On Pounds and Pine Trees....

What a wonderful weekend so far! The summer-like weather has been so long in getting here! My only regret is that we haven't been able to spend any time at our cottage. We've been so busy with the plans for the new addition that we can't justify the "get-away" time. (Or at least hubby can't - I'm always willing to kick back and enjoy!)

In preparation for the addition we've taken the two GIANT pine trees down (it was hard to do - they were at least 75 years old according to the rings) but we had no choice. We couldn't really build around them! Though there is a cottage on Keuka Lake with a big tree growing right through part of it.... I guess we weren't that attached to ours. But we're having the wood cut into lumber to use on another project and the scraps will be taken to the cottage for some nice campfires - if we ever get down there!

The place looks different now - with those two towering giants gone. It's funny, how when you take something away everything changes. And it's not just that the pines are gone - but the house looks different. Smaller for one. And the sun hits it in a different way now. It's best features are no longer hidden.

It's kind of like that when we lose weight. People will say "You look different..." And usually follow it by "Did you lose weight?" Dropping some excess poundage shows off parts we used to keep hidden - like flabby arms and ripply thighs. Maybe the sun doesn't hit us quite in a different way - but the days certainly do seem sunnier! Although I'm not quite ready to bare all my limbs yet - I do see the road ahead and the analogy of my fallen pines works well to keep my sights focused on the horizon. I wish I could drop the weight as easily as my hubby dropped those trees, but then again - I guess it wasn't so easy when you think about it. He had to climb up there and cut branches one by one as far up as he could in order to balance the trees so they dropped in the right direction (ie. not on the house!) And so it is with us. We lose a pound at a time until we can finally drop the word "fat" from our list of self-adjectives.

Happy pruning!