Fall, fires, and early to bed

Now that we’re well into fall, and the clock has fallen back, I’m morphed into winter Lisa.

I get up at 5:30am now. Reach for my jogging pants, sweatshirt shirt, and Crocs from beside the bed and navigate my way in the dark down the stairs (stopping to pee and put on those warm clothes of course!!)

With my night time eyes I take a glance out the front glass door and gaze at the stars and the amount of frost on the grass. If there is lots of frost I know I’ll have to start the car a few minutes early.

Then I temporarily blind myself, just before I head down the basement steps, by turning on the basement lights.

Sometimes the fire is ready to go in 15 minutes. Other times it’s closer to 40. But this morning was another good morning. There were plenty of red hot coals from last night’s fire so I put 7 pieces of wood in, opened the damper, cracked the door a bit to give the coals a shot of air, and after a bit of smoke the logs erupted into flames. Then I latched the door and sat there with the damper open for 5 minutes to be sure the logs were catching well on the bottom. Eventually I close the damper most of the way and head upstairs.

Zeus loves the heat from the wood stove. If this winter is anything like last year, he’ll spend most of the winter down there, hanging over a chair, half melting from the heat. Last spring he’d sit down there and meow and meow and meow if we hadn’t restarted the fire for him.

Winter Lisa goes to bed early – sometimes as early as 8:30pm.