January 2, 2009

• Coping with Complex Reality

  The kitchen timer woke me some time after eight this morning.  From that, I could deduce that Doug had gone to sleep some time after six.  We use the timer to ensure that it is not the cold ensuing after a fire burns too low that wakes one of us.  We can reliably assume that a fire will last at least two hours.

  Using a large round, and closing the draft down almost all the way, once gave us a nine-hour fire in this stove.  That was election day, when it was not much below freezing, both of us were going away, and we had little idea what to expect with the new stove.  This morning, it is over thirty below outside, and Doug’s fire made up of small splits, which was still too hot for me to add wood when I woke, had it up to 55°F in here.

  I sat up in bed when I noticed that I didn’t need to bound out of its warmth and tend the fire immediately.  I knew better than to lie there and close my eyes again.  I’d been sitting there five minutes or so when Doug stirred on the couch, across the room by the stove.  He reached out toward the coffee table, patting around for his glasses, and muttered, barely intelligibly, “I’ve got it.”

  He had, I suppose, heard the timer and waited a while for the sounds of my getting dressed before deciding it would be up to him to tend the fire.  I told him I was sitting up and the fire was okay, and he settled back to sleep.  He’s snoring in my ear now, just across the back of the couch, which is in the “living room” area of this big room, backed up to the end of the computer desk, which has the “dining” table (loaded down with my jewelry making tools and materials) butted up to its other end.

  Right after I recognized that the fire didn’t need my immediate attention, I noticed the big old walking stick, one end braced against the door and the other end butted against the base of the T-shaped divider that takes up the middle of the room.  The most obvious and likely correct deduction from that was that one or more cats had gotten cabin fever and tried to open the door.  A few other possibilities exist, such as an early-awakening bear out there, a drunken neighbor looking for shelter or trouble, or a shift of the foundation blocks that would allow the door to swing open by force of gravity.  I’m guessing cats.

  Longtime readers will know about the avalanche from the roof of the little cabin beside the trailer, that busted in the door and took out the latch plate and part of the door frame, even before we moved in here.  The doorknob basically fills a hole in the door and provides a handle for opening it.  There is no need ever to turn the thing, because the door has nothing to latch to.

  I sat there with my legs still under the covers and watched the fire burn down to coals, thinking about social issues, paradigm shift, addictions, aberrant psychology… just the usual stuff.  I crawled out of bed, pulled my sno-jogs on over the two layers of socks I’d slept in, and brushed my hair.  Then I found my hat where it had landed by the pillow, put it on, donned the polar fleece vest-over-hoodie combo I’d taken off as a unit and laid on the bed the night before, and zipped them both.  I had slept in a sweatshirt and my sweat pants over long johns, so I was good to go.

  Once I had refueled the woodstove with a six-inch round in the back for long-burning, and a pile of fast-burning small splits in front and on top of it for immediate heat, I pushed the button on the preloaded coffeemaker.  By then, Koji had assured me that he was really serious about going outside, so I put him on the chain, one end of which snakes in through the gap in the door frame and hangs just inside the door in winter (It hangs on the outside wall beside the door in summer, when there’s no danger of the snap hook freezing shut.).  I stood there and waited a minute or so. 

  He was out there no longer than he needed to be.  After I let him off the chain, hung it back on its hook, and rewarded him with his routine biscuit for coming back, I got a table knife from the kitchen and used it to stuff the plastic grocery bags back into the gaps around the door, snugged the draft snake up against the bottom of it, washed my hands, and took a muffin from the freezer for my breakfast.  About that time, the coffeemaker signaled the end of its cycle and I nuked the muffin.

  I had baked last evening.  I needed to devise a new recipe without milk because Cubby’s, the big little store up at the Y intersection on the way to Talkeetna, had neither goat’s milk nor plain unsweetened yogurt and my supply from the last trip to Wasilla is nearly gone.  I improvised with eggs and nut meal for protein.

