Sally had just finished serving breakfast (lox, bagels, scrambled eggs and fresh fruit salad) and the kids and Begonia were ‘gearing up’ for what they wanted to do. But I had an agenda……

We had picked up a few logs over the past few days and they were in the lagoon floating all nice and pretty-like, eh?

This won’t do! Not in the long run, anyway. In the long run, a log salvager might see them and, if they are in the tidal zone, they are his for the taking. I hate it when that happens (rare, but it has happened). The only solution to this form of legal theft (there are so many more types that I can’t deal with) is to cut ’em to length (about ten to twelve feet) and then we are safe. No one wants logs so short but us.

“Sal, before you guys plan too much, I’m going to go down to the lagoon to protect our forestry interests.”

She decided to join me (she almost always comes when I have the chainsaw running because she thinks she should be there to scream if I ever cut myself enough to warrant such hysterics. I’ve come close but so far only gasps and sighs with occasional accompanying shakes of the head. I am sure her day will come).

So, off we went leaving our guests to fend for themselves. The chainsaw screamed (and Sally didn’t) and pieces fell. It was all going well. But one log was high and dry on a big rock in the middle of the lagoon. I under-cut it so that it would fall right. As I did, it unexpectedly fell a tiny bit down and pinched my saw. I was stalled and stuck.

This would not be a problem most of the time. But this time, the tide was coming in and I had decided to do that one mid-lagoon log just as the water was touching my boots. I quickly threw as large a rock as I could to stand on and yelled to Sal to pass me a thick branch or two-by so that we could lever it up and I could remove the saw. Sal, thankfully was wearing water shoes.

She levered and I removed the saw and finished the cut. The log fell down in the right place and made a big splash.

Now I was standing on a little rock in the middle of the lagoon with about a foot of water under me and the tide coming in.

“Sal! Come get me! Carry me to land!”

“Yeah. I’ll get right on that. Just give me a few years to bulk up!”

It’s not a BIG story. It’s a very small one. But that and wet feet is all there is to report today.