Adaptive Curmudgeon

Winter is never easy but some are worse than others. Sometimes it’s a mere inconvenience. Sometimes it fights dirty. This winter is a groin kicker.

Take firewood. Firewood is a gamble where you pit your own brawn and brain against the mountain of BTUs needed to heat a house. Do it well and you’ll get summertime exercise, a cheery fire, and a significant amount of savings. Plan badly and you’ll be Jack Londoning your ass into icy misery.

[RANT] Don’t let hippies give you shit about wood smoke either. Wood is among the most ecologically sound of many options. The material is relatively cheap too. Wood is so commonly that it… well… grows on trees. Also for the Tesla fanboys out there, electric heat is a joke. If you heat with electric you’re not too far north of the Mason-Dixon line. Besides, most electricity is just remotely burned coal. [/RANT]

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, the trick with firewood is to use your big monkey brain to avoid overusing your weak monkey muscles. I use all sorts of mechanized force multipliers. Unfortunately, a hearty winter and decrepit machinery are slowly closing out options.

My main system is a nice little wood carrying wagon towed behind my ATV. Love that little wagon! Holds about a half a face cord. A few trips with it each week and all is well. The labor saving is huge! I move wood from a pile to a wagon that’s a few feet away. Then from the wagon to the house that’s a few feet away. It’s the most efficient way to do an incredibly hard job.

Alas, the wagon just plain wore out. You can buy all sorts of ATV trailers and a replacement is on my “to do” list but I’m currently light on funds. (Good ATV trailers are worth the price but they’re not cheap).

Earlier this winter I fell back to plan B. Plan B is a “real” trailer; I use it for on the road towing behind my truck. It’s a smallish trailer (I think it’s 5’x 8′) but it’s bigger than the ATV wagon and that’s a drawback. It takes a much wider track so I need to plow a much bigger path. That’s precisely what I’ve been doing. I have to invest more labor keeping the path open but wasted labor is the nature of sub-optimal solutions. I also have to be careful to only half load the trailer. Otherwise I’ll overwhelm my 20 year old ATV. That said… it works.

Until it doesn’t.

The ATV died. Or rather it keeps failing to engage 4×4. It’s intermittently useless for plowing. Plowing is how I keep the firewood hauling lane open. Plus the ATV is how I tow the wood. The ATV is mission critical and it’s unreliable. This too shall pass but not before spring. Getting an ATV repairman to look at my ATV is a multi-month affair. He’s busy making bank off the snowmobile owners right now. I don’t blame him for his priorities. (As with buying a new trailer, a new ATV would be nice but it’s cost prohibitive.)

I muddled through for a while but finally the wood hauling lane was snowed in. In current conditions no ATV in creation has enough oomph to plow it. That’s how homesteading works. An ATV is not a truck. An old ATV is not a new ATV. Do not dwell on what you wish, accept what is.

Plan Z is to man up and just haul wood by hand. I hate Plan Z! Pick up a great armload of wood, hike it across the driveway, through the house door, through the living room, step on the dog, track snow everywhere, stumble down the stairs, drop the pile in our rack… lather rinse repeat. You can work to exhaustion and it gets nowhere. Compared to a trailer it’s a tiny amount. I did it for a few weeks but I hate it. Nobody wants to get beaten that hard!

A man’s got to know his limitations. In order to haul all the wood I’d need using that level of crude brawn I’d need to the physique (and possibly the dumb brute patience) of a draft horse.

So I created Plan C. I got myself a nice but smallish ice fishing sled and planned a narrow hauling lane.

Ice fishing sleds are plastic but pretty cool. They’re a million times stronger (and somewhat heavier) than a kid’s sled. Ice fishing folks use them to haul 200+ pound loads of ice auger and beer behind a snowmobile or ATV. Some of the more dedicated fishermen just pull the sled on foot or with snowshoes. They do this in blizzards. They do it to kill fish. Think about that when someone in the media is all fluttery about politics from the DC point of view. Politicians who can’t change a car tire are meddling in the lives of people who haul great loads of fish killing shit onto frozen lakes in blizzards for fun.

I carefully chose a smallish sled. The large one would probably weigh too much when fully loaded.

Then I geared up to bust out the snowbound trail. I have a snowblower but I very much prefer to not use it. Plowing with ATV is strenuous but the snowblower is a wrestling match. Also it’s very loud and sometimes sucks up rocks that bind its impeller.

