Further firewood adventures

Today Mom and I went out to split some firewood. Lilly the cat felt the need to come out with us.

“Let's try to split this one.” We each take a swing at a giant log, and miss entirely. The next time it goes in way off to one side and sticks. We yank it out and try again. This time it lands pretty much in the middle. We keep going until we've got a crack all across the top. Then we start banging the hatchet in with a hammer. Lilly complains at the noise. The log kind of cracks. We go to pull it out. It won't pull out.

I lean my foot against it and Mom wiggles the handle. The entire log falls over. She lifts up the handle, log and all, and bangs it on the nearby concrete two or three times. It doesn't crack, depressingly. I stand on the log and wave the handle up and down, and the log rocks gently up and down too. Lilly paces up and down the fence. I end up riding the log-and-axe kind of like a stick horse. Mom goes in and gets the camera, and just about the time she gets it turned on, out creaks the axe.

So we wedge it a bit further down the crack and hammer some more. It gets stuck again. I stand on the log and Mom wiggles that handle. It eventually comes out. We flip the log over and try to crack the other end.

Mom: “I think it won't split because of this.” She gestures at a sticky-out branch disrupting the wood fibers.
Me: “Oh, sure we can split it!”
We chop and hammer.
Mom: “This must be physics. Or geometry.”
Me: “I think it's math plus muscle, and we're out on both those!”

About this time we decide we need a boy. With all due respect to Gabi and Megan, our girl power just wasn't getting the firewood split. Unfortunately, there were no boys handy, nor men either.

So we went through the gate, past the lilacs and Tex's grave, and got some long but thin branches off the woodpile. We balanced them across two of the unsplittable logs and bunged away. They chopped into fireplace-lengths very obediently. Mom found a mid-size log and split it most admirably while I dragged a few more. One of them turned out to be a former 2x4, nicely weathered, and it looked like it needed to have "To the Beach" painted on it and hung in the entryway, so I put that chunk somewhere we wouldn't accidentally burn it.

We decided the woodpile was entirely big enough, and came in and built a fire. Then we collapsed in our respective chairs.

Lilly said, “My, wasn't that enjoyable?”