Something Suddenly Came Up!

I have a confession to make. I'm not a very eager helper. You are probably thinking that it can't be true because I'm an elementary school teacher. After all, teaching is a helping profession  isn't it? In the confines of my day job, I do consider myself somewhat of a helpful person. I help kids all day long. And I also like sharing lessons and ideas with my colleagues. Outside of my job I like to help out at church and don't mind helping my friends. My shortcomings arise whenever my husband asks me for help. I feel like I have quite a few of my own housework type responsibilities that I take care of with little or no help from the three guys I share my home with. So when I hear "Hey Honey, Can you come out here for a minute and help me?" Let's just say I'm not one to drop whatever I am doing and dash out to the garage to hold a flashlight in the freezing cold. My husband is a busy guy. He works all day then runs a small business out of our home at night. Sometimes he needs another set of hands. I find myself conjuring up projects so I will be too busy to help. It's cold in the garage! A couple of weekends ago some trees had to come down in the yard. I made sure I had plenty to do around the house so as not to get roped into dragging tree limbs into the back yard all day long. I actually managed to avoid it and was quite pleased with myself. That is until I went to school on Monday. A friend of mine was telling me about her sore neck and shoulders that occurred from helping her husband fell trees and drag limbs and branches around all day Sunday. Suddenly I didn't feel so proud of myself. So this past weekend I made amends. I have been wanting our back deck to get finished and convinced Tom to work on it instead of cutting down more trees. Ordinarily I would come up with my usual list of have-tos in order to make myself scarce. However, I knew that the job would not only be the deck railing but assembling the new deck furniture. I decided that in order for this project to take less than two full weekends of Tom doing it by himself with two reluctant sons, that it was time for me to jump in and help. I am happy to report that a sore neck and shoulders later, I assembled all of the new deck furniture while at the same time handing Tom tools and helping him level posts. So maybe this means I've turned over a new, helpful leaf!
"What's that Honey? You're planning on cutting down more trees this weekend and you need my help? Shoot! I would, but something suddenly came up!"