Last Call

Where do crows go at night? I've never seen a crow's nest except for that small platform high in the rigging from which you spy either land or a whale. Winter schedule, I stoke the stove and go to bed early, get up and catch the fire early morning. It's 10 degrees and falling, no wind, the cold is a blanket that hugs the ground. When I go outside to pee everything is fractal and crisp. I think this storm has passed to the south of me. Breakfast is in order, the first of many at odd hours. Get the stove cranking, might as well eat breakfast. Potatoes and eggs and toast at three in the morning is a fine thing, a last drink and smoke, or maybe the first, it's hard to keep track. Nora Jones sounds good, this time of night. Ain't no use in turning on the light. Don't think twice. My precious time. It's all right. Wrong. Snowing heavily when I get up, go right back to bed, thereby not dealing with the cold-house problem. But I need to dump ashes and knock down the stovepipe, so sleep an extra hour. When I bring in the first armload of frozen wood, I have to start a fire, then outside again, to work while the house heats. 48 degrees inside, 5 outside. Work outside for a couple of hours, in 30 minute hits. Cold, frozen feet, I finally come in for good, eat a large breakfast, with biscuits. I saved out one of the five biscuits, rolled it out as a piecrust and made a very rudimentary sweet potato turnover. Burned my tongue. About 4 o'clock I had the house warm enough to shave and clean up. A sliver of clearing sky in the west makes a spectacular sunset and twilight, orange and yellow through stick trees. Burn a lot of wood on a day like this, and there have been a lot of days like this. Got my electric bill for the first of the two coldest months of the year. I have two little portable oil-filled electric heaters, and at least one of them was going nearly all the time, still the bill was just $112, which is enormous for me (usually $35), but as it is the total heating bill, not all that bad. Can greatly improve the tightness of the house, now that Child Support is over. Buy a pancake compressor and trim out the doors and windows; a case of spray foam to seal the rigid foam between the joists in the floor; a finish floor, maybe finish the siding. No apologies for being lazy, just that I only had $25,000 to build this place, which is $19.29 a square foot, and I had five months to do it, mostly solo. It's sloppy, but most people like it. Fits me like a glove, but it isn't finished, and it isn't tight. If I improve the functioning of the house, and streamline the firewood system, I think I'm good to go for a few more years. Then I might need a four-wheeler, and pay someone to cut firewood. Pegi said something the other day, I just blew it off, that I was the most fulfilled person she had ever met, that I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. I thought about that today, freezing my ass off, and she's correct, I am doing what I want to do. I don't exactly enjoy freezing my ass off, but it is a real connection, not something fabricated electronically. Mostly you set the thermostat and pay the gas bill: in the real world someone cuts trees, mines coal, enriches uranium, something to generate heat. I most admire the Arctic Indians, ice is a great insulator and a seal-oil lamp might keep you from freezing, barely, but that's enough, to survive.