Crick

I sat reading most of the day, in my rather uncomfortable writing chair, and ended up with a pain in my neck; a police procedural that was pretty good. I needed fiction, wanted to get away. R. J. Ellory "A Simple Act Of Violence" complex story and interesting characters, a fine read for a day off. I never get out of my bathrobe. I can take off days like this because I live alone, no one is expecting anything of me. A paragraph, maybe, if I have power or a line to send on, but nothing more. I can just listen, usually what I'd do. And that would give a clue, what direction I was headed. Rain starts in the night, a soothing sound, continues all day. At dawn clouds in the hollow below me. The lexicographical circles have decided that the word of the year is tergivesate (ter-JIV-e-sate), a word I've never heard, that means to change one's attitude --- equivocate. Mac says Browne is more Baroque than Rococo, more Bach or Purcell than Mozart, and after thinking about it for a while, I tend to agree. Heavier rains for a while, then backs off into a slow soaker. I harvest ten gallons of wash-water off the clean roof by just setting out a couple of pickle-buckets on the back stoop. Mid-day I open the other bottle of mead that Kim had brought from his brother Kurt. I think it's orange blossom honey, but I'm not sure. It's very good, crystal clear and a delight on the tongue. Marilyn and I, for years, brewed a mead variation called cyser (spelled several different ways) which is a fermentation of apple cider (instead of water) and honey, sometimes bottling it as a sparkling wine. By a system of primitive distillation we could make an apple brandy. Calvados for blue-collar workers. I have to turn the radio off, usually get my hit of news from NPR on Sunday and Monday, but can't stand it today. The last time I was in Florida, I got Mom to show me how to make milk-gravy, and finally got it right, made a wonderful double helping of caramelized onions, chipped beef and mushrooms, in gravy, on toast. Comfort food of the highest order. Need to get outside, don't want to take a walk in the rain, though I often do, so suit up, go out to the woodshed and split kindling. When starting two fires a day, as I do most days now until March, I use a lot of kindling. Then there's the next step in fire-building, what I think of as starter sticks, something very dry and larger than kindling that can actually get a split or log burning. I found a bunch of oak class-room chairs in a dumpster behind the new high school, I just smash them up with a small axe. Also the pallets I scrounge from behind the paint store, which are usually oak, but sometimes a different hardwood. Both very good for this purpose. For years I worried about getting the nails out of the pallets, before I burned them, then realized they're actually an asset. I never walk across the compost heap in bare feet, and after the compost is tilled into the raised beds, I'm not really in danger of eating one, AND they're a great source of iron. Leave them, cut between the nails. Circular saw firewood is very easy and safe. Position yourself to the left of the kick-back zone, right, if you're left-handed; the average cut takes a few seconds. In an hour you have a month's supply. I use a carbide blade, wear goggles, doesn't matter if I scrape the occasional nail; a few sparks, maybe a singed patch on the back of my hand, nothing threatening. Except for the shipping, the logistics, pallets are the answer to third-world housing. I could build a mansion out of these, much less a hut; world enough and time, but I seem to be busy, doing something else.