Nothing Fancy

A chicken pot pie. Anything with a crust. Apple crisp. I'll do some cooking this weekend. One more hour under the house tomorrow, thank the gods for a nice day (I got lucky) because a very cold front moves in Sunday night. Whatever it takes to get battened up. No rain today, just some spits, and I was able to get up the hill and bring in a few things. I've been carrying two five-gallon buckets of water, as ballast, in the back of truck and I'll need to trade that out with a couple of rocks or something. I saw a nice pile of free wood on the way home tonight, but it was too dark to stop, I might go get it on Sunday, hard to pass up pre-cut firewood. Another dead tree on the telephone line, some local (with enough wood already, one supposes) had cut it up into manageable pieces and just left them by the side of the road. Happens all the time around here, hardwood capital of the world, and everybody carries a chainsaw around in their truck. Work for the day was cutting paint in the two big windows and Pegi's room is now officially Lavender. A little bright for me but she's going to love it. Restored her office, cleaned up, closed up, and D was certain I could make it up my driveway. I was too, because I've developed an algorithm or a system that allows me to judge, from the conditions outside the back door of the museum, whether or not I can get up the drive. There's a lot of boring criteria, but it's over 90% successful, not too bad for someone who never took a course in statistics. Mostly trial and error, a meta-system I apply locally. I learn this way, that if the center hump of asphalt on sixth street is dry, and the potential puddles you learn if you're a smoker, are dry, then probably there's been enough wind to dry the top of the driveway. I'm dressed warmly right now, comfortable; it's forty-eight degrees outside and I don't light a fire. Fuck a bunch of cold. D doesn't understand that I work all those extra Saturdays because I enjoy his company, everyone else is jealous, and they don't even know of what. It's blowing a full gale right now, and this is when the ridge-tops suffer. Stunted trees are bent once again, and when you cut them, they spring apart, like creatures with their own imaginations. What the wood wanted to be, as opposed to what you wanted the wood to do. Classic de lima. I fall down heavily on the side of the wood.