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The yurt was cold. The stove was cold. No embers.

Well the good news is that Paul is still asleep late enough for me to write this (usually he’s up at 6:00). The bad news is that he’s asleep because we were all awake from 3-5 am. He wakes up fast these days, possibly because his teeth are coming in and bugging him some or maybe for no reason at all. The end result is if he’s really restless because of a diaper change, it’s likely that he’ll be up for 2 hours after a change.

However, we’re used to it and have become fatalistic about the whole thing. If he wakes up it’s no longer a tragedy that we’re crabby about and working our damndest to get him back to sleep. Now we’re enjoying the time. Sage made a couple packs of instant black been salsa couscous for us and we listened to the UK top 20 countdown on the BBC (what was it about the singing hamsters in “Cognoscenti meets Intellegentsia” that cracked us up so? Maybe we were just tired…) Anyway, we had a lovely time reading to Paul, hanging out and listening to the radio until he decided to go back to sleep.

And, I definitely think we’ll make it through the winter, heat-wise, everyone. This morning we hit the single-digits and the yurt was anywhere between 90F (when we loaded wood and had it going during dinner) to 55F (after leaving it closed up and untouched for 5 hours).

Well, it’s now noon - Paul woke up then we both got bundle up and walked to the compost pile and emptied our compost buckets. Then we came back and cleaned up the yurt. All the wood we’re bringing in leaves tons of dirt and bark around so sweeping has to happen even more often than it ordinarily does living in the forest.

Well, this may be a short entry as I’m going to put up this entry and work on some christmas presents then we may be off to a solstice party but as it starts at sundown (Paul’s usual self-imposed bedtime) it is not looking too likely. Yes, again, I’m making dinner and Sage is asleep. No complaining, though - I read her to sleep with Pico Iyer’s Video Night in Kathmandu a fun book that we’ll review together when we’re done.

Sunday night it got cold - high 20’s and we went to bed at 8:00 with a warm yurt and crackling fire in the stove. At 1:30 I woke up. The yurt was cold the stove was cold and not any embers to even start it with. So I went outside, gathered kindling and started a fire and waited for the yurt to warm up from 40 to 60. That took 90 minutes so I read while it warmed and went back to sleep until Paul woke up at 6:00 or so.

So motivitated, on the way back from checking email that morning I took the doors off the new, big woodstove which was out by the house about 500′ away and tried to lift it. It wasn’t bad - the weeks of hauling water 12 gallons at a time paid off! So I carried the stove back to the yurt and set it up outside so we could get it ready to be repaired. When Kitey woke up we asked her to help us figure out what needed to be done to it and she watched Paul while we sanded off the old stove cement, carried it into the yurt and put new stove cement on the cracks that it had from a drop several years ago. The stove cement had to cure so we went to town to pick up the new, bigger pipe we’d need and a few groceries. Then we stopped at Sonic for burgers (yes, we’ve really lapsed on the vegetarian thing, haven’t we?). Sonic is so stereotypically american. I don’t remember seeing one back east but they’re all over here. They’re a drive in - pull your car up, push a button and order food then the carhop brings it out to you and you eat in your car. Not only that, it’s “all american” food - burgers, fries, shakes, malts, corn dogs. But for all that formula amaricana it’s a wonderful place and I rate it above any of the other burger places.

Lately we’ve been living a sitcom life, I think. Don’t know what I mean? I’ll tell you. It started when we were sanding the stove and Sage and I were blabbing about ways to make money so that we can eventually not need the money that we get from Kitey. I think we’re close - maybe 1/2 way there but it’d be nice to be all the way there. So we’re talking about the gallery, our web design/computer repair business and brainstorming about ideas for making money from home. So as we were talking about it it felt like one of those old Honeymooner episodes and I started doing Ralph Cramden and Ed Norton impressions - “Hey hey Ralphie boy, I’ve got an idea about how we could get people to go to the gallery” and stuff like that. Yes, it really helps to have a sense of humor when it comes to thngs like this. It’s bad enough that I feel a little cheesy just having commercial content at all but to have to promote it too! Don’t worry, though, I’ll never spam - I promise.

Then yesterday it got even more sitcom like. This time it was “I Love Lucy”. In this episode, Lucy and Ricky install their woodstove. After it’s put in place, Ricky looks around to find bricks to put under the stove where the missing leg was and Lucy screams as the stove falls over on it’s side making a huge crash. (Here’s the part where the muted trumpet wah-wah-wah-wah-wahhhh comes in). Then when the stove is righted, Ricky looks around for the pipe and finally giving up, squats down to talk to Lucy and sits dead on the pipe which mashes his tailbone (trumpets again…)

Yeah, it’s been one of those weeks but we’ve had a great sense of humor about it so it hasn’t been a problem.

And the good news? We ran the stove last night - I put a huge piece of red oak in at 9:30 PM that lasted until almost 10:00 the next day. The yurt was so warm all night (while the wind blew and it was 30 degrees with 15 degree wind chills) that we slept with hardly any blankets on and t-shirts (this after other days of sleeping in 2-3 layers and wool blankets to boot. Now it’s in the low 30’s (maybe high 20’s by now) and it’s about 80 in here. The stove is damped way down so that the log is burning not unlike a cigarette. We should be warm all winter with this one. So seriously, are there any Sage & Todd winter pools going on as to whether or not we’ll give up or freeze? Sometimes I get the feeling there are having received several letters expressing great (and friendly) interest in how we’ll do this winter. Hey, I’m interested too so don’t feel bad but I think we’re going to be fine - the yurts, after all, are in the Colorado rockies and Vermont and New Hampshire where the winters are much more harsh than here. That said, the record low for today, set in 1989 was -6F! So it can get cold here.

Dinner’s done now - BBQ soybeans again. I’m going to wake up Sage and have dinner.

Shades of grey and brown.

Instant Black Bean Salsa Cous-Cous