Must...Stack...Wood...

Before I tell you how easily the firewood pile is transforming into neat, orderly stacks, an introduction is in order. It is time you met Boyfriend.

Blogosphere, Boyfriend.

Boyfriend, Blogosphere.

Boyfriend has been wondering when I was going to get around to acknowledging his existence. Poor Boyfriend. It is certainly reasonable to want your existence to be acknowledged, and I feel it's time to do so. Particularly since it will be helpful to me in telling stories.

A few more words about Boyfriend. First, he is essentially dating three ladies at once - and by that, of course, I mean myself and the Tornadoes. Dating is not a state of being that I ever pictured myself dealing with again...and it turns out I was right, in the conventional "two people spending time alone together" sense of the word. It's more like how I intend to allow the Tornadoes to (one day far from now) spend time in the company of boys, which is only in a group setting and under heavy supervision.

Which reminds me of the second fact I will share about Boyfriend: he is exceedingly patient.

Fact number two is important - in many ways, you can imagine - but specifically it is important to today's woodpile update. It is also at odds with fact number three, which is that Boyfriend is very...tidy.

Very tidy.

...Not that I am untidy, mind you, but I do have to relax my standards a bit due to the fact that - well, I don't call them the Tornadoes for nothing.

Boyfriend helped me clean my basement last weekend (which is probably in the top five hottest things a man has ever done for me) to make way for my new kickass treadmill and my firewood. When I say "clean" I am not saying we moved things around and swept the floor. Cleaning entailed loading up a flatbed truck with junk and taking it to the dump, vigorous scrubbing and vacuuming, painting the floor (who paints the floor?), and assembly of my new kickass treadmill. Tres jolie, my basement.

The one thing he was unable to help me with was stacking the firewood. Because, if you recall, it wasn't here. So I have been chipping away (ha - made a little joke there) at it all week, filling the rack in the basement and, as Boyfriend suggested I might, stacking the excess in lincoln log fashion on a palette outside. Maddeningly, the pile appears to be the same size as when I started. Also, my lincoln log structure? May not have perfectly straight edges.

Here's the thing: I want to do it myself. Why? Because I do. I get like this sometimes. Like a two-year-old. And I just know that Boyfriend is going to get a little twitchy about the non-straight edges and then he will want to help, and that will make me a little twitchy, because?

I WANT TO DO IT MYSELF!

As I see it, here are my options:

Option A: Find the nicest, calmest, most non-two-year-old way to say, "I so love the help but really, I can manage this one." Finish job over course of weekend (BY MYSELF - sorry, did I say that already?)

Option B: Retreat to kickass treadmill at first sign of lincoln log disassembly. Later, self-soothe with sight of neat, orderly stacked wood and disappearance of messy pile.

I'm torn.

What do you think?