..my life really isn't like your lives, is it?

We did heat with wood when we lived in the country in a 1904 farmhouse and discovered that it would probably have been cheaper to heat the house by burning dollar bills than what it cost to heat it with propane. In Georgia, however, we never had to be quite that prepared. I found splitting logs to be rather soothing. At least it's exercise that accomplished something tangible.

I'm sorry the universe is piling stuff on you at such a rate, Consuela.

Fingers crossed for the home infusion option, ita.

Somehow I double-posted, several posts apart. Weird.

Somehow I double-posted, several posts apart. Weird.

Or one of your clones is running amok again.

I spent 4 years living in rural Maine as a child - we had a woodstove, although (unlike a lot of people we knew) it was not our primary source of heat for the house. I knew plenty of people with outhouses and/or no electricity (gas appliances and lamps) in Maine, actually.

So, the nurse says it's happening this weekend. She says the meds will whow up tomorrow, and a nurse will show up Sunday...and that's pretty much all I know other than sometimes the agencies over-promise.

That is good news! You should celebrate by getting a fade.

I knew plenty of people with outhouses and/or no electricity (gas appliances and lamps) in Maine, actually.

My grandfather in Georgia (my mom's dad) still had an outhouse when we first visited him in '67. And he'd just put in electricity about two years before that.

Hey, I get a steroid shot in my hip for my out-of-control sinuses! (I'm waiting for the nurse to bring the shot in.) Woo, steroids. I await the munchies and rage.

Yeah, it's not officially our primary, but it functionally is. First is the passive solar, which gives us about two degrees, even with only doing a one room solar slab. Then there's the woodstove. And then we have propane. But typically, the propane never kicks in, thus this year's big frozen condensate pipe ordeal.

I love it. It's a lot of work, and it's a little dirty, but I like the rhythm of it, the wood, building the fire, sweeping the hearth, emptying the ashes. There's something very primal about it, about being able to have warmth you can count on. About having to be aware of the seasons and climate and weather and time of day. Of seeing the tree grow that keeps you alive in the dead of winter.

This house's HOA prevents us from putting up an outhouse, which I resent. So I want to build a woodshed, and put the little cutout in it so it looks like an outhouse. Because I'm an ass like that. But seriously, it is so beyond me how I can be in Arizona so rural there is no road maintenance on one stretch because no one can agree on who owns the road, and yet have homeowners covenants more restrictive than when I lived in downtown Wichita or Indianapolis.

My parents had an outhouse until they sold the farm in the mid-'00s. But it was falling apart by then and we never used it. When I was about three or four our dog had puppies underneath it.

I just realized I never found out what happened to those puppies. Maybe my dad did something to them. Gave them away, I hope.

The farmhouse was electrified back in the 1930s, I think. My aunt has memoires of running around the house turning the new electric lights on and off.

So, I had baked oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, and ginger with fresh strawberries on top and I feel like I have won Friday.

I don't know how long this feeling will last.