A minor fixation

Good morning world. This is about the earliest that I’ve been alert in...oh...can’t remember when.

So, I attacked the pile of wood yesterday and put quite a significant dent in it. By the time I was finished putting that significant dent in it, my bones said “That’s enough, thank you. Stop torturing us.” So I came inside and did the things that had to be done. Finally, parking my weary bones on the sofa to watch a little tube, the next thing I knew it was a half an hour ago. I must have been tired.

The super great thing is...I get to do it all over again today. I hope to be finished before the storms hit. They haven’t decided exactly what we’re going to get yet, but it’s going to be many hours of some combination of rain, freezing rain, and snow. Obviously, the sooner I can get all the wood under cover, the better. I have no desire to try digging wood out of a snow bank or trying to smash it apart after it has been frozen together with freezing rain. Besides, wet wood doesn’t burn. It smolders.

Not that I’m fixated on wood or anything.

By the end of today, all I want is for it to all be stacked, tidy, and covered.

I wasn’t planning to use the stove this year. And there is a lot of preparation involved in the whole process, when I do. I have to get the fire resistant rug, out of storage, to place in front of the wood stove so no embers can pop out to burn the carpet. I also have unpack the throw rugs and the runner to protect the carpet from wet feet as I bring wood in every day to refill the rack beside the stove...which I also had to drag out of storage. When you’ve got an armload of wood, taking shoes off at the door is out of the question.

Then I have to erect the frames for the stacked wood. Also a 6’x2’ rack on the deck for a close at hand wood supply for when the weather is really ugly. And fill it and cover it, of course.

It doesn’t really seem like all that much, but when trying to get all that in place and square away a big pile of wood sitting in the driveway in something under 24 hours, it feels like rather a lot. It would have been so much easier if this storm situation hadn’t cropped up suddenly.

The lad has been unavailable for duty, unfortunately. Between school, track practice, and semester finals, he just doesn’t have ten minutes to call his own. Though I don’t think he felt particularly bad about having legitimate excuses for not helping, he still felt guilty. But as I pointed out, it’s good for me to do this on my own. He’s going to be gone in a year and so self-sufficiency is a good habit to rely on.

Still, I will be ever so glad when this is finished. When it is, life will get back to normal. And I’ll stop talking about wood piles.