My kid came out to see me futzing with our snowblower in the freezing cold. I’d stored it with an empty tank (on purpose!) so there was the search for a gas can. Then the obligatory flat tires (when it gets real cold unused tires will go flat). This led to wrestling the compressor out of a different building. Then stretching the air hose, which was as flexible as lead pipe.

I clicked on the compressor and promptly tripped the circuit breaker. Sheesh!

The kid assessed the situation and, teenager that he is, decided I was a moron.

“This is a lot of steps.”

“Yes it is. I’m having cascading failures at the moment.” I said this while rummaging in the cold dark barn for a flashlight.

“We should just use the sled without all this stuff.”

OK folks, you’re adults. You can maybe see all sorts of logic to my more sophisticated approach? Should I explain it? Nah, it’s a teenager I’m talking about. Plus, why not let him try?

“Knock yourself out. I’ll keep at this and you haul with the sled.”

Ten minutes later I’d reset the breaker, wrestled an extension cable to a different outlet, fired the compressor up, and was topping off the snowblower’s fuel tank. Another five minutes and the tires were inflated.

Now I had the blower running and it was game on! I roared into the gloom with the great beast hurling snow like a gas powered tornado. I marched slow and steady through waist deep snow while wondering how the kid was doing. He’s a precocious lad. Competitive too. Given the slightest chance, he’ll show you up and make you look like an incompetent dumbass. (I wonder where he got that from?) I half expected him to be standing there with a grin of smug superiority. Ready to report he’d moved six face cords to the house while I was banging my knuckles on the air compressor.

He was nowhere to be found. He couldn’t have muscled hundreds of pounds through deep snow that fast could he? I had a moment of doubt.

Finally, I found him a couple hundred feet away; collapsed in the snow and exhausted; halfway from the woodshed to the house. The loaded sled buried in a 3′ snowdrift near his feet.

I roared up to the prone teenager and very carefully said nothing mean. I’m awesome like that.

“Snow… Deep. This isn’t going to work!” He panted.

I’d known that all along. The sled had at least 60 pounds of payload and he’d wallowed that pig though drifts to almost literal collapse. Brave but stupid. I didn’t say anything discouraging.

“Nice try. You rest and I’ll see how it goes when the snow’s cleared.”

I wrapped the rope around my waste and pulled it through the cleared path. I’d made sure to clear a level path. The sled rode on a half inch of snow over the frozen soil like it was on greased skids.

I trudged around the house and unloaded it. I gave the kid many compliments when he got to his feet and helped again. We did just a few loads with the sled. Each one was many multiples faster and easier than carrying the wood by hand. Not as easy as the wagon… but not too bad either. We moved perhaps half a face cord. A few day’s worth depending on the weather.

Word to the wise, friction is a thing to be managed, not ignored. Pulling a hefty sled in an inch of snow is at least 90% less effort than churning the same load on top of deep drifts. The kid has learned and will remember. Or not.

Thanks to the wood, the house is nice and warm. We’re fine… until, I suppose, the sled breaks.

Exhibit one in the chronicles of why my lawn is half dead in the spring.

Of course, I lost all of my firearms in a tragic canoe accident. However…

For some reason I like the .38 Special / .357 Mag pairing of ammunition. I don’t know why; maybe they’re easy to reload? Maybe they’re old and tested? Maybe I’m biased for no good reason whatsoever. Who knows what makes the heart want what it does.

Anyway, I noticed this and liked the idea:

The 2019 SHOT Show saw the release of the latest cartridge from Winchester—the .350 Legend. The new cartridge is a .223 case blown out to have straight walls, making it a perfectly viable choice for those states which require the use of a straight-walled rifle cartridge for deer hunting. The bullet diameter is listed as .357″, and the rimless design will require the cartridge to headspace off the case mouth.

For no logical reason, that just looks like the bee’s knees to me. Pretty sure it’d be a fine big game rifle (provided, as always, the operator is up to the shot).

There’s a bit of discussion at The Captain’s Journal that relates to this shiny new caliber:

It would appear that the idea is a straight-walled cartridge that isn’t quite the punch in the shoulder that the .450 Bushmaster is, but still with a lot of power. I confess that I had thought before about the possibility of a carbine chambered for .357 Magnum. This is a step up. For the 150-grain bullet they get 2350 FPS, whereas by comparison, for the 300 Blackout at 125-grains, it’s pushing 2215 FPS.

