Never trust anyone who doesn’t drink coffee.
AJ Lee
I am sitting in the fire room with the boy cats.
It is less than five degrees in here, but I have a new fire blazing.
I went out to sweep off the solar panels, bathrobe and snow boots. I didn’t stop to take pics. Too cold
Feels like -45, at that temp it didn’t matter. It’s all just too cold.
I had a long 2×4 and a 2×6 left in the fire room from foraging yesterday on the front deck.
I put a fresh battery in the saw and cut those up. That would do till about noon. Then I would have to find more.
In 15 minutes, the temp has doubled in here. It means that the mass is still warm. A good thing.
I remember the day I decided to leave the hospital in January 2015. I had been there long enough.
I dumped the last of my opioids in the toilet. Got scolded by a nurse for that. What was she going to do? Give another patient used pills.
I made a call to get a ride home. I had been in two different hospitals for a total of 45 days, had one spinal surgery, needed another.
It was -45 outside. When I finally got home, it was -45 inside the house. I gathered enough wood for a fire. There were no cats, just cold. My living room was the open plan back then. My bed was in there.
I dreamt of this moment every day and every night I was in the hospital in those uncomfortable beds.
I had a 3-inch memory foam topper on the bed. With all the energy I had left, I flopped back first, onto solid cement. Memory foam freezes solid in sub-zero temps.
I screamed, my broken back was fresh then. After a few minutes, I took all the blankets off, I layed with my head to the fire and set out to survive the night.
It took 12 hours to get the inside to zero. Another 12 to get it to 20.
The pain was hard to deal with, but I survived. The opioids the doctors had prescribed during my long stay in the hospital had long since stopped working.
The next few weeks were more painful as I went back to chopping wood with a broken neck and back.
It is up to 15 in the fireroom, the kettle I had on the woodstove boiled and now coffee is dripping through the cone filter beside me.
The first load of wood that I used to start the fire this morning is gone, just some forgotten coals and ash.
It’s time to pour the rest of the hot water from the kettle into the thermos and climb back under the blankets.
After I put more wood into the fire.
I decided the best place to be, was next to the fire, having black coffee. So I stayed here, finishing this.
Later I would have to brave the cold again. There would be no gen today. I didn’t want chance damaging this one. I couldn’t afford another one.
Wood got got, snow got got too. Pics were taken in bitey cold. Air so cold it bites the inside of your lungs.
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