Lingering Coldness

Left on my winter schedule, an hour early, try and get a good fire going before dark. The house, inside was 50 degrees, and I can deal with that, dress warmly to write at the other end of the room from where the cookstove cranks. I need a small quiet fan, D said the built-in fans on their fireplace do an amazing job of circulating the warm air. Freezing my ass off, actually; as expected never got above freezing at the house, and I thought about the trip to Florida, meet my girls and see my parents, and when I get back, the inside temp will probably be 36-38 degrees. Which is fine, you're not going to freeze to death, but it will take 48 hours to reheat the interior mass of the house, the ten thousand books, the posts and beams, the massive staircase, the two-inch thick stone countertops. It's a heat-sink. It's like a phase-change salt, that stores heat, then releases it. I know this house well, I've watched it, studied the idiosyncratic self, know how badly I leak heat. Truth be known, I'm a sieve. 27 windows is probably too many in a house of 1300 feet, but a house in the woods is essentially an observation post and you need to be able to see out all sides, on both levels. I'm actually missing one window, that I didn't think about, I thought about all the rest of them, I can justify every one, but why isn't there a small, fixed-pane, horizontal window, looking north, from where I sleep? I overlooked it. I hadn't imagined it was important, nice to know you're often wrong, what you thought someone else meant. Meaning is tricky. What you thought you meant. There was a story I meant to tell here, I had a story all made up and everything, but it's then the phone rang. A telemarketer in Bali. I ask about the weather. And we were off to the races. I lost the thread, I'm more ephemeral than that, I parlayed inattention into a business, what we didn't mean. This is what's called betting futures, progressive bets in black-jack, a system, if you wanted to apply yourself that way, you could earn a living doing it, the cards fall where they may, a spread. Like tea leaves. Make something of them if you will. Counting cards is easy, if you train yourself, I do it best when I don't think about it, let my mind float. I remember everything for a short period of time, then it's gone, I harbor no anger. Anything I might say is probably a product of just trying to get better, you know, more clear. What's said. I'm guessing, but everything seems germane. It happens for me, at a certain point, that I can't mention something that doesn't fit. I look at my tool-kit, it doesn't explain it, I'm left with you. Not particularly where you'd want to be, me and you, what we thought we meant. Listen, I need to cut myself a lot of slack, everyone would agree I'm unbalanced, just don't fall.