Weather Report

I crashed early, again, awoke to rain, changing to sleet or hail, then snow; finally got up, about two in the morning, to look about, stick my nose outside. Wind, with a vengeance, and the radio says it's twenty-two degrees, and that will be the high temperature for the next several days. Ten below tonight and I'm as ready as I can be. The kitchen drain will freeze, so I get out the dishpan, to wash dishes, and I get out my piss-pot, which is a two-pound coffee container, plastic, with a tight-fitting lid. The house is fairly warm right now, and I'm letting the fire burn out, so I can dump the ashes and clean the smoke-chase, then I'll burn a very hot fire for forty-eight hours and mostly hang around the stove. Finding something to read isn't a problem, and I dig out my extreme cold-weather gear: snow-boarding pants (I never did), a vest of some space-age material, wool socks. Below zero is purely survival mode, I just eat beans on toast and read. I have a reading nook, over near the stove, that I've fabricated from blankets and chairs, and I sleep there, when it gets this cold. Usually, these conditions, during the day, I wrap up, and read on the sofa. After a day like yesterday, numb trips through the woods, splitting out recalcitrant stumps, I might self-medicate. I finally just stopped, I needed to make two more trips, to collect what B had cut, but I just couldn't do it. Done in. I slept well, awakened to another inch of snow over hard-frozen ground, temperatures steady falling. By sunset it was zero, and still falling. B came over, home from his classes, to make sure I was ok. With his knobbly tires and 4-wheel drive he was able to drive to the top, and asked was there anything I needed for tomorrow. I told him a dozen eggs, so I could make cornbread, but that otherwise I was fine. If it was going to be like this very often I'd invest in a Casio wrist-watch that would wake me every few hours so I could stoke the stove. Hot cornbread and baked beans for dinner. Tomorrow or Wednesday I hope for some marrow bones in the remaindered meat section. I crave marrow right now, and I have a little pickle fork that works perfectly for eating them. I get the house almost comfortable, bathrobe over sweats over long underwear, curl up in the corner with a good book. Quite comfortable, actually. Fuck a bunch of convention.