Feb 1 The First Step

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

Lao Tzu

Too cold to run the gen today. No video games. I will be going out to cut wood later. I missed a log out there yesterday when my chain broke.

There is a ton of things I should be doing inside. Cleanup, cleanup, cleanup. I know it will sound like blaming, my cats destroy every room they touch.

My kitchen is a great example. They can still get in there. When I divided the room to keep them out, I used 1×6 boards. Thinking I was so smart by leaving a gap between the boards to allow warm air to circulate into the kitchen. As the boards dried, the gaps got bigger. Big enough for small cats to wiggle through.

Their favourite thing to do besides knocking everything on every horizontal surface to the floor is pooping. Everywhere.

If I leave any bags of garbage or tin cans anywhere, they empty them.

If I hang laundry to dry in there, they make it their mission to hang from them till they are on the floor, where the poop is.

I could redo the walls to keep them out if I had any more 1×6 boards.

I need to rethink the whole kitchen thing. Redesign and rebuild make it cat-proof. I also need to repair some water damage in the walls and the floor.

Now a small project becomes a giant one. One of many that needed doing. Too many.

Before I start, I needed to add a 12v port by my bed, so I could do the design on my laptop.

While I am there, I might as well add the two voltmeters, so I can monitor my battery banks. Oh, yea, I will need to build a stand for the laptop, so I can use it on the bed.

And so it goes, a million smaller projects to get to the bigger ones. Design the room, do cleanup, move the stuff, start deconstructing and then reconstruct.

ETA 12 th of I don’t think so.

Where should it start? The planning then comes the action. That’s the part that thwarts me. My disabilities can get in the way. It is 13:15 I am already tuckered out just doing the maintaining chores.

And so it goes.

I need to empty that room out. Takedown the walls and start the rebuild.

After putting on a new chain, I gathered the things I needed to cut more wood. The old sled, the chainsaw, machete, the steel bowls for snow. Then I went out, cut every piece of wood I could find, loaded them on the sled, and dragged them inside.