During halftime of the Giants/Cowboys game on Sunday, my father-in-law mentioned that he had just bought a chainsaw.

Less than 10 minutes later, we were out of the house and in my front yard cutting ugly branches from my big trees. For years I’ve only used hand saws and branch clippers that looked like big scissors. You feel vintage and slightly classy when you use tools like this, but they are terribly inefficient. I got a rush seeing how fast that chainsaw melted through the branch. At that point, I knew we wouldn’t watch the last half of the game. We had more work to do.

The next 4 hours might have been the best thing that happened to me all week. There are about fifteen Oleander bushes in my backyard that have grown over 40 feet, up into the canopy created by the taller, older pine trees. This dense green made for a lot of privacy, but it made my backyard difficult to keep tidy.

Plus, I’ve always suspected that there was a desert Sasquatch out there waiting to club me with a cactus stump. And he needs to get the hell out of there because I have enough problems.

One by one, we cut down the Oleander trees back to Oleander bushes. We dragged the fallen branches to the curb until we had a stack large enough to hide a military issue Hummer. We finished the evening by slicing up a bougainvillea that’s been dumping dead leaves into my pool. I felt a little guilty tearing down the bougainvillea with it’s pretty pink leaves, but they have no place near a pool.

John came over a couple times this week to pick something up random things from our house. Each time he’s pulled the chainsaw out of the trunk of his rental car and manhandled another overgrown bush. It’s fun because each day I’ve come home from work this week, the first thing I do is hop out of the car and explore my front and back yard to discover what’s changed.

As a kid, I despised the sound of Dad’s roaring chainsaw because it was so loud and violent. (Every one of my siblings can describe my epic hate of the chainsaw.) But over the course of an hour, my hatred changed to gratitude. You can’t despise something that is making your life more manageable. It was great.

This has been a very good week.