You would Think

You’d think that someone with a college education would be a little more intelligent, but I’m proof that it’s not always so. I’ve mentioned before that I have a wood burner in my basement for added heat. It is especially welcome on frigid and windy days and is also the backup heat when the electricity is interrupted. My water pipes won’t freeze and neither will I. The one thing that I really like is the steady flow of heat and not the sudden bursts of forced heat then cooling with the oil furnace.

I haven’t had to climb on the roof to clean my chimney so far this year, and I am thankful. I’m sure that my kids are too. They don’t think a jolly old fat man in an orange hunting jacket should be on a metal roof, two and a half stories above the ground.

The case for my stupidity happens when I go to the basement and feed firewood into the wood burner. More than once I forget to put on gloves to handle the wood. Most of the firewood has been split, leaving behind sharp shards and splinters. That’s where my brainlessness collides with reality. I return upstairs only to find I have carried pieces of firewood with me and I have to fetch the tweezers to remove those slivers from my fingers and hands. Many of the splinters are too small to be removed without a magnifying glass and a needle. I have several sores that are trying to heal right now.

When I was younger, I would place the stacks of firewood farther away from my house to keep bark and debris at the back of my house or in the side yard. It was hard work lugging the wood into the basement on a plastic sled or rolling it inside on a wheelbarrow. Drifts of snow built barriers between the woodpile and my basement making the trek strenuous. For the past six years I’ve learned enough to stack the firewood at the side of my driveway, just outside the garage door. A short bit of shoveling and the path needed to push the wheelbarrow to the pile, and roll it back is so much easier without the barriers.

Now that I’ve added a few more years to my age, the loads on the wheelbarrow have grown slightly smaller, but it does require that I make an extra trip or two. Even with the smaller loads, I am feeling a slight twinge in my lower back and shoulder; Tylenol and BENGAY anyone?