“People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.”
Albert Einstein
8 A.M. days are getting longer, but still cool here.
Some days you just have to let your mind go where it wants to. Some days that is nowhere. I am focused on today’s tasks. I have to empty hot ash out of the woodstove. Not a fun task. The ash gets everywhere. In your lungs in your hair on everything. Even wearing a full face respirator a hat and snow clothes I am still spitting out ash.
Oh well needs doing. I have two big litter boxes to empty into the fire right now not even one would fit. There is about a hundred pounds of red-hot ash I need to remove. And all the time I am doing that no heat. The fire will have to be restarted. I was so smart this morning I burned all available paper in the house. I do have a ton of flyers and old mail in the van, but no kindling, yup you guessed it.
I need to go out and chop wood first, make kindling right at the end of chopping, so it is on the top. Empty hot ash, when that is done empty one litter box full of wood pellets into the woodstove Start a fire on top of that. And that is after I get paper and cat litter wood pellets out of the van.
Then and only then I can do the things I wanted to do today. Clean my kitchen, move my shoe and boot rack out of the fire room. The kittens really like to destroy shoelaces and boot zippers. I think they ate one work boot, steel toe and all, it is missing.
If somehow I managed to get all that done, gas up the gen and play a little xbox as a reward for my efforts. I need to do that anyways solar batteries are low again. Oh and I described three hours of work and it is 2pm.
I have to go and do some stuff.
Managed to chop wood, get the pellets, get paper, make kindling and removed ash, reloaded the fire, put the paper in.
While I was chopping was feeling extreme back pain, coming back inside was just a zombie shuffle, same with doing the rest of the things. I don’t know what motivated me to do all that, and oh yea had to get new snow water because I forgot to move it before doing ash. Like my lungs are right now, it was black. Even wearing the respirator some got in. The whole house filled with smoke because I was doing hot ash.
Usually, it is warm when I do this. It takes three days for the ash to cool. In this temp I don’t have three days. So I have to open the windows and door wide and let the smoke out. Of course the house gets cold and will be for the next three hours.
I have to get horizontal soon, it is the only relief from the back pain.
Getting to lay down was a nice thought, but I heard a litter box fall over in the fire room. Oops I forgot to put in the magic poop powder (wood pellets). 
When I got there it was on its side and a little cat was trying to use it. I put the box upright with cat still inside. I went to fill a large container full of pellets. The little cat used the empty box anyways. Was I mad, nope happy that he used the box?
As soon as the box was filled there was a line-up. Like rockers at Woodstock waiting for the porta-potties. At one time there were the ginger triplets, one inside and two with their paws on each side waiting to get in. You could almost hear the dialogue. “Come on man hurry up I really gotta pee” from one “ME too brother hurry up” from the other. Ya needed the camera for that scene.
I am laying down now. The pain is slowly leaving. I hope the fire is burning its is ten degrees inside.
I can hear crackling. Maybe now I can rest a bit.
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