Splitting Kindling

A chore I've done for decades, but I never fail to delight in cleaving large splinters off a billet I'd put aside because its grain was perfectly straight. I use a hatchet and a 24 ounce framing hammer and work inside an old wheel-barrow tire, to keep things from flying off, kneeling on a foam pad. There's a zen aspect to it. I'm after pieces that are an eighth up to a quarter of an inch thick and six to eight inches long. A lot of the kindling, maybe 40%, comes, naturally, from the process of splitting serious logs for the night-time fire. When you strike a round of wood with the maul, you often have to hit it one more time, and you rarely strike it in exactly the same place, so there are splinters. I save these. I have a trash can I picked up at the Goodwill I use for kindling; when I'm splitting serious wood I keep it close at hand. The bark from a young red maple makes excellent kindling. Next, on the fire, is either an oak chair or parts of a pallet (often cherry or black walnut) then a stick of red maple, then red oak, until, at the end of an evening, I put on a stick of Osage Orange and go to bed. It sounds like a color field, but it's really just the cost of doing business. Delicate dirty business. I have to, confront may be to harsh a word, confer, with Pegi, about two scheduling conflicts. I'm not sure she knows they're impossible. A text-book case of impossible. I can make almost anything happen, whatever illusion you require, but I'm old enough to admit impossible. So these two glaring errors bother me, no way I can correct them, I'm the fucking janitor for god's sake, I don't plan, I merely mop. Someone has their head screwed on wrong, this is an art museum, not just a venue for wedding receptions. I haven't lost my temper in 30 years but I'm on the brink of a melt-down. I refuse to see how an office manager could run the show. Spare me all the bullshit. If I could sell this place, I'd move further south. I'm tired of being cold and I'm tired of illiterate assholes telling me what to do. Maybe that's the way of the world, but I'm not happy with it. I'd rather eat grubs and live in a tree-dip pit. Better to not be answerable than to be a pawn. That may be too strong, I'm just pissed, not like I'm going to shoot up a wedding reception or anything, but this path sucks, the potholes, the way the centerline isn't actually centered, and that edge, where the blacktop goes to verge, could use some work. Three things, right? compose a list.