Hauling Ashes

It's strange here, the way the rain is spaced out over the year. I haven't ferried in wash water for over two years, and that's with only keeping twenty-five gallons on hand. I don't shave anymore, but I do keep my dishes clean and wash my hair once a week. Coffee, brushing my teeth, and cooking I use the filtered water I buy at Kroger, for 39 cents a gallon, maybe two gallons a week, but I can always melt and boil snow if conditions require. I made a great ham and bean soup with the smoked jowl, dried onions reconstituted in sherry, some dried herb from my secret stash, it's wonderful. I'll be digging those bean skins from behind my molars for hours. A good conversation about failure on the radio. I've always been a fan of failure. At the end of my building career I could spend several weeks designing a staircase and then realize it was possible, but that I wasn't capable of building it. The last couple of staircases I built, I just spent my time letting the materials do what they could do. More difficult than it sounds, because we always want to impose our will. I collected an extra five gallons of wash water because it's supposed to be above 70 degrees Sunday and I'm imagining a good wash and rinse outside, before I don the longunderwear and start eating raw blubber, and that great rotten shark we keep for guests. A good conversation with Linda, she's my best reader, and we always engage. She was harvesting the last of the kale. I envy her that. I was reading about field amputation during the Civil War, fucking Jude had sent me this book years ago, and it's incredibly gross, so it was nice, to hear a friendly voice. Linda thought I did well as an isolate, no more melancholy, or sentimental than I needed to be. Something between a sputter and cough. I pride myself on that. Hawking lugers. I have a land tax bill to pay, six months for $163.00, and I need to get that done before the end of the month because I might not be able to get to town later, and a vehicle insurance payment that is almost the same, and then pretty much nothing. Taking advantage of the warmer weather I haul ashes and decide to work the compost pile tomorrow. I need to deal with shit. Run the composting toilet through its cycle, shovel out the outhouse, then turn the compost pile on top of it. A project that will end up taking most of the daylight. Needs to be done twice a year. If I stop at the museum and use the bathroom, even with their state of the art low-flow toilets, I double my water consumption for that day. Pork-fried rice for dinner, five small loin chips for $2.34, so for about five dollars I get three or four meals, and it's good, I'd feed it to anyone who was hungry. It has all the sophistication of Spam, but it's hot and filling. If I'm busy with something, that's all I want, a casserole, or something I can eat on toast. I'm so easily distracted, it's good to have a clear path to a safe spot where I can get a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of tomato soup. The cookstove is working nicely, with a cleaned stovepipe, and the smoke-chase, that heats the oven, as clean as I can get it. And I have ashes, for the compost pile. Replete. I've been eating a lot of sweet potatoes in several different ways, and it was too warm to waste a fire, so I steamed one, in the microwave, and had it with butter and cream cheese; polenta, with slices of home-cured pork. Eat with my right hand only, so I can hold a book in the left. I have a rock I use to hold my place, if I have to use both hands for something. Then you have to clean your hands and start over. At the Quik-Stop they have these breaded and fried potato wedges, four for a dollar. I'm not exactly addicted to them, but it's close. I get four of them (a full Russet potato) then stop at the Buckeye Dairy Bar for a small vanilla shake. I'm trying to bulk up, the winter, hibernation, but I keep forgetting; when I remember to stop at the lake, mediate between town and ridge, eat some potato wedges and slurp a milk-shake, that the transition is easier if you stop and breathe slowly. I drink milk, I eat potatoes, I'm a naturalized citizen. I'm whitish. Nobody's one thing. Ted Crews is a fucking idiot.