Ground Fog

A hanging mist in the hollow, rain all day. Read a slightly creepy John Connolly novel. Irish creepy. I had to put away a few books, as the pile on the carpenter chest had gotten too high to see over. I'd gotten out a great many books, when Bear had asked me about the sassafras beam, and they all go back to the construction section, which is difficult of access, being in the tool-room (soon to become my downstairs bedroom) amidst a bunch of dead chainsaws. My sense of order seems to be almost complete chaos. I'm collecting rain-water, so I can wash dishes; and I have to clean and re-season 6 or 8 cast iron skillets. I get awful about the cast iron when I don't use the cook-stove, because I have such a large flat surface and I own so many skillets. When I'm cooking on the wood stove, it's so easy to just wipe out the pan (burn the paper) and wipe on another layer of oil. Roy and I used to laugh about this, using a cured pig's tail to grease a skillet. Magwitching hour, overclap of clouds, tracking oomska through the parlor. Corned beef and gravy on toast. Gravy, in the south, is always an amalgam of fat and toasted flour, except for red-eye gravy which is just ham fat and strong black coffee. Cool morning and much more rain, but the crows are back and I toss a nuked mouse to them on top of the outhouse; then transfer water around until I can clean one of the buckets and bring in a kettle of water to wash some dishes. Another wave of rain moves through, but no thunder, so I turn on Little Dell and search for errant commas. Cold enough to warrant a fire, so I burn what's in the firebox (I stuff crap in there all summer) then add a couple of sticks. No danger of fire from fly-ash because everything outside is saturated. Perfect circumstances. In my bathrobe and slippers, wild beard and filthy hair, I get a nice fire going, and wipe down the stove-top with a lightly oiled towel; it burns off quickly. Sometimes I roast an herb, to scent the house; sage is always good, or juniper berries. I realize it's the perfect opportunity to cook a pot of beans and put on a pound of pintos. Cut up a cured jowl to make cracklings, mince a couple of yellow onions. While the oven is hot, make a pone of cornbread. Let the fire go out, and the beans cook perfectly. I'm reading Beowulf and looking up words all day; eating beans, and cornbread, toasted and drizzled with maple syrup. Rain on the roof, Bach, a dram of Glendronach. I love this life. Roll a cigaret, sit back in the dimness. It was dark today at noon but I have my seven-and-a-half watt LED reading light, my headlamp, to see me through. And just think, at the end of this next winter, I will have read all of Thoreau's Journals. Joel will give me some shit about this, us plumbers; but I defend myself as just someone who reads quickly. It allows me to coast through a lot of fiction, then slow down, and study the history of the fork.