More About WORK!

Since I wasn't getting enough hours at the Open School, Matt begged his dad to give me a job within the family business: "Clark and Sons Lawn Care." My generous father in law was ok with it, and we assured him that I was experienced. In high school I worked a summer on the grounds crew at Little America and the next summer for Jack Bluemel in Lyman. But those were both crews made up of mostly girls, so this is totally different for me. We have Matt, his younger brother Kyle (who is a year younger than me), another brother Nate age 16, a cousin Brian (my age) who moved our couch and our washer into two different apartments by himself, and Jacob who is not related whatsoever and is 18. So I'm the only girl and totally out of my leauge. I have never worked so hard in my life, but it's nice to be doing some physical labor and I get to work with Matt almost all of the time so that makes it even better. Plus since I do have another job, I'm only there until lunch.
Anyway, so today Matt and I were pruning a yard. When I say pruning you probably think it's clipping a few bushes. OH no no no. This week Matt has already cut down 24 aspen trees and is working on a box elder tree today. So I started clipping down some lilac bushes and hauling trees and branches to the truck and trailer. In the two hours I was there, I pulled four splinters from my flesh, three branches from my clothes and hair (they really were stuck, honest), lost my shoe in the truck bed amidst all of the trees, and almost had at least three heart attacks while watching Matt work the chain saw.
This is getting long, but I have to tell this. So when you're chopping down a whole tree in someones yard, you're supposed to chop off the branches first, then the main trunk in pieces. So I'm dragging a large piece of aspen (hee hee) from the backyard and look up to see Matt half way up the tallest and fattest branch on the box elder WHILE running the chain saw on the SAME branch. Heart attack #1. Next he gets the saw stuck in the branch so he climbs higher, with no foot holds like a freakish monkey, and is yanking on the saw and the top of the branch at the same time and all the while periodically losing his balance. Heart attack #2. Next he has me climb the latter that's next to the tree (very tall) to hand him a tie down so that he can tie the saw to the tree so that if it falls it won't hit the ground. I get to the top, hand him the thing and he starts violently shaking the branch. Suddenly the saw falls, along with the huge branch, and the branch hits Matt, then the latter (which I'm on), then the ground with a boom. Heart attack #3. So when we came home for lunch, we had to mend three gashes in Matt's arm along with one across his right eye brow where he was stabbed by a limb. And he just went back to do more of this... Heart attack #4. :)