The Life And Times Of A City Dweller ...

I'm not cut out for hard labour. Well, not for long periods of time anyway. Yesterday, I decided to trim the mango tree in my front yard cos it was getting a little bit unruly and was encroaching into my Neanderthal neighbours yard. From my previous mango tree experiences with him, I decided to get it trimmed before he starts complaining that the leaves are falling into his place again.

Now normally I would get a gardener to trim the tree for me. But I thought why not save some money and trim whatever parts of the tree I could reach, especially the side that was in the neigbours yard. And besides they do charge quite a bit for trimming the tree and with the cost of everything going up, I wasn't prepared to waste good amounts of money, especially this close to the month end when I need every single cent that I have otherwise I'm probably going to have to get one of those online payday loans to last me until pay day! So I boastfully told wifey I'll do it myself.

I took out my trusty old ladder. You didn't expect me to actually try and climb that tree now did you? I'm not really good at climbing trees though my best buddy calls me monkey boy all the time! LOL! There I was with my ladder and trusty chopper (I'm not some serial killer who owns machetes now, okay, so a chopper it was!), I begin hacking away at the branches. Now these branches weren't really thick I tell you but after hacking at them for a whole 5 minutes, yes 5 minutes (a whole 300 seconds!) my arms start aching like crazy, I was out of breath and I was sweating like a human waterfall!

I turned around to see where wifey was and there she was, observing her *ahem, ahem* supposedly macho and manly husband struggling with great difficulty trying to trim a mango tree! LOL! She looks at me with this look of disbelieve on her face and goes:

'Don't tell me you're tired already?'

'Yeah honey, it's hard work, you know!' I replied.

'But it's only been 5 minutes since you started and you've still got lots more to trim!' She replied.

'What? You mean, this is not enough? It looks okay to me ...' I countered.

'No honey it's not and since you're already there, trim the ones on the other side and also the ones slightly above you, not forgetting the ones behind you' she persisted.

'But honey, there are tons of black ants crawling all over the tree not to mention on my body and some of them think my body is a buffet or something cos they're biting me! I say.

'It's only black ants dear, and black ants don't bite' She says ever so sweetly.

Yeah, sure they don't. I'm only imaging the little critters feasting on me ... LOL! Ok, That's when I think maybe I should have just kept my big boastful mouth shut about trimming the tree myself and just get a gardener to do it. Next time I'll know better ... LOL! And so there I was totally out of breath with wifey standing in the porch like some prison warden to make sure I didn't bail out and with the ants having a grand time biting every inch of my body, I start to chop and hack the remaining branches that she indicated.

And finally after an eternity, well, 20 minutes or so to be exact but it sure felt like an eternity to me, I was done. And you should have seen the amount of leaves and branches I chopped up. It looked like a mini mountain. I was too darn tired to do anything about it, so I left it for my mom to clear later. Mom just didn't know it yet cos she wasn't home and as long as I wasn't home when she came back and saw the mess I made, then I probably could get away with it .... LOL! I don't think I could lift another finger to clean up the place!


I guess I'm not really cut out for hard labour. I was born in the city and have been a city boy all my life unlike wifey who hails from a smaller town and is more in tune to hard work. I was a spoiled and pampered brat remember? I had everything done for me and it was only later in life that I actually had to do stuff on my own. Errrr, don't get me wrong. I can do hard labour if the need required it to, god knows I do hard labour at work all the time ... LOL! It's just that I'm not used to doing it too much! My body ached liked crazy the next day, in fact it's still aching right now. My right arm feels like someone took a hammer and whacked it.

It's really weird though, I can run for miles and not feel achy or out of breath at all, but trimming a simple tree just leaves me totally beat and feeling my age! I think I've just been spoilt silly by city life and paying people to do things when in fact I could be doing them myself. Maybe I wouldn't be so lazy if I actually did go outside and do some hard labour like mow the lawn or something once in a while. I mean, I do help out with household chores and all that but that's not really hard labour.

'What do you mean not really hard labour!' shouts wifey

Ok, ok, that's hard labour too honey ... LOL! But I'm talking about the more labour intensive work that requires strength and all that. Not that I'm a weakling, but I think I'd rather pay someone to do those things from now on. It would at least save me the aches I'm feeling all over right now! LOL!