Orange Santa
My plans for Tuesday fell apart. I was able to wash a load of towels and hang them outside to dry, that was my first objective. My second was to head to Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania for some groceries and furnace cement. My third goal was to clean my chimney. When the flue clogs, it causes smoke to back into my house. It started several days ago, but with the snow and cold, I couldn’t easily climb onto my roof and clean the lining of my chimney without risking life and limb. But I knew that it was absolutely necessary. I had a headache Monday and believe there may have been some carbon monoxide leaking into my house even though the smoke and carbon monoxide detector didn’t alarm.
I needed furnace cement and went shopping first. I needed to be sure there was no frost or wetness remaining on the surface of my metal roof. By the time I returned from my shopping excursion, the wind picked up and being on my roof with a wind is no paradise. The morning had been calm and I almost wish I’d have donned my blaze orange jacket and scaled the heights to clear the clog, but I hadn’t and now it was too windy for Orange Santa to ride the ridge. My house has two stories and a basement, so a tumble from that height would cause major trauma to my aging physique.
After I came from shopping, I ate lunch. I was a good boy. I listened to my doctor and dietician by eating a salad of chopped cabbage, kale, and carrots. What can I say? It fills me up and it’s high in natural fiber content. As I sat in my recliner grazing on the salad, I thought, just perhaps I could reach up inside the clean-out door at the bottom of the chimney high enough to loosen the creosote clog until I can reasonably scale the heights and attack the soot from above at a later time.
It seemed to have worked. I built a sample fire and the smoke went up the chimney. My load of laundry was dry. I folded and put it away. The groceries are also stored. The jacket I wore became soot covered is washed and hanging in the basement to dry.