Chilly Monday Moons!

LOL! This weekend's hunk even has tats on his buns!

It was certainly too cold to show your buns around here this weekend. Budley and Sam put the firewood on the porch, I cleaned the woodstove, Budley cleaned the flue, and then we fired that sucker up Saturday night. Actually, we should have done it on Friday because it was even colder then. It's supposed to warm up a bit this week, but let me tell you, when your toes are froze and you're running to the potty every fifteen minutes because of all the hot tea you've been drinking to keep warm, it's time to light the fire!

I remember the first year we lived here, there had been a chimney fire that cracked the chimney before we bought the place, and it took forever to get anyone out here to fix it. The guys finally came, but it was December by then (we moved in on Aug 19th, as I recall) and there was not only snow on the ground, but the temps were getting down into the subteens. The day they fixed it, we got a fire going, which was nice because it got down to 16 below zero that night. This was quite unusual for the southern half of Indiana, and, thankfully, it has never gotten that cold since, but when I got up in the middle of the night to put more wood on the fire, I just sat there in the living room for a while, enjoying the warmth.

We've discussed putting in a furnace (probably a heat pump) from time to time, but never have any intention of taking the stove out because when the power goes off in an ice storm, we've still got heat. We may not have water (electric pump on the well) but we won't freeze, and our pipes won't, either. Of course, that's probably due to the lack of insulation in the floor. We've had a couple of people say we need to do that to conserve heat, but that lack of insulation keeps the crawlspace warm enough that the pipes have never frozen, not even at 16 below. . .

But it's also why sitting back here in the bedroom (the room farthest from the woodstove), my feet need a little help. Thank heaven for my microwavable foot warmer thingy. . . and my fleece blanket. . . and my woolly socks. . .