and said, somewhere behind me, as I attempted to dig up an extraordinarily stubborn root system, “And I know just which weed I’m going for first!”

I turned around. Just in time to see him not only lift the entire sunflower I had been so excited about right out of the ground, but also twist the stem and rip it even as Voldemort and I both yelped, “No!”

Strike one for gardening day.

Strike two came when the plumbing dude came and told us that the guy who had installed our new furnace last year had screwed part of the drainage installation and the furnace and a/c were currently pouring water onto the floor upstairs and destroying the ceiling in the garage. Awesome!

Strike three, however, was where we all gave up and walked off the ball field, because we were obviously out of our league.

Brandus went after one of the taller than him, tree-like weeds with nothing but his bare hands and his temporary loss of sanity. Instead of cutting down some of it so he could reach the bottom row of branches, or even trying to loosen up the root ball with the oh so convenient weed diggy tool thing* I had IN MY HAND. Or even going to get the “camping” ax** he bought last year and chopping the damn thing down like the tree it is – no. He decided to just..pull it up. Straight out of the ground.

Unfortunately for him, the tree-weed had other plans. Plans to burrow down into our yard underneath the landscaping all the way down to the CORE OF THE EARTH and cackle at his pathetic attempts to remove it from our lives.

Instead, Brandus forget the most important rule of lifting heavy things currently attached to the core of the Earth – LIFT WITH YOUR LEGS, NOT YOUR BACK.

He heard (and felt) a pop in his lower back as he lifted and twisted the thing, and when I rounded the corner, he was laid out on the ground with the tree hovering menacingly over him looking almost completely unruffled as Brandus choked out moans.

I..did not panic. Much.

The good news is that Brandus is fine – just sore.

The bad news is that the weed-tree remains mocking us from the backyard.

Bastard.

*technical term
**I have known the man 13+ years. Never seen him camp.