abby « Robin Writes

Actually, I could entitle this “things I’ve learned since the weather turned cold.”

It takes, to date, about an hour or so to get the fire in the furnace burning.
It takes about another hour or so for the temp to reach 120, which is when the blower kicks on.
With our new, warmer bedding set, we really don’t need to put another log on before we go to bed.
When the sun shines in the front windows (south-facing), the temp in the office and bedroom goes up to around 82. No heat sources needed as long as the outside temp is above 40.
In a small house, it’s really hard to find a place to hang up winter coats.

The first two only matter in the evening, say, between 6:00 and 9:00, at least so far. We’ve had some nights down in the 30s lately, and once I get chilled outside (like with a north wind), I stay pretty cold the rest of the day/evening.

Over the weekend, I unpacked, from barn storage, all the winter stuff: long underwear, really heavy coats, sweaters, and so forth. Yes, I’d already packed and put away the summer clothes. A few things might make it to the dropbox in town, if they’re still in fair condition, but as long as they fit, they’ll stay.

Somewhere.

I might be able to find space for a few hooks on the walls, but wall space is at a premium here. In desperation, I took an older over-the-door rack and stuck it on the kitchen door, going outside. Hard to see out, but that’s okay. Now, if I could only find one to go over the front door too . . .

Changing habits is hard.

Well, that’s kind of a no-brainer, right?

We’re currently having a big discussion here about the television. I’m not much of a TV watcher; I do like movies, and there are some series/shows I like, but if I miss them it’s no big deal. Sometimes a program will catch my interest for a few minutes.

My husband, on the other hand, is, yes, a TV junkie. He used to turn it on in the morning, which drove me nuts—too much noise way too early in the day—but he has since stopped that. He usually watches while he eats lunch, and for an hour or so afterward, and turns it on from 5:00 until around 10:00 or 11:00.

Now, before we moved, we talked about this. We had no TV at all down here for about eight months after we bought the place, and so in the evenings we’d sit outside and talk or play cards at the kitchen table.

Then he came down here by himself for a week.

So he brought our smaller TV along and bought a DVD player and a ton of old movie collections.

After a while, that got old, and a few months later we moved. Now, living and working here, I need Internet service, but we decided to go just with a TV antenna—which works great, and the old shows we mostly got on non-network channels provided a lot of laughs.

Roku, however, doesn’t work very well, and by the end of the month, when our LIMITED INTERNET is running out, it doesn’t work at all.

Seriously, who ever heard of LIMITED??

Today, DirecTV is coming out. I hate them. They’re hard to deal with. I do NOT want another dish or antenna or whatever junking up the place.

But at least he’ll have, what, 200+ channels to fall asleep to? 😉

Oh, yeah, I was talking about habits, right? Well, the TV is certainly one of them, but where I was originally going with this was my own daily routine. I used to spend a couple hours online, working and reading the news and emails, and then get dressed and moving and start the ACTUAL working, like editing and so forth, until lunchtime.

Now, particularly in winter—not to mention LIMITED INTERNET—the daylight hours are much shorter, so I have to get my butt in gear. Some days it’s easier than others, but I’m slowly moving toward an hour first thing in the morning, and then a few hours later in the day after all the outside chores are done.

Since, yes, I have a lot of habits, I’m having to readjust them all constantly—and it’s rather tiring!

I’m looking forward to no big outdoor projects this winter and doing more baking, some leatherworking, and maybe even figuring out how to get that second knitting stitch on the damn needles without dropping the first one.

When it comes to crafty stuff, I am a sloooow learner.

The time change happened, like clockwork—ha—yesterday. And we woke up, here on the farm, to 38 degrees with a windchill of 34. I don’t know about you, but anything below 45 just screams “winter” to me!

The Farmers’ Almanac gives us seasonal dates like these:

Fall: September 22

Winter: December 21

Spring: March 20

Summer: June 21

These may change each year, based on shifting sunlight, not temperature. Most of us, I think, see September as fall, November as winter, March as spring, June as summer—all beginning on the first of each month.

Maybe that’s why so many have SAD, because this makes winter last four months . . .

On the other hand, I’ve done plenty of camping in March and it sleeted. As in the last three years, in recent memory.

This year, it’s easier to think of November as still fall: there are plenty of leaves on the trees, my azalea bush and morning glories are blooming like crazy, new grass is sprouting up in the pasture.

But that 38 degrees trips me up . . .

And of course, today being a Monday doesn’t help at all and totally explains my fuzzy brain. Okay, not totally, but whatever.

Prepping is a lot like homesteading—a big duh, actually, because so frequently they’re one and the same. But you have to schedule things around the weather already, so the time change and shorter days just adds to the mix.

Instead of getting up and moving by 8:00, or even 7:00, you have to push a little harder and do in the daylight whatever needs to be done. Indoor things—unless you have a huge spotlight—can be done later.

For me, that mixes it all up. As a creature of habit—stop laughing, family—it’s really hard.

I usually spend an hour or so at my desk, then take care of stuff around the house, then move on for the rest of the day doing chores and projects. Now, I have to get my rear in gear much sooner and do stuff backwards. For me.

The flip side is that, once the outdoor projects are done for the winter, we don’t have to worry about a lot of work in the snow and ice and subzero temps. By the way, “subzero” for me means anything below 40, or 50 if there’s a lot of wind . . .

Yeah, this post sucks. I’m all over the place. My point is that there’s a reason for the saying “burning daylight.” And that said, I’m outta here—time to return to the fencing!