TEA LIGHTS

Our best neighbor's son is getting married.

Our neighbors are giving the bride the wedding she wants.

I'd say she lucked into some nice in-laws.

The wedding's theme is "hiking".

The bride and groom are avid hikers and campers.

One day our neighbor, who also hikes often,

came across this great log laying there waiting to decompose.

As often happens when one is trying to have a nice wedding without

going to the poor house...

inspiration hit.

 She hiked back to her car and drove home for her husband and son...

and drove them back... chain saw in hand...

to cut the fallen log into sections

of varying heights.

After returning home with the log bits...

she dumped them into a wheelbarrow and wheeled them 

over to our house.

"I need a favor." 

she grinned.

"Oh course you do." 

said the man, who grinned back.

Favors have gone back and forth between our families

for years, I am told.

She held up a stump with an X in the middle of one end.

"I need you to cut out a circle where the X is that goes 

deep enough to hold a tea light."

She passed the stump to Randy and turned to me.

"I'm going to use them on the tables."

I said

"What a cool idea."

(The man gave me a you-are-crazy look from over her shoulder.)

She left and came back right away with a wheelbarrow full of these suckers.

So that is how I was enlisted to be a "clamp" today...

I am often a clamp.

My job is to hold whatever needs to be held.

Today I clamped stumps.

Or I held a clamp that helped me to clamp stumps.

It was messy.

He used a 1.5 inch spade bit...

that blew sawdust all over me.

But I wore safety glasses and thick leather gloves.

Still, it made my nose itch.

I was glad to wheel them back to the neighbor's house.

Well, actually... to walk next to the man as he wheeled them.

But...

much to the man's horror...

I got him to promise to make me some.

"I'd like to put them on the mantle this Christmas.

Maybe I'll put some red bows around them."

That earned me another you-are-crazy look.

But he knows that already.

He didn't complain.

Its nice when your crazy is accepted.

=:]