Itty Bitty Apartment-Sized Woodpile!

It's not because I'm imagining it's someone's noggin.  It's not.  Don't know why people think of that when I say splitting's the most satisfying thing I know do to.
It's just the steel... the wood... the motion.
Anyway it's instinct, and responding to deep instincts always rocks.  Long about September or October, the warm smell of August turns into the crackle of dry leaves, and there's a lovely crispness in the air, not of cool but of going to get cold soon.  It's TIME to make a gigantic pile of wood near the house so we can stay warm all winter.
Anyway it's such fun to march down to the bus stop with a maul over my shoulder.
It's like, Crazy person; should we hide?  
The privilege of hopping on the bus to the confusion of everyone was more than reward enough for a trip to my friend's house to split some wood for her, but she also gave me lunch and a few tools that she had extra.  That's as close as I've come yet to getting paid for doing what I love  :-) 

It was wood that someone had donated to her.  Why did they donate it?  I think it might be because it was all so difficult that they didn't want to split it themselves. 
That means each round is a different, interesting challenge!!

One round was so fibrous that I buried two wedges in it from each end, then used the super-sharp Fiskars axe that my friend had to cut through all the individual fibers that were still holding the halves together. Crazy! 

She gave me a file so I can finally put a new edge on the old maul.  Notice the top corner, still a little blurry?  Aeons ago I hit a rock and broke the corner clean off.  It's been filed so many times since then that it's almost blended in. 
But when people tell me "you don't need a chopping block with a maul," um. Yes, you do. 

Let's have some nostalgia for the rounds that last logger left for me.  The one before him had dropped export timber then broke it, making it worth nothing but to be sawn into rounds for firewood.  The logger left it all for me because I'd said I liked splitting, instead of taking away half to resell like he usually does.
Most beautiful, big smooth rounds ever... and I had to leave them all behind.  Sigh. 
"I wish he'd taken away the lot."

Oh, but see?  The blessing of Jehovah maketh rich, and he adds no sorrow with it!  :-)

I WAS going to sit in my upstairs apartment and watch the weather come on, but look what God brought to the woods right behind me! 

I was standing on my deck listening to the music of chain saws and ignoring it, until a tree dropped from the skyline as I watched.
Cool.
The cutters told me they were just going to leave the rounds, and someone from that side would gather them up. 
Later I went over and split some of it just for fun, as a service to whoever it was who was going to take the wood home. 
I don't split much at a time. I'm just a girl and I wear out quickly. Back at the other place, I used to go out every day and split just a little. Now fancy this, a woodpile that I can leave from my front door and walk to, just like old times! 

Three months later nobody had taken any of the wood. The rain started and that nice, split firewood was out in it.

Long ago a workman told me a story of a job he'd been on, then went back the next week, and the homeowner showed him a beautiful brand new "forty dollar hammer" (90's price).  

"Is this yours?" He said he had asked everybody else, and nobody had claimed it. 

The guy telling me about this said he held that hammer in his hand for a while, wondering what he could say that wouldn't be a lie.  He finally came up with, "You know what?  I think this does look like mine!"

After they let all that firewood lie out in the wet until it grew black mildew on the ends and got bugs underneath, it started to look like mine. 
I've been carrying it home in this beautifully feminine canvas bag, that much at a time. 

There's a lot more than that by now, and a lot of kindling, too.

Gotta have SOMETHING made of steel to be a fireplace tool.  Shovel head from Habitat for Humanity store for $2, okay. 
And what to do for a metal bucket?? 
Prettiest bucket ever  :-) 

I'd never run an open fireplace before.  Inefficient, troublesome, and not putting out much heat, balances with "about as romantic as it's possible to get".  After getting it started we just crouch there for a while, hypnotized by the flames.

