A sense of accomplishment

Today was a great day. Not a great day like yesterday where I was with friends, hunting down the biggest nuisance pest in the great state of Iowa, white tail deer.
But a productive great day. I had borrowed my monster-in-law’s truck and needed to return it to her. So when I got down to the farm she had a list of things that she wanted me to do for her. Chores, so to speak.
First, I had loaded up her truck with wood to weight it down. Her truck is a two wheel drive farm truck and I am more comfortable driving it on snow when I have 500 pounds of weight in the back. So the first thing I needed to do was unload it. Some of that wood needed to be split, so I backed the truck up to the splitter and I split some wood.
Then I plugged in her loader tractor so that it could be started so we could put on chains. With winter and snow here she needs trains on for traction. Then I went and found her chainsaw and brought it into the house to warm up so I could cut up some trunks that were in the way.
About this time Wife showed up with my truck so that she could give me a ride home. Since Wife is pretty smart she had brought her homework just in case I wasn’t ready to go. So while she hunkered down to study I took my truck over to the splitter since I needed to move the split wood from MIL truck over to my truck and I needed to split some of the wood in the back of my truck.
Lunch. Pizza, steamed vegetables, apples.
After lunch we took the loader tractor to the machine shed and jacked up the rear end so that we could put on the chains. If you haven’t put chains on a tractor all I can say is that it is a serious full body work out. Not much cardio but you will use every major muscle group excepting maybe your jaw muscles. After the chains were put on MIL tried to torture me by telling me she thought they could be tightened one more link. I tried, I really did. Pulling on 100 pounds of chain stretched across a 5 foot tractor tire is an experience everyone should try. Especially while the tractor is jacked up and the wheels are free spinning. Suffice to say they were as tight as I could get them.
After that I took the chainsaw and quartered the stumps, fired up the splitter one last time and split another couple hundred pounds of aged oak. Then loaded it all up into my truck. As I type this out almost all of my muscles ache. I sprained my wrist trying to tighten the tractor chains. I froze my legs while splitting, loading then unloading the wood in the truck. (12 degrees F outside, thank GOD I filled my tags yesterday)
However, I feel like I worked hard and accomplished quite a lot today. This is the kind of tired that says you worked really hard and you will sleep very well tonight. This is a great feeling.