Whew!?

Whew! I am so glad to be back.

Christmas preparations are so time consuming. Last weekend we were overwhelmed by them.  Getting the tree, going Christmas shopping, and Grace had some friends visit from college for the weekend. Also, the snow last weekend really turned up the pressure on my preparations for a long winter’s nap. We burn wood to heat our house and water. The system trades efficiency for safety. The firebox is outside. It heats water and pumps it through insulated tubing into the house where we use it to keep warm and toasty. The quantity of wood needed for this operation is large and takes the determination of Henny Penny as she worked that wheat crop during the summer and fall in preparation for that loaf (get it? worked hard and loaf) of bread.

In an average year, the weather turns really cold around December 15. I have a goal to start cutting wood around Labor Day and put the last log on the stack on December 15. Then I put on my cap and settle down in the man cave and come out March 15 get my summer wood pile cut for hot water.  But it appears this year that the cold came a couple of weeks early and I may have to look for a window of opportunity during a mild break in deep winter.

All of that stuff took up the time allotted for writing. That was last weekend. This weekend it is raining in Indiana (for my international readers). So I am yours for the next however long.  The weather channel has posted its severe winter weather warning for the flurries we might be receiving tomorrow. I do believe that the advent of the weather channel has been a bad thing overall. Sure who doesn’t like seeing Jim Santore being blown sideways with a back drop of pounding surf during hurricane season.  And I never get tired of seeing a tornado racing across the Kansas prairie.

But every time I turn around they are warning me to get eggs, milk and bread at the supermarket because the next big snow is just around the corner, and everyone needs their French toast. Usually it is for nothing. It seems to me that we are much better prepared for the weather than we were 30 years ago. Our vehicles are much safer and reliable. We have cell phones, under armor and thin-sulate. So why do the folks at the Weather Channel try to keep us worked up with these warnings. Back in the bad old days, if we were stranded on a rural country road, the drifts would be high enough that we would walk over to the nearest telephone pole, bend over and use our trusty lineman’s handset to call out the emergency crews. And thin-sulate sminsulate, we used to stay warm by putting 30 lbs of cloths on and utilizing the shear exertion of moving that much wool and cotton around to generate body heat to keep warm. And trust me, I never kept my chestnuts protected by under armor. That’s why we roasted them on an open fire.  Toasty.

And what happened when we had no forewarning with the blizzard of 78? Thousands of people were stranded in our homes for a week with nothing to eat, a few decks of cards, and a 1000 piece puzzle that had one edge piece missing. Argh!  What did we do? I’ll tell you what we did. We cheated at solitaire, we turned the house upside down looking for that one piece, we ate our young, and made new ones. How many of you are 32 years old and have a vague sense that you had older siblings that no one ever talks about.  Weird.   

Whew! It is good to get back. I just needed to get that off my chest.

Take Care,

Roger