Too Cool, double entendre

We are right now at today's high temperatures: inside 51; outside mid-twenties and rising. Most of today was 47 in the house which make no mistake is too cold but then again, survivable. Standing next to the stove anyway. With a non-centrally heated house, it is not my goal to it be 70 degrees all over. But 60 would be nice. With an overnight low of about 52. I think I would not complain too much with that.

It is only SO cold because husband has it in his head that we'll get through the winter just using the cook stove, not the parlor stove, so he didn't even clean that flue so we can't use it even for this horribly cold snap (about 0 last night). Last year he got four tons of coal for the parlor stove to make sure I'd be warm enough. We had planned to actually buy two NEW stoves for this winter and had the money to do it (we seriously don't do debt). This would have given us a cook stove with a LOT larger firebox and a fuel efficient parlor stove. Since the plant is closing, however, that cash is months and months of basic expenses for us and so no new stoves until other cash from our cottage industries is coming in and we put aside for stoves again.

Back to today: Water was frozen. Twice. Because there is a place where it freezes easily as it goes into the pressure tank. Luckily it thaws easily too. And count it another advantage of having put in your entire water system yourself that you know these thing intimately.

Husband is sick. Always is at Christmas. So he helped a bit with the wood and the water but all the chores are mine mine mine. Also all the kid's chores because you don't want the kids out in this cold a weather.

But the really good stuff is that the boys from up the holler came down to take down that oak tree that had the damaged trunk and leaned a little in toward the house. We chose to build in the forest to get the solar gain in winter and the shade in summer, and it works, but there is eternal vigilance as to trees and branches. So the guys were cool, really really good, reasonable, and bucked everything up, including some logs we'd long ago taken down, into stove length pieces so all we have to do is split to have a LOT of really long & hot burning stove wood. And I paid them with money other neighbors have paid me so we really are part of building our own little REAL neighborhood economy. And that is really cool.