Not so hard to get something going.  I had a lot of dry kindling in the house.  But then I did what I usually do-- as soon as there was a hopeful bit of flame, I threw a big piece of wet wood on top, jostled the lot and nearly put it out.
I spent some time gently blowing and nursing the flames back, and being philosophical. 
That's like me, isn't it?  Isn't that what I always do?  And the sad truth is, I'm just like that woodpile out there, wet, mossy, with bugs, so far from ideal that it's a joke.  With bad timing, too. 

But, you know what the truth is?
That pile's gonna burn.
It's gonna heat the place. 

Two years later, here's the rotten tree video

No kidding, this has been in my drafts since November 2012.
There's a lot of other stuff moldering in there, and new stuff I haven't gotten around to posting.  Oh well, it's not like self-expression is high on the list these days  :-) 

I never did get the story from my drafts to go with it, so I'll just write it out again. 

Well, this tree was rotten, and had started leaning at a drunken angle.  I swear you could watch the thing sinking at a rate of a millimeter an hour. A logger happened to be out and I showed him the leaner; he didn't have a chain saw on him, but said he bet if he kicked it, it would fall over. He did and it didn't.  That's because it was fine up to about five feet. The rot started above that. 
He went away and I commenced worrying.
I worry about this stuff. Y'know, if a random tree happens to fall on a random day and smush one of my kids, that's not cool at all, but add the phrase "If only I had taken care of that tree when I noticed it!" and you have the stuff of horror. 
At that time Ed was digging a long trench from the pumphouse to the house, to bury a new waterline.  He had the boys working on that trench, right under that tree. 
So yeah, I'm gonna take care of that right now while I'm thinking of it.
To clarify, yes-- I do mean "before dinner" and it was late afternoon, so let's hurry. 
I marched down there with my axe and got busy.  But I got tired really quickly. It was the end of the day, as well as the beginning of the end (November 2012!) and I didn't have much energy.
Already most of the way through the tree I really got impatient and started to hate it for being sound at the base and not giving up any easier.  Then I had one of my bright ideas. The best logger in Shelton had just told me that that tree was one good vibration away from collapsing under its own weight.  So, why not use gravity, and help it a little? I flung a rope up as far as I could loop it and started pulling rhythmically.
You really can move a tree quite a lot by doing that.  It's a matter of rhythm. 
I got a good rhythm going. Then, as usual, I realized at the wrong moment what was wrong with this proposition.
Um, the trench? The one under the tree?
I had been totally positive I would miss the trench.  But the problem with a back and forth motion is that the tree might just decide to snap at the beginning of the "forth" motion-- which would drop it on, in, across and around that trench Ed's been working on for a week.  So, "wait a second, maybe I shouldn't--"
CRACK! 
And of course it was heading right for the trench. Luckily my feet were already braced really good on something, so I pulled on that rope like I've never pulled on anything before. I was basically horizontal, and with the added strength that comes from having just realized how stupid you are  :-) 
What I did not anticipate was how cool it was gonna feel!
There was the WHOLE WEIGHT OF A TREE in midair, and as I pulled for all I was worth, I could feel all that inertia moving towards me. How cool is that?? My little hands on a piece of thin rope aren't really worth all that much, and yet the tree moved sideways towards me for the whole three seconds it took to fall. 

I do have a humdrum little lifey, but every life has its moments  :-) 

I just love this video.  
Here's a link to the original file because Blogger's compression isn't the best. 
(Pity about a bit of seasickness at the beginning when my cameraman couldn't decide which way is up.) 
And the tree misses the trench by six inches. 

Washington Smiles!

I took this one in the morning to illustrate the generally icky weather.  The boys play flag football in a soaked and drippy park. 

Later on, it looked like it had cleared up enough to walk down to the library without getting wet.

Then, brilliant sunshine!

We have a saying, "Don't like the weather?  Wait five minutes!"

Yay for my new smartphone!  So I can be three miles away from home, down on a park bench, posting in my blog!

I Was Not Driving

And taking pictures, for once.  My passenger took the picture.

Can you believe this beautiful weather, for October? I haven’t even needed a coat lately.

It IS a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood!

