January 24, 2006

• Late Night Home Repairs

  My diurnal cycle has intersected with Doug’s cycle, which has a longer
  period.  Yesterday, he was up shortly before I was and he went to
  bed last night about the same time I would have gone to bed if… (I’ll
  get to that.)  This morning, he hasn’t gotten up yet [got up while
  I was writing this entry].  Neither of us likes it much when his
  body clock cycles around to roughly coincide with “normal” daylight
  wakefulness.  For him, it means less liberty to use either the
  computer or the PS2 without interference from me.  For me at this
  time of year it means I must sleep lightly to keep the fire in the
  woodstove from burning out.

  I was already in bed reading while Doug was doing those chores that
  must be done before his day can be considered complete:  taking
  out the trash, splitting firewood and bringing it in, scooping out the
  litter box in his room (I’d already done the other one.), hauling the
  scoopings out to the compost pit in the backyard, etc.  As has
  happened each of the last few nights, since the latest heavy snowfall,
  he came in covered with snow fallen from the ambushing bushes along the
  path. 

  I mean COVERED, his entire back from head to knees was caked with snow.  I watched it
  melt on his clothing as he stood with one hand in the pot of warm water
  on top of the woodstove, thawing cold fingers.  I understand why
  he doesn’t wear gloves on some of those brief excursions, but I don’t
  like it, especially when it is so cold and getting colder. 

  Shortly before then, as I had been making tea in the kitchen, I’d
  glanced at the thermometer:  minus eleven point something. 
  Waiting for the microwave to complete its cycle, I glanced back at the
  temp:  twelve point something below zero.  A couple of more
  glances and a couple of more degrees colder, and I shuddered and left
  the room with my hands wrapped around a hot mug of tea, deciding I
  didn’t want to watch that process.

  After
  Doug  had warmed his hands, taken off his anorak and shaken the
  snow off of it, I asked him to check the temp for me.  It was
  still about fourteen below, as it had been last time I looked. 
  “Hmmm…,” I said, “I guess it was only doing that for my
  entertainment.”  However, during the night, the temp dropped about
  ten degrees more.  It still wasn’t enough to dissuade me from
  traipsing out there a few minutes ago to capture the pink sunrise light
  on a big tree overhanging the little cabin in our yard.

  Meanwhile, back to my story:

  Doug went to bed, and Potemkin, the stray cat who has been showing up
  every few days to warm up and fill up on food and water, cried at the
  door to get out.  I got up to let him out, then went to the
  bathroom.  There, I discovered the door once again hanging from
  its upper hinge.

  When we moved in here in 1998, that door was half off its hinges and
  the frame was splitered where the screws had been pulled out. 
  From the deep dent in the plywood sheathing on the outside of the door
  and the fact that the doorknob wouldn’t turn and its latch mechanism
  won’t disengage without using something to slip into the gap and jimmy
  it open, I deduced that a previous occupant had kicked the door off its
  hinges to get around that latch hangup.

  A few years ago, I had dug up some longer screws and driven them deeper
  into the door frame and got the door back into shape to trap us in the
  bathroom again.  I left a screwdriver inside the bath and a sturdy
  thin-bladed knife on a shelf outside it to be used as “keys” to open
  the door if it latched.  I was assuming, until I talked to Doug
  today, that he had torn out the hinge screws either inadvertently or in
  frustration, but now it seems that the cats are the prime suspects.

  How it came off the hinge is beside the point.  Last night around
  midnight I fumbled through the hardware collection, found some screws
  that are longer than the last set of longer screws, got down on the
  cold floor and fixed the bathroom door.  Even before then, I had
  exceeded my daily activity limit and hit the fatigue wall while
  preparing for a trip to the laundromat that I still don’t know when
  I’ll make, since those preparations aren’t yet complete.  My leg
  muscles were stiff and hot, with a tendency to go into spasm when I
  used them.  Wrists and fingers reached that state while I was
  driving the screws.

  I finished the job, put the hardware bucket in order and back on its
  shelf, and came out to the front room to tend the woodstove.  I
  was kneeling in front of the open stove when I heard a clattering
  commotion in the back of the house, followed by a sustained sort of
  rustling swooshing sound I couldn’t identify.  Assuming it was
  generated by Doug or the cats, and concerned because I couldn’t
  identify the sound, I left the stove and went to investigate.  I
  still don’t know what was making that noise.  Doug was asleep and
  the cats were just being cats.  Some items had been knocked to the
  floor from shelves in the hallway, so I picked them up and went back to
  the woodstove.

  That’s when I realized how lucky I was.  I had gone off, leaving
  the woodstove open, no burning wood had fallen out onto the carpet and
  I hadn’t ignited a creosote fire in the stovepipe.  Lucky, indeed,
  which is especially appreciated when I’m so careless and
  absent-minded.  My thoughts were running along those lines when I
  fell down.  I don’t know how or why I fell.  Things like that
  happen when I’m fatigued.  I’m used to it.  I picked myself
  up, examined the wound on the heel of my right hand and decided that
  first aid for it could wait until I got the stove loaded and shut down.

  It was only a scrape, which is lucky because I never did get around to
  caring for it.  Something else came up, most likely one of the
  cats wanting in or out or Koji demanding a chewy.  If that dog
  doesn’t get his rawhide when he needs it, he starts gnawing on the
  firewood and furniture.  I don’t recall the order in which the
  various additional distractions, hassles and bothers occurred.  I
  remember only that the next time I looked at the clock it was about
  half past three and I wasn’t in bed yet.  This was fortunate,
  because it gave me a chance to stoke the stove one more time before I
  went to sleep instead of having to awaken, crawl out of bed, and do
  it.  Whew!  Another night survived.
  

  • 3:25 pm
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