英語(yǔ)播客 A Cup of English Build those muscles.

The other day, when I stopped to get some free firewood, I realized that I'm not as strong as I would like to be. The owner of the tree that was chopped down, had left huge chunks of wood to be taken away. But, when I say that they were huge, I mean really huge. I'm a fairly muscular female, but some of those pieces were far too heavy for me; I was glad that my brother was with me. He is huge, and very muscular, and not intimidated at all by heavy stuff. "Okay," I said, "we can lift some of these together." So we did. Now, I don't know why, but when I lift very heavy things, I get the giggles, especially if I'm with someone else. So, I only managed a few pieces with my brother, but then I started to get silly, so he had to finish loading up the car himself. "It's very handy having a big, strong guy around," I said to him. He seemed to enjoy the work, and tried to fit as many huge chunks as possible inside the car. I wish I was that strong! "I bet you can't hold that piece above your head," I said to him. Oh, it was an easy challenge. He immediately lifted the thing up, right over his head, and posed for a good photo. "Gosh, I hope he doesn't drop that thing on his head," I thought to myself. Of course, he didn't. He just swiftly put it in the car. He told me later that, back in Christchurch, he had to dismantle three tons of bricks from his house. They had formed the chimney sections, but the earthquakes had separated them from the rest of the house. "I had to take them down, one by one, and stack them in the garden." His muscles have certainly been working a lot. And you know what that means. His bones must be good and dense, full of calcium. They say that the best way to avoid osteoporosis is to lift weights. I don't think that that is a condition my brother will have to worry about. When we got back to the house, again, he did most of the work, lifting the chunks out of the car, and I simply cleaned up.

Grammar notes.

Related vocabulary: muscular, to get the giggles, a challenge, dismantle.

1. After a year of lifting weights, he became very muscular.

2. She seems to get the giggles at the most inappropriate times.

3. Sudoku is a good game to play to challenge your mind.

4. The wall needs to be dismantled because it is unsafe.