I need a toy in a weird caliber like I need a hole in the head, but I like that straightwall case for reloading. Also, I just never got into the .300 Blackout. I mean it’s pretty darned cool but a .300 Blackout without a suppressor is like putting shitty tires on a hotrod. It’s got the engine but the performance you wanted is denied. And I have to admit, doing the paperwork on a suppressor is a turn off. I would like to spare my hearing and I’ll do paperwork if I have to but the BATFE / suppressor thing is like doing taxes as a hobby. Boooooring.

Also, I’m not sure about the whole “legal betterness” of a straightwalled case. I’m have mostly escaped the universe of “this gun is ‘good’ and that gun is ‘dangerous’ due to some dumb fucking technical difference that nobody in the right mind would care about”. I realize the depth of the related political shitstorm but it’s just not a thing I have to worry about. Apparently straightwall versus necked case is a thing in some places? Who knew? Arbitrary regulations are fuckin’ weird.

For the hunter who has always wanted to hunt with an AR-15 rifle but has been unable to because of local straight-wall cartridge restrictions, this rifle is for you.

Then again it’s a personal goal to avoid “flavor of the month” calibers when possible. Also, and far more importantly, I’ve blown all my “wiggle room” keeping the house heated this winter. A wise man would stay the course and keep his money in his pocket.

Besides, if I were wandering the woods looking to put a .357 bullet into something edible I’d definitely prefer something a bit more old school and suitable for a Curmudgeon:

Oh well, it’s fun to look at the new toys anyway.

I don’t know if my readers have been exposed to the media (which is like being exposed to malaria) but the weather has been rather interesting lately. Yeah, sure interesting.  Lets call it that. Or maybe these: Exciting. Extreme. Invigorating.

Harrumph! I can’t do it. It’s verbal nonsense trying to sum up this kind of cold snap in a single word. The weather has been more than a minor hindrance. It has been a gold plated pain in my ass.

This isn’t my first rodeo. I know that “cold snap” is not Armageddon. I’ve ridden them out before and will ride them out again. However, at a certain temperature, quantity has it’s own quality. It becomes the most important thing happening right at that moment. For me, the cutoff is somewhere near -30.

When the temperature hits around -30 (Fahrenheit) all forward motion in my life stops. We here at Curmudgeon compound go from “keep on truckin'” to “hunker down and stay wary”. It’s just common sense.

Also, I don’t want to hear any puffed chest bravado from folks who think they’re tough and tell stupid stories that deny simple facts of physics and nature; “In my day we played pond hockey in t-shirts at -80. Millenials should be out there playing lacrosse in a blizzard or they’re just wimps.” WRONG! Even Paul Buynan knew when to sit by the fire and wait. Either you have a faulty memory or you’re a dumbass who barely escaped the clutches of Darwin.

Somewhere around -30 is when the technological accoutrements of civilization begin to fail. I don’t care if you’re a mountain man messing with oil lamps, a homesteader trying to keep the chicken waterer thawed, a suburban commuter jump starting your Honda, or a hipster barista whining because your Amazon delivery is delayed… at some temperature it’s no longer “routine”.

Vehicles stop starting. This is the best barometer. It happens according to a predictable progression of brand names. Starting somewhere with Dodge and Chevy and chewing its way up the reliability ladder until a Honda is dead. If a Honda won’t start you’d better watch your ass!  (Note: Mrs. Curmudgeon’s Honda needed a jump start. That means I jumped up and went out there with a battery charger to get it started.)

Once you start whatever machinery you’ve got, you must fret over what you’re doing to it merely by using it in that weather. There’s a heightened risk you’ll break expensive plastic bits off the dash. Why? Because cars have plastics and rubber seals and grommets and shit. If it’s too cold for the material in question, things get tense. Ask the guys from the Space Shuttle Challenger about brittle materials.

All week long, everything (including me!) was near the limits of its design criteria. I could almost feel the power grid groan under the strain. The woodstove and furnace worked 24/7 but the house’s insulation wasn’t up to the task. (My farmhouse is not very modern.)  It’s just the nature of the situation: Pipes freeze, trees are “popping” in the forest, obsessively counting livestock is due diligence, and (in my case) my lungs ached every time I was outdoors.

Some folks might not get the whole “everything stops for a while” zeitgeist. Here’s a hint; if you’re checking every water fixture every two hours to make sure the pipes are still thawed you’re not free to focus on the normal tasks of an average day. This isn’t to say other places don’t have their own drama. Nobody’s mowing the lawn the day before a hurricane hits Key West; they’re nailing up plywood and wishing they lived in Kentucky.

I decided to get photos of my outside thermometer as a bit of photojournalism. Sadly I’m still recovering from bronchitis. Every time I ventured a few feet beyond the back door I’d have a coughing fit. Life is like that.

I started taking screenshots of weather reports. This was kinda’ lame but it’s the only idea I had. Then my dog pointed out OPSEC failure I was courting, so I wound up with cropped numbers that mean nothing to nobody. Enjoy:

I got this.

I wonder where the outdoor cat went?

Would a different media source give different results? Nope.

One of the faucets isn’t working! Get on it!

This isn’t funny anymore!

IT IS THE END OF DAYS!

This went on for quite a while. Days sorta’ blended into each other. Eventually it went just below the coldest I’ve ever personally witnessed.

You know how I rip on people who tell bullshit exaggerations? I hate those people:

“This is nothing, I remember once it was -70.”

“You live in Houston.”

“It’s not the cold, it’s the humidity.”

“Fuck off.”

In my never ending desire to counteract fake news, I very carefully remember actual facts. The fact is that once I stood in front of my outside thermometer and it read -40. It was a real honest -40 and not some windchill inflation “feels like” voodoo. It was the genuine article. If I’ve ever been in colder weather I didn’t document it.

Last week there was a morning when it was colder than my previous low. Mrs. Curmudgeon was up and sipping coffee. She was sitting within 10 feet of the fire and wisely planned to stay right there. I tried to take a hot shower and it was tepid. Our hot water heater just couldn’t make the water hot enough. (I hate cold showers!)

After my shower Mrs. Curmudgeon mentioned that it had been -42. The dog had refused to go outside and probably wouldn’t take a dump until March.

-42?!? Wow. I threw on eleven layers of clothes and ventured out to verify it on my physical thermometer. The sun had just risen. It might already be “warming up”! I endured my obligatory coughing fit (bronchitis is a bitch) and then snapped a photo.

Damn! It was already a little warmer. With the first sun’s rays it had “heated up” all the way to about -35. No “new low” photo for me. I didn’t bother to get a screenshot from the media either. I was focused on “real world verification”. I didn’t care about the nearest airport, I cared about my backyard.

Back in the house I complained to Mrs. Curmudgeon. “Darn it,” I groused, “no photo. You know what they say; pics or it didn’t happen. I missed a new personal low. I wish you’d taken a photo.”

“Take a photo?” She growled, “Go fuck yourself!”

Yeah, my bad. I had it coming. Two personal lows in 20 minutes. I’ll be a lot nicer from now on; or at least until it thaws.

What I call “rich people doctor” is different. It’s a new thing and I want to give them a hug every time I go there! It’s a direct response to Obamcare and it’s a desperately appreciated limited workaround as everything else becomes the third world medical monopoly that controls this region. It costs roughly twice what it costs to get ignored and infected in the land of tattooed freaks and dirty floors.

It’s worth it. What is money for if not to take care of yourself?

Repeat after me, health is important. It’s a big fucking deal. When it’s gone, nothing else matters. Doctors are worth more than Jet Skis or whatever the hell else you were going to buy.

Especially if you fancy yourself a survivalist, think of the relative value of a proper doctor visit right now as compared to that next brick of ammo you’re storing in your closet. Flu, pneumonia, and other boring dumb shit kills a lot more people than you think. In fact, it’s a lot more likely you’ll die from a broken toe that gets infected at the ER than it is you’ll go out in a firefight on top of a pile of spent brass. Proper health care is a survivalist asset too.

[Rant] If you’re going to give me a sob story about how cheap medicine is awesome… stop. This is my value system and I’m sticking to it. Bad health care is only a great deal until it fucks you up. Life is cruel, nothing is free, if cheap is what you pay cheap is what you get, nobody wants to be sick in the first place anyway, etc.… I get it; the vagaries of health are sad and it sucks to burn a wad of cash because someone sneezed on you. But it is what it is. You don’t always get what you want. Bad medicine can kill ya! Regardless of what should be, the doctor either works for you or you’re just an expense to the system. Finally, nobody bleeds out at the ER thinking happily about the money they’re saving. [/RANT]

Rich people doctor is a miracle. I love those guys. They’re a new development. Weren’t around just a few years ago. They’re NOT owned by the local monopoly. They actually care if you live. The wait is 20 minutes or less instead of hours. The waiting room is empty. The doctors seem to actually know medicine. They want my money and they try to cure me to get it. I’ll play ball if I can get healthy faster!

They figured out tout sweet I had bronchitis. (Which I’d guessed.) For the cost of double expense (even with insurance) I got in there and out of there in an hour instead of half a day. What’s the market value of sitting half a day in a fetid cesspool of germs while they whine that I’m not an oppressed Guatemalan and bitch about guns in my house?

The real doctors at rich people medical care treated me like a human and wrote prescriptions for meds. They can sell meds right on site (for a fortune) but they told me I could get the prescription filled cheaper at the local pharmacy (which is linked to the local medical monopoly but is an actual company and therefore has nominally acceptable service). As a non-monopoly company, they couldn’t get access to send the prescription electronically. I had to carry a paper Rx myself. They apologized for the inconvenience.

I drove a few miles away and bought all the stuff they recommended (some of it wasn’t cheap, but I’m worth it). Then I headed home. God bless you, rich people doctors!

Back at home Mrs. Curmudgeon hadn’t moved. Hard to say if all the money and effort I’d expended was worth it.

I changed into jammies and immediately the fuel oil guy arrived. I dressed again while the dog started barking and so forth.

Wow, he arrived when he said he would! The second miracle of the day. I like the fuel oil guy. He’s a nice (and very overworked) fella.

I got the shakes bringing the check through the cold to the oil delivery guy (and in the process my checking account went into overdraft).

So now it’s a few days later. We have electricity, fuel oil, proper medical care, and I’m slowly shaking off bronchitis that sucker punched me hard. Same for Mrs. Curmudgeon if somewhat slower. It seemed too hit me meaner and faster but (due to care or not) it’s fading quicker and easier. On the other hand, I have an unknown electrical bill, pissed lots of money on meds and care, and dropped a huge wad I didn’t have on furnace fuel. As for the ATV, that’ll just have to wait until it’s not -30 and I’m feeling better. I hope it doesn’t snow!

What was meant to be a frugal week of self-improvement became a shit show. Winter is hard.

While I convalesce, the internet (via my old backup Wi-Fi router) tells me I should be upset over some douchebag non-Vietnam vet who claimed he was an oppressed victim hammered a drum at a teenager in a MAGA hat who didn’t do anything but smile. Really? Drums and smiling? People tweeting about smirks and demanding woodchippers? This is news? Let’s cut the shit right here… nothing on the news is news; hell, it’s not even the truth. Healthy breathing and a heated home… that’s important news. It’s what matters. I had three miracles, an electrician, oil delivery, and good medicine. I’m blessed! I missed my joyously anticipated once a year event but that’s life. I’ll try again next time. Maybe I’ll write a country music song about it.

Now you know what the heck I’ve been doing instead of blogging. Stay healthy y’all.

A.C.

The next day I was even sicker. I didn’t even set my alarm. My workout regimen had been nuked from orbit. What a bummer. I’d been so excited but there’s nothing you can do if you can barely breathe.

On the other hand, the furnace had electricity. It was still almost out of fuel but one step at a time. Glass is half full and all that.

Of bigger concern was that whole… “I’d like to keep breathing” thing. I’d been hit very hard very fast and was determined to do something about it lest it get worse. The next part of this story is just my personal experience with local medical care; if you wanna’ get all political and call me a Deplorable on the wrong side of history that’s just fine. This is my actual world and not a theoretical one and it probably applies only to my area. Beyond that we’ll just have to talk about tractors instead.

What I chose to do was run off to what I call “the rich people doctor”. In the nearest town all the medical facilities (save one) are owned by the same monopoly. The town used to offer roughly average American quality care but it’s been going steeply downhill for about a decade. By now it’s amazingly bad. So bad that Mrs. Curmudgeon refused to go (even to the “rich people” doctor). She’d rather suffer on the couch than tilt at windmills of the local medical bureaucracy. I don’t blame her. We chose different paths and will compare notes in the end.

Most medicine in our area is simply unacceptable nowadays. Mostly it’s cheap but the quality is haphazard, worse than laughable, worse than it once was, just fuckin’ terrible. It’s impersonal, annoying, largely ineffective, and possibly descending into the range of third world quality. It’s delivered by people who don’t care if you live or die, can only diagnose something big and obvious (I’m talking something like a farm tractor accident or a gunshot wound), and any properly skilled doctor flees the scene as fast as they can. I assure you they’ll be moving on to a better gig as soon as they can ditch this rural shithole. Like I said, it wasn’t always like this, but there’s no point in denying what it is now.

The transition between adequate and craptacular has been remarkable. Aside from the fact