  Egg, Bean, Corn and Almond Muffins

  Whisk together in a large mixing bowl:

  2 cups garbanzo and fava bean flour
  1 cup masa harina
  1/2 cup corn starch
  1/2 cup flax seed meal
  1/2 cup almond meal
  4 tsp. baking powder
  2 tsp. salt
  10 packets Splenda® (optional if you want them savory, not sweet)
  2 tsp. Chinese five spice

  In a separate bowl, beat

  about a dozen eggs – I used six large eggs and six extra large

  Add, beating after each addition:

  2/3 cup water
  1/3 cup grapeseed oil
  1/3 cup soybean oil (or 2/3 cup of any vegetable oil)
  1 tsp. real vanilla extract

  Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C).  Line muffin pans with 24 paper baking cups.  Spoon by 1/4 cup measures into lined muffin pans. Bake about 20 minutes at 375°F (190°C).  Let muffins rest in pans 10 minutes, then remove and continue cooling on racks.  Makes 2 dozen muffins, and can be frozen for reheating in microwave.

  As they were baking, Doug asked me, “Why am I smelling spices?”  I replied that I was baking muffins.  He said it smelled more like sausage and I said I’d used five spice.  While they were cooling, a stealthy cat or cats got onto the stove and took little bites from the tops of three hot muffins.  Either they didn’t like the flavor, or the heat discouraged them.  I managed to polish off those three muffins last night, sealed the rest in coffee cans and froze them.

  Just now, while I was typing the recipe above, Greyfox called.  We talked about the weather — it’s about the same there in Wasilla as it is here, fifty miles up the valley.  He updated me on how we’re doing for cell minutes (less than half an hour a day for the rest of the period), and shared some business details with me.  We talked a while about the ways we’re coping with the cold.

  He has moved some cases of canned and bottled food and drinks away from walls and off the floor, where they are now in the way one way or another.  Doug and I moved our full water jugs and buckets off the floor and onto the tops of empty ones, and still had one left over, which is now on the coffee table. 

  Everyone will be glad to see the end of this cold snap.  With a malfunctioning engine block heater, my car would need a different source of external heat (hot coals in a pan under the engine, an electric heater on the ground under a tarp over the engine compartment, or some equivalent) before I’d even try to start it.  Low on dog food, kitty litter, milk… with enough water for no more than one or two dishwashings, I must make a move soon and don’t want to do it at 30° below zero.

  These are things I’ve been talking about and dealing with, but not necessarily what has most been on my mind.  Through it all, I keep thinking about crazy people, cultural evolution, neuroelectrochemistry, and other shit like that, and blogging.  Where would I be without the outlet of my blog?

  Where?  Right here, of course, on the edge of the fringe of the back of beyond, in a trashy trailer I got for free, which is worth every cent I paid for it, with a dozen cats, a husky dog who has one floppy ear, a biscuit addiction, and a taste for muffin wrappers, cat butts, and used kleenex.  Oh… and that sleeping “kid,” my enigmatic, self-willed, devoted, reliable and ingenious slacker gamer son, who went out around sometime between 3 and 4 AM today to split firewood because the wood box had gone empty while he was involved with the Nintendo DS and the PS2.

  The sound of the door and the wave of cold air woke me when he came in the first time, empty-handed.  He said the light wasn’t working.  It’s a low-wattage energy saving fluorescent floodlight.  At temps around freezing, it hesitates a few seconds before lighting and then takes a few minutes to get up to full brightness.  We hadn’t yet had cause to use it at thirty below.  I told him to leave the switch on and it might come on when it warmed up enough.

  I was dozing lightly while he put fresh batteries in a flashlight and prepared to split wood by that light, as he’d done for years before we rigged the floodlight a month or so ago.  I heard him go out and come right back.  That trip was for the purpose of leaving the flashlight and warming his hands while the floodlight got up to speed — it had come on.  I looked out there and could see a dim glow up on the big tree.  Doug told me for the second or third, but not last time, that I needed my sleep.  I said I intended to stay awake until he’d finished splitting wood.

  He reminded me that he had been doing that task for over twenty years, since he was about seven years old, and had gotten only a few bruises.  He assured me that he’d scream if he needed help.  I protested that the snow might muffle his screams, and the fans in here would impair my hearing.  He gave up and went to work, and I waited, listening to the irregular thumps of the axe hitting the wood.  A few times there were anxious pauses, I suppose as he moved a new round onto the chopping block or pushed some splits out of his way.  Then, after the longest, most anxious quiet, I heard him approaching with an armful of wood.

  We exchanged a few words, he reminded me again that I need my sleep, and then I got a few more hours before that kitchen timer went off.
  

  

  • 4:21 pm
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