Fired! No girls allowed!

Today I was fired.  Just like that.  Told I should not come back to this job, and that if I did, I’d be chased right away!
That’s some pretty rough treatment, isn’t it?  But, I will have to say that I showed up at the jobsite without the supervisor’s approval, and so was never hired in the first place.  I was volunteering.  But, I still got fired.  Guess my help just isn’t wanted around here today.
Yippee!!!!
I got the day off!  Like it or not (and I did like it, I just was surprised), the boys got hired to work, and they didn’t need me as their supervisor.  A strange thought for me, since I’m always their supervisor!  Just not today.
(Well…a little time has passed, and now I’m switching to the past tense.)
Daddy’s boss became the Little A’s boss, and what a job they had to tackle! Something like three miles of wire needed separating and, eventually, stripping and dismantling. It didn’t look too bad until you saw that a steel core had to be removed from the strands of aluminum wire before it could be taken to be recycled. All by hand.
On Sunday, the boys started the task. A very eager-beaver Lil A jumped right in. Wire cutters, safety goggles, whatever it would take, he was ready! The littler A’s got to work soon after, and since I didn’t have anything specific to do, I came out to see how the job was going. It soon became apparent that this was going to be a job that would require some real focus in order to finish it by night. I guess I felt a little bit sorry for the boys as we all looked at that huge pile of wire needing attention
So, we all jumped in and started–cut–twist–bend–then begin again. We really did keep at he job, but by the end of the day, the pile to be done still dwarfed the pile we had done. This was going to be quite a job!
The next sunny day the boys geared up again, and I came out to help get the job advanced along. That’s when the Boss Man came out and declared that I was not part of this deal. This was a boys’ job opportunity, and no moms were going to be working at this job. His intention was to hire the boys so they could have practical work and I could have a breather.
When it was explained this way to me, and when the Boss Man himself offered to supervise the operation, I became quite cooperative. ? I was instructed to head inside and work on whatever I needed to do. After changing mental gears, that became easy enough. I enjoyed working on our Christmas cards. ?
Something else I enjoyed was keeping up with what was happening on the job site out my window. Happy chattering, frequent check-ins by the Little A’s to keep me updated, and I did see that progress was happening. What surprised me the most was Littlest A, who went to work like a true helper-boy. Somehow, working for the Boss Man inspired this little A!
Really, working with the “big guys” inspired all of the Little A’s. Soon, Boss Man’s brother, and Grandpa B. joined the team, and the wire really began to fly!
I think that working with the guys is an healthy thing for boys to do, because they see how responsible men see a task, jump in, and get it done! And, even though the Little A’s need to improve in that area, I was encouraged to see that boys respond to healthy examples of hard-working men.
Not surprisingly, within a short amount of time, the wheels began turning in the mind of Mr. Boss Man, as he commented that there must be a faster way to do this job! His inventive brain soon came through for him, and next thing I saw, the guys had a railway crossing gate, through which they were running the wire to separate the strands. This speeded up the task by leaps and bounds, and the daunting task suddenly became manageable. And the pile of wire began to shrink visibly. So, they had those three miles of wire separated and snipped, and that phase of the job was completed! As for the unwinding each strand of wire, when the Boss Man saw how tedious that job turned out to be, he called that phase off until he could figure out a better way to tackle the task.
Great work, Boys!
And special thanks to Mr. Boss Man and his crew for the Mom’s day off!