Tree Stands

So Josh and I spent most of our Sunday afternoon assembling and putting up a new tree stand. This was my first attempt at putting one together, so Josh took on the role as teacher. I must say that it makes me pretty nervous that the one thing that is keeping me from falling fifteen feet to my death, was put together by yours truly. I feel like there should be a professional doing this, not some girl from Jersey who didn't know what a bolt was. (All I could think of was the movie with that cute little white dog). Josh loaded up the car and we went out to the shop to put it together. While he took all the parts out of the box and lined them up meticulously on our "tool tray," I roamed the shop to see what super cool things I could find. My favorite find for the day was this little blue scooter thing, that Josh said is used to slide under cars when you are working on them. Apparently you lay on your back and then push yourself under the vehicle. This does not seem safe to me, so instead I knelt on it and scooted myself around the shop. Much safer.

Once all of our tools and parts were lined up we got to work. By we, I really mean Josh, I just kind of bounced around for most of the beginning. Once we got into it though he taught me how to use the adjustable wrench, identify a nut from a bolt, where washers go (in between the metal so it can move), what a gusset it, and a string of new curse words that I would have never been creative enough to put together. (Kidding, that happened once he was climbing into the tree...). We got the tree stand together relatively easily, with only minor goofing off by me. I wish I would have had a camera because my creative juices were flowing! I managed to turn the seat into a pair of wings...which was awesome until I got myself stuck in them. And then I used the seat as a shield and tried to entice Josh into jousting with me. A great idea until I thought about how dangerous that actually was.

We went and got the tractor, and I came up with the brilliant way to load it in the bucket...thank you Master's degree. Off we went, into the woods. Once we got to our spot, Josh and his dad worked on choosing the correct tree, and I ate raspberries off of the bushes. The bugs were pretty bad, and I am zero help at this point, so I climbed another tree stand nearby and watched from there. I have found that there are less bugs the higher you go. This is also the part of putting up a tree stand that I HATE. They lean the stand against the tree, it is not strapped up there at this point, and Josh climbs up it, while it wiggles and jiggles, and tries to get it strapped while not falling fifteen feet. I closed my eyes. It took three attempts because the backrest kept slipping down, preventing it from adhering to the tree. Finally she was up and usable...but still a little too wiggly for my taste. Apparently it will "settle" and the wiggling should stop. I'll believe it when I see it-thank God for my safety harness.