January 15, 2011

4:28 p.m.

Preparing for Winter, in Winter

Tired. Need a bath.

I made an error in the last entry -- I said the dynahoe was 2800 lbs., and it's actually 28,000 lbs. About 14 tons.

We rehearsed last night; I did okay, though I can't sing high yet. I was too pooped afterwards to deal with cleaning the donated wood stove, so I tackled it this morning.

How odd to feel such a mixture of gratitude to the Universe, and complete annoyance at Plow Guy who gave me this stove (well, I gave him some money anyway, so let's say I bought it for cheap). It was completely filthy, shedding ash all the way in; the ash tray was full and so much ash around and behind it that it wouldn't even go all the way in. The belly was stuffed with a cardboard box full of their trash, kids' papers, magazines and junk mail. It was kind of hard to get out, and in and behind all that, another mountain of ash. I don't think they ever cleaned this thing. It was also full of nails and staples. If you gave someone a stove, wouldn't you even just sort of clean it first?

Maybe that's just me.

Anyway, I spent a long time sorting that out, and then I turned to the fireplace flue. I hadn't been able to close it fully because some debris had fallen behind it over the years and wedged it open. Looked like a couple of pieces of fallen cement, maybe acorns, leaves, whatnot. Karl said I just needed to take the codder pin out of the handle, remove the handle, and turn the flap sideways to take it out. One look at the codder pin and I knew I'd never get it out. It was big, had a large bend on the end, and completely rusted.

Fortunately the edge where it hinged wasn't attached, so I was able to stick a fireplace poker in there and wedge it up enough to just scrape stuff out from behind it. That worked fine. Among the debris was an ancient, fragile little mouse skeleton and a half-melted, orange golf ball.

One of the sons, the one who killed himself in the late 80s, was a pro golfer. He must have hit this ball into the chimney from the yard.

Oddly, the fireplace looks as though it has never seen a fire, period. No ash, no burned spots, chimney open and clean as the day it was mortared. I can't explain why the golf ball looked kind of melted. Maybe they had one fire and said, "Wow, what a strange smell -- like melting golf balls!" and never did it again.

Anyway it's clean now and it closes (just in time to wedge it open for a stove pipe), and I cleaned up the floor wherever there was ash, and I mopped the area.

Then Karl and I went to a friend's house and loaded the pickup truck FULL of pieces of a tree he had cut a few years ago. He wanted to get rid of the wood, I needed some starter pieces, so it worked out fine. It was buried in the snow and it was about 20 degrees outside, but we hossed as much wood as we could fit in the truck. I'll chainsaw it tomorrow into usable lengths as I remove it from the truck, and Karl will teach me how to use a maul on the larger pieces. He and Rose will come to help put in the stove. I've put pallets down on the back porch to stack it. Still need to get a righteous tarp, and create a place in the living room to stack and dry enough to burn for a week.

This is entirely last-minute, as so many projects have been here, but I'll feel a lot better when it's in place. After this weekend I begin to tour almost every weekend until June, and some trips between one and three weeks long. The house needs to be safe and sound while I'm gone. My goal is to be warm, to not have to order oil again this year, and for kitty to be safe and comfy in my absences.

Leaving her is wrenching.

Okay. Bath time, and then dinner.