Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2016
Home from work about 45 minutes ago. I stayed about 40 minutes extra because I have an inspection tomorrow and everything has to be up to snuff. I did some work at home yesterday and finished up the rest of what I wanted to do tonight. Nothing left to do tomorrow but pray.
Nick was still in the barn and has just slammed the back door to announce his entrance. Did I tell you he slams and bangs and throws everything. He always claims it is by accident or the wind caught it or whatever. He is much better about keeping it less obvious and not quite as deafening as he did a year ago, but I still feel the waves of anger reverberating in the walls and doors of wherever we might be at the time.
He came up the stairs to tell me not to run the water in the shower tomorrow morning until I decide it is hot enough, but I should just hop in because there is now only one burner working on the hot water tank. Well there were two working yesterday and he acts as if I should have known not to do this in the first place. And well, well, well - the house is so cold in the mornings that I have to warm up a bit before I jump under water of any temperature. I have started turning the electric baseboard heater on in the bathroom as soon as I close the bathroom door and this way it is nearly tolerable to pull the curtain aside when I am finished and not freeze to death while I dry off. This might sound a little dramatic to the rest of the civilized world however the house is often 16 or 17 degrees Celsius and that is downstairs on the main floor. There are no floor vents from the furnace on the second floor. There is a large open area where the stairs are that lead up to the balcony and hallway to the other two bedrooms on the second floor, but none of the hot air is blown into any of the bedrooms and they get pretty cold at night with the doors closed. Each room has electric heat but I dislike sleeping with it on, by the morning I always feel crusty and all dried up. It is nice to be able to turn it on crawl back under the covers for 20 or 30 minutes but right now we don't have the money to pay for both kinds of heat. I have already explained the heating ridiculousness. The oil furnace is also too expensive to run. It is the best, the whole house is warm and toasty in half the time of anything else.
Last night the house got pretty cold and I just thought this morning that Nick had forgotten to top the wood up before he went to bed, so I decided I should remind him to do it tonight so he wouldn't forget again. Then it occurred to me to go down into the basement myself to put a piece of wood or two on and I must admit I was totally surprised or shocked to see there was absolutely no wood at all sitting on the floor next to the furnace. Or anywhere else for that matter.
I had nagged all summer long about the fact that we had run out of firewood every winter and had spent unnecessary money on power and oil, and I was told a million times not to worry. There would be firewood this winter. It just wasn't in the basement yet. It was lying all over the property, cut and ready to chain-sawed up into two-foot lengths or just gathered up and thrown into the tractor shovel and dumped in the yard. Nick had hurt his back and the chain-saw motion did make it worse, but that had been his excuse last winter. He had left he wood until the very last minute, as is his extremely exasperating habit - then he had poked himself in the eye somehow and detached his retina. He had to have surgery and couldn't lift anything for six weeks or so afterward to avoid the possibility of the 'laser stitching' coming undone. For more than three months I had to shovel the horses myself on my days off. We did get a lot of help from Nick's daughter and her boyfriend and also from Nick's son. Our boarders arrived in February and they became a big help as well. But I was 'it' if no one else was available. And I had trouble sleeping without guilt if the stables weren't clean and dry before the horses came in for the night. If I was going to be cozy under the covers I wanted to think that the animals in the barn were comfortable as well.
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