Saturday was a long day and had mixed rewards. Our wood pile had grown tragically small and the weather has taken a sudden dive. Papa had a lead on some free wood, all we needed to do was pick it up and haul it away; and this we did. We did not realize there was nearly a cord of wood to pick up; I'm far from complaining about it, but it did force us to adjust our expectations about how long the chore would take us. Since Papa is still recovering from his dislocated shoulder injury he could not lift much, which left me with most of the heavy lifting; to put it bluntly I am sore all over my body.

There was two kind of wood we picked up, some old decking material, and a felled tree. The tree was cut into rounds, so we didn't need the chain-saw, but I would need to split the wood before burning it. The decking was mostly in long planks, and they would need to be cut into wood-stove or fireplace sized lengths before they could be used. Given the amount of wood we had we decided to return to Papa's place and there use his wood splitter and Skil saw.

I didn't check the temperature at the time we were working but it was hovering somewhere around freezing, and the pile of wood we had to move was in the shade. This made for an interesting discovery, the wood was frozen, and in the case of the felled tree rings some rings were frozen to each other. Both of us were dressed in many layers, hoping to fight off the cold, and it worked; it worked so well in fact that I had to take off my coat and hat by the time we were done. Picture a bald man, standing outside in near-freezing temperatures without his hat, and a smile on his face. It reminded me of cross country skiing, only Papa didn't fall on our lunch, there was no snow, and we had no skis. I remarked on this to Papa whereupon he quoted his father in regards to getting wood saying that woodcutting always warmed him up three times (but we think he meant twice). Once collecting the wood, and once burning. Can you smell the foreshadowing?

Returning back to our previous paragraph, instead of driving to my house, where the wood would make its final voyage before its ultimate sacrifice for the comfort of two Royal Felines, we made a detour to a little country estate to apply some modern day fibrous torture and dismemberment devices to the pile of dead trees we had in tow. If you haven't been paying attention to all the clever foreshadowing allow me to shock you with the following observation: we had to load and unload this wood too many times. It was cold in the morning, so we warmed ourselves up by loading the wood into a pickup and trailer. On the drive over (with the windows down mind you) we realized it was still cold outside so we unloaded the wood and got medieval on the wood, in a twenty-first century kind of way. Still not satisfied with the temperature outside we loaded the trailer and pickup again. No good, still cold, so we had to drive it back to my place and unload the wood one final time. Between you and me, I think the last time finally did it.

I'm not one to usually complain about aches and pains my body sees fit to entertain, after all I am not yet grey enough to have earned that right, however I would like to point out a few small details. Wood is heavy, and so is a skil saw, or rather a skil saw gets quite very heavy after using it for over an hour straight, and chain-saws the likes of which my father owns aren't light either. Being still on the injured list (apparently a root beer an 30 minutes of one handed driving didn't heal a dislocated shoulder) the chain-saw and skil saw details were left to me. Normally I don't mind, but when the fatigue set in and I could hardly move my arm or fingers . . . it was time for a break so I split some wood . . . with the wood splitter.

I normally call any able-bodied man who chooses to use a wood splitter instead of a splitting maul a sissy, but at this point neither of us were able-bodied and we were losing daylight (and by extension what little warmth the feeble rays of the sun were providing). Whoever said splitting wood was an aerobic exercise never used a wood splitter; that being said, pulling a two hundred pound hunk of wood out of a pickup and positioning it on a wood splitter probably still qualifies as exercise, though it's the kind you find in the back of “Muscles and Massochism Weekly”. Did either of use escape the torture that was in store for our poor misguided bodies? Not at all.

On the trek home I was looking forward to a few things: a hot fire in my wood-stove, a hot fire in my fireplace, a hot bowl of curry, and a very hot shower. And now we get to the good part of the day. We unloaded the wood, which overflowed the space in my garage into our outdoor pile. A fire was built and lit in my wood-stove and our 50-something degree house was slowly warming up. Food was ordered from Thai Beer (I recommend the massuman curry), and I built a fire in our fireplace.

It's not often we light the fireplace. It's in the farthest corner of the farthest room of our house as dictated by the drug-induced sensibilities of the 1970s; after all, why heat your entire house when you can heat one corner of one room? When I have wood that won't fit my wood-stove I have an excuse to burn it in our fireplace. Since we had some wood matching that description, and since it was cold in our house, and a little romantic fire never hurt anyone (unless they are as sore as I was) I built a fire in our fireplace. I didn't light it right away as Holly was out and any fire in the fireplace is a special thing and the lighting of it should be attended by all who wish to enjoy it (yes, the royal prince and princess kitty were there too).

The fun thing about the fireplace is the roar it makes when the fire is first lit. There is this rapid intake of air as the entire edifice strives to win a guest appearance in a movie adaptation of Dante's Inferno. Anyone with any fascination for fire would be mesmerized by the sight and sound of it. That night it was a thing to behold. A few left over boughs from our Christmas tree adorned the pile of three long-empty pizza boxes. It was a glorious conflagration up until the point of the sudden and unexpected destruction of one of the panes of glass.

With a speed any CPU would kill for one of the panes of glass on the closed doors of our fireplace broke and shattered, the pieces mainly being pulled into the fire itself. We still are not sure what caused it, but near the bottom of the glass, where all the spider-web lines connected was a piece of wood seeking revenge, escape, or slumber as it rested against the glass. I don't recall any wood falling down, if I had I would not have been so surprised at the sudden nature of the breaking glass. As best as I can guess the fire got so hot that the pressure of the wood against the glass was enough to push the stressed material to its breaking point.

We never liked those glass doors. They are perhaps the ugliest thing we have in that room. Even though neither of us relish the idea of spending the money to replace it, we both like the idea of getting rid of an eyesore. We checked into the cost of replacing the glass versus replacing the doors; rather than spend $50-$70 to replace the glass I think we'll opt to spend $200 and replace the entire thing to something more tasteful and decorative.

So remember kids, cutting wood can heat you up twice, or thrice, or even four times, just be sure you aren't a glass fireplace door, or you might need to be replaced.