Homestead Day 57 Friday 11/17/2017 

On this day nothing exciting happened. Well that isn’t entirely true. I have a 16″ piece of log positioned so that it is convenient to sit on while feeding wood into the stove. I leaned forward to put wood into the stove and when I learned back the bit of timber slipped from under me. I fell on my ass and banged my left elbow which led to some very minor bleeding. Summer came running downstairs and said that I had shaken the entire house. At 200 lbs, I kind doubt that but it was an epic fail in proper seating procedures. This happened in the evening so it had no effect on the days work or anything else for that matter. The only injury of consequence was my pride.

After coffee, Summer went into town (Homer) to pick up necessary supplies to continue the rehab of this old house. I know, I know. While she was gone I finished up Homestead Day 56, did some laundry and hauled some ‘destruction’ wood to the back door to be processed as fire wood. When she returned I asked her to find someone who would bring us a cord of wood as we are running out of ‘destruction’ wood.

Upon her return, I took the insulation and duct tape that she had purchased and crawled back under the house. Insulating the septic drain lines is of paramount importance to insure that the sinks drain and the commodes flush. Tomorrow we will be closing up the openings to the underside of the house in a further effort to insure proper drainage. The house was a derelict when we arrived. It is now habitable, barely, but habitable. There were better abandoned houses in Detroit but we couldn’t stand the cold. In the next few days we will have a fully functioning kitchen just like regular middle class Americans.

After insulating the pipes, it was time to reduce big pieces of wood to small stove size pieces of wood. This was greatly facilitated by the new saw blade I bought for my 20 year old Makita saw. I managed to reduced most of the large pile to burnable pieces before it became too painful to hold the saw. It is difficult, and dangerous, to use a saw while wearing insulated gloves. Barehanded gives you a far better grip. The temp had fallen to 18F when I began this task. I quit before I lost all feeling in my fingers.

After my finger chilling experience with the saw, I was through. Enough self flagellation for one day. I had intended to mount the counter tops in the kitchen today. However, dinner time and dark were approaching and I had eaten nothing except coffee since the last evening’s meal. Time to quit and make room for cooking.

The water truck came this morning. I was able to take a shower. It is amazing how much a hot shower can lift your spirits. Also, the laundry situation has vastly improved. After my shower I started another load and we are now down to having 8-10 towels left to wash and all is right with the world.

Dinner was spaghetti with a tomato based beef, mushroom, merlot sauce topped with fresh grated Parmesan and garlic bread. Vienna fingers and vodka-seven for dessert. Summer and I both ate way too much. When you only eat one meal a day, you are ravenous. Not easy to get fat when just staying warm burns hundreds of calories each day.