Autumn Ending

It’s raining outside, a fact one is extremely aware of when living inside an aluminum can. The weather wonks are predicting something between an inch and 3 inches in the next twenty-four hours or so. So much for the ice on the lake – it is gone as of 20 minutes ago when I took the dog out to empty his bladder. Snow is pretty much gone already, too. In it’s place is little pathways of ice, compacted then frozen over the past week or so as autumn turned gray and nasty.

Snowy Autumn – Last Weeks of November, 2010.

 

We’ve been fighting serious condensation in the Airstream. It is inevitable, aluminum conducting heat so well, poor insulation and all of the Thanksgiving cooking I have been doing. Seems folks took pity on our financial plight this year. Personal friends provided a 29 lb turkey and a bag of veggies, along with a bottle of propane. The Food and Medicine Coalition gave us a very nice bag of Thanksgiving goodies, including apple cider, pumpkin pie, squash, beets, onions, potatoes, bread. And, we had dinner with our neighbors, Dave and Katy and their house guest Lauri on T-Day, too. That required the contribution of some homemade cornbread dressing and southwest Ancho Chile candied yams. So yours truly has been a very busy bee at the stove of late. In fact, I’m still cooking the last of the big bird … she was too big to cook whole in our oven.

Iggy is being a little porker, socking down every scrap and morsel that comes his way or within even close proximity. He’s even mastered climbing up onto a plastic storage bin on the dining table to reach the cat’s bowl. Meanwhile, Jingle Belle is so confident she sees no problem with reaching out and swiping her claws across Iggy’s tail stump in passing. That leads to much chasing and caterwauling and barking within the confines of the trailer. Remind me why I consented to my wife keeping a kitten again, please.

We’re getting ready to move the trailer over to the house at the farm. Not much point in staying once the ice is in--- a seven mile fetch to the Northwest can be mighty chilly without the resistance of the water to slow down the wind a little bit.

 

All in all, we are doing OK. Haven’t had any luck finding work but I am confident something will turn up (it better – heating is expensive here). I have no desire to imitate a “Pops-cicle” anytime soon, either.