Not a single cloud in the sky.
Got some problems coming up, but forewarned is forearmed.  The usual worries are not on my mind today.
I was just looking out at the treetops with a blissfully quiet mind.
And... hmm, there's nothing to talk about.
Boy, am I that boring when I'm peaceful?  LOL

A Street Fair and a Wallet

A street fair... big, loud, colorful.  The perfect place to feel so very alone.  I wandered around lost in the crowd for a while, then went away to sit looking out at the water and just feel so lonely and sad. 

It's okay, it's truth, it's peace, it's much better than it was before. 

Oh, where were my kids?  One had already biked down there to check out the event earlier in the day. One didn't feel like going, one was busy doing something else, and one was a volunteer, hard at work right there at the fair. 

That's not the kind of alone I meant.  I meant poetic languishing.  Poor me, the star of my own tragic romance, with the ocean in the background. 

The only picture I took at that event was this one, of a lady wearing something I loved so much I wanted to save the idea.  Surely I could make something like this?  The top is crochet, the skirt is dyed gauze.  

Then I got to thinking. 
I wasn't really coveting my neighbor's clothing, because I don't want hers, only one like it, and I can get one.

The ten commandments, that stern list of shalt nots, are mostly about thoughts, not actions. Ever notice that?
In that case... I have casually violated a great many of them, quite recently, in fact.
I'm not coveting any particular neighbor's husband, but boy, I wish I had one of my own!  A nice husband who wouldn't scream at me until I'm exhausted and then blame his behavior on me.  One who would say nice things or nothing at all.  A nice calm husband to eat what I cook and care when I'm missing. 
It's okay to want that, but not to walk around being so casually discontented.  "Everything is not okay because I don't have everything I want." 

Later I went into the public restroom at the dock and found a fat wallet lying on top of the toilet paper holder.  It was one of those big long ones with a clasp, the size of a small purse, and it was LOADED.  The side was stuffed with a fat wad of hundreds, I didn't even dare touch them to get an idea how many there were.  Dozens of credit cards, shopper's cards, insurance info, Costco card, even an original social security card. The driver's license showed a sweet old lady from Idaho, but I couldn't find a phone number. 
I tried calling one of the Visa cards, but it was obvious that wasn't going to get anywhere.  
The police station was only eight blocks away, so I marched over there. 
While waiting for the cops to come out and talk to me, I thought about calling Costco.  They have a reputation for helpfulness.  Sure enough, they looked her up by her membership number and said they would let her know her wallet was at the police station. 
Meanwhile the cops had come out, and they stood there and listened to the end of my phone call, then took the wallet. 
One of them made an awe-struck whistle at the amount of money in there. Yeah, I know, right? 
They said they were going to have a word with that lady for putting her whole life into a purse without a strap.
Of course they gave me praise and compliments. What a good thing it was me who found it, and not one of the homeless downtown! They thanked me for saving the old lady from having her identity stolen. 

I wandered back home, feeling quite a bit cheered.  My day was made.  That had been so nice! 

Then realized what was really going on and had to laugh out loud at myself. 

Turning that wallet in like that was the most self-serving thing I could have done. Let's face it, cleaning out the money and dropping the carcass into a mailbox wouldn't have paid me at all, because my poor little conscience would have hurt so badly I wouldn't have enjoyed any part of it. Although I need money, peace of mind is what I need the most these days. I'm not even attracted by any options that would cause me to have less of that. 

So what I did is gave up something that couldn't have benefited me anyway, in exchange for a dose of the one thing I crave desperately! Approval.  Attention.  A couple nice, big, friendly cops to tell me, "Hey, you're all right, you did good." And make me feel good about myself. 

My plan paid off, haha. 

The Gift Rebounder

Yay! So grateful for this.

Yet another instance of kindness when people know we have needs– and people have been so very, very kind.  But I hadn't told anybody how much I missed the rebounder!

It's good for one's physical system but also good for the spirits.  It makes us feel bouncy!