You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.
George Burns
Enjoying the last days as a 66 year old. Earlier I cut three maybe four pallets into firewood.
We have -32 coming tonight. Too sore to write.
Nov 30
It is what they predicted fooking cold. The fires I had yesterday made indoor living tolerable.
Today was the dreaded ash day. The ashes inside the woodstove were too high. That didn’t leave much room for burnables.
I made the trip down to my van to grab a covid mask. Not perfect protection, but better than nothing.
Ash makes a very fine lung clogging dust. Ashes done, I lined the bottom four inches with cat poop.
I figured they could contribute some heat. On top of that empty catfood bags then, paper garbage I had saved over the warmer months.
Then finally some of the pallet wood I cut yesterday. I lit that and went out to gather a huge bowl of packed snow for melt. Some time in there cats were fed and given fresh snow for water.
That would get them through until the snow on the woodstove melted. Finally my turn came.
Coffee coffee coffee. I thought I left enough boiled water in the kettle. I didn’t. Great no coffee.
Then I looked to my right on the desk there was a two liter bottle of snow melt. It was a bit chunky, I mean there were floaty bits.
I decided to pour that through a bamboo coffee filter. It was slow but it did filter the chunks and floaty bits. Twenty minutes later I had enough water to boil for coffee. Boil was the operative word.
I read that snow water was full of bacteria and pollutants. Usually I filter that through carbon filters first. Two cats got into my water filter room and destroyed it. It was a disaster.
I would have to try to rebuild that system in my loft. It was already to tight in there. It would take weeks to fill only using snow water. I was only burning two fires a day. Each fire made 2 1/2 liters.
Cats consumed 3 liters a day. I comsumed a liter, that left roughly a liter, the system need 19 liters to be functional.
The question arises how long would it take to fill if I didn’t do the work. Forever.
Great while I was typing my overfilled kettle boiled out on the counter. I lost a half a cup to that. Gotta go
Later
It is almost midnight, I could say I was waiting to turn 67 at midnight, but the truth is I am waiting as long as I can to light a fire.
it is almost -32 outside. 2.4 inside my room. I am under many blankets and cats. Another hour till my birthday. Time either for reflection or a match.
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