A Guilt Free Birthday

Good Morning!  I have to chuckle to myself this morning as I write this, I had been concerned over Tom's birthday since money is tight and I'm a little laid up so it's not like I could really make him something nice or even get too excited about doing something or eating a really nice meal or anything.  All winter long Tom's been on this firewood kick; that's how he deals with stress, he gets one thing to worry about and concentrates on that.  I mean firewood has been his absolute obsession this year!  We have even started joking about it, the worse things get as far as the stress level goes, the more firewood Tom gathers, which of course we need to heat our house, so it works out just fine, it's just a funny man trait.
But, when Tom said he had to cut firewood on his birthday I figured I had to draw the line somewhere.  You know, the old, every one's gotta be together and having a great time on Dad's birthday thing? I knew the kids wanted to do their normal weekend routine with their friends, but wouldn't want to hurt Dad's feelings, and I wasn't really up to keeping him busy.  So, I figured we might try something new, a guilt free day, let everyone do whatever they wanted and no one feel at all guilty about it, really.  It seemed to work out great for everyone.  Once the kids learned I wasn't cooking anything, that pretty much scattered them.  As for the birthday boy, well..
Now Tom is the kind of guy who loves a good story.  He loves to hear them, but even better he loves to tell them.  And he has a lot of them.  They're very good stories too, and they're mostly true.  Really.  That's the funny part, is that he doesn't even really have to exaggerate most of his stories.  Like today he will go back to work to all of his city friends and will absolutely amaze them with his birthday weekend.  They all think we live some kind of magical life up here in the mountains and I'm not sure, but I think it may be true.
But, anyway, here is my version.  These young men from the city have never been up to the mountains, so you can only imagine what my loud, very mountain man/biker husband seemed like to them, probably a little nuts.  Dan and his friends had stayed at The Royal Roost the night before and Tom joined them on the morning of his birthday.  The birthday morning started out with coffee and some kind of liquor and hunting to no avail.  Sounds like the city kids slamming the truck doors might not have helped much.  So, the rest of his day is happily filled with him cutting up this huge tree all the while showing his fabulous skills with the chainsaw and then giving the kids the privilege of loading the wood while he amazed them with the stories of the area.  And let me tell you, those kids were having just as much fun and beer as the old men were.  It was the funniest thing!
His weekend of fun rounded out when the hunting party (Tom of course) ended up getting two deer about fifteen minutes before the end of the hunting season!  Talk about cutting it close!  The men had been hunting up at the cabin on our private property up there and were on their way home, done for the season, when they came upon the deer down here!  All in all, he had a fantastic birthday weekend, he's got a mountain of firewood, that he didn't have to break his back over, we will have a freezer full of meat and he's got one heck of a story.  The man simply runs into his stories, it's uncanny, I wish I was a fly on the wall at his shop this morning!!!