Friday, October 02, 2009

Three, two, one, ignition, LIFTOFF!

Largely due to my own incompetence, I have turned the furnace on. But after two damp, cold days it seemed chilly and damp and dank in here and quite frankly both my butt and shoulders had begun to ache.

The shoulders ache because of too many years hunched over a computer keyboard, endlessly fingering, plus some damn fool stunts I should have known better than to undertake alone this summer; the butt, because I was for practical purposes born without one. That means there's no padding between bony ends and whatever they're planted on --- unpadded church pews, nearly every sort of chair made available at public meetings and the chair I'm sitting on now, kind to shoulders, not too kind to a bony butt.

Had I been able to find the electric blanket I might have held out another few days, although the long-range forecast looks cold and damp, too. I remember taking it off the bed last spring, unraveling the nest of wires it requires, folding wires and control box neatly within the blanket and then putting it somewhere. I have no idea where. I keep opening the door of the linen closet in the upstairs hall, then looking in the bottom dresser drawer in my bedroom --- just to make sure it's really in neither logical place. It isn't. It'll turn up. Hopefully before snow flies.

The furnace always takes a little getting used to. It has electric ignition rather than a pilot light and since this is a small house it takes a while to get used to a sequence that really does sound at first as if the entire building is about to be launched.

+++

I'm also going to have the first acorn squash of the season for supper, which I suppose means fall is really here. I really like squash and it's really good for me, too, or at least it would be if I didn't cook it the way I do, which of course is the only civilized way to cook it:

Split and seed acorn squash; bake face-down on foil-covered pan until 97 percent done; flip over; insert large pat of butter, fill cavity with either browned bulk sausage or small link sausages, top with brown sugar and cook 10 more minutes.

I'm afraid the butter, sausage and brown sugar neutralize the healthy aspects of squash, but what's a guy to do?

+++

The egrets still are with us, but sensible birds that they are have abandoned their usual roost with the cormorants on dead trees sticking up some distance from shoreline down at the marsh. Instead, they've taken to the trees (with leaves) around a cove at the northeast corner of the main pond, near the river. It'll be interesting to see if they come back to the old roost when the sun shines again --- if it ever does.

The good neighbor and eldest daughter took guns and hiked down the greenbelt trail below the cemetery and across the old river bridge last evening to see if there were geese to be scared off the marsh way back in there. As it turned out there were, but all were spared.

The useful information that came out of that trek is that both the main trail, which follows the original meandering route across the bottoms of the road that now is Highway 14 and shoots straight south toward Corydon, has been clipped, as has the loop on the north side of the river. So that will be good hiking when it dries out a little.

On the other hand, deer season is open for bow hunters so I expect I'd better find something bright to wear. I'd hate to come home with an arrow in that bony butt that already hurts.

1 comment:

Ed said...

I fired up our furnace this past week just to make sure it worked. I have too many memories of waiting too long only to find out it didn't work along with a thousand other people around town. But I turned it off again because I did find our electric blanket though so far, I have just used it as an extra blanket without the juice. With this cold rain, it won't be long until it gets used.

I like your way of eating acorn squash!