A Story Worth Telling

I would like to invite you all, dear readers, to imagine a story that justifies a photograph of mangled, charred springs. How did they get there? What did they belong to originally? Why do they appear to have survived a fire?

For the true tale behind this image, read on....

Ever since we moved from the city to the country, Scott has really embraced a more, shall we say, "back-to-basics" lifestyle. He spends hours out in the yard every evening, digging, hauling, sawing, trimming. What he digs, hauls, saws, and trims often remains a mystery to me - I just resign myself to the idea that he must be doing SOMETHING, so I carry on with whatever I am doing and don't give it too much thought.

As of late, however, he has become a bit of a pyro. He has been starting fires (safely) in our backyard for the burning of leaves, twigs, and really anything of no value that he can get his hands on. He has adopted an "I-could-burn-that" attitude. Sometimes I peer out the window and all I see is my husband's face lit by an orange glow. Slightly creepy. When he finally comes in, he is a walking campfire air freshener.

He simply loves the fact that we live out in the woods and he can have his fires. "AHA. LOOK WHAT I HAVE CREATED. I HAVE MADE FIRE. I AM HUNTER GATHERER AND I HAVE MADE FIRE."

I joke. (But not really.)

So amidst all this nightly burning, we come to another matter.

It is (was) the matter of an old couch that was taking up space in our family room. It was the couch that I bought as a student many years ago and we just never got rid of it. Recently, it had become the "dog" couch and was more or less in shambles. Not only would no one pay a dime for it, but I don't even think we could have given it away.

We were trying to figure out what to do with it.

"I could burn it," Scott joked. (But not really.)

"Haha."

"Well, I COULD burn it..."

"Yes, I guess you could."

[15 minutes later....]

"Would you help me get this thing outside?"

"Now?! Wait...no...are you seriously.....?"

And so, incredulously, I witnessed Scott lift the old couch at one end and drag the dog-pawed thing out of the house, up the outside basement stairs, across the lawn, and onto the coals. You know what happens next, my friends. Yes, he set it ablaze. Apparently it was reduced to the springs in a few short minutes.

Boys and girls, this is what the country life has done to us. Not only are we burning our old furniture instead of disposing of it respectably, I think we may just be on to a new boonie-ville social activity: "Dude, jump on the 4-wheeler, we're headed to the MacNeill place for a couch-burning!!! Bring your bow and arrow!"

Spectacle as it may be, mission accomplished. Goodbye couch, R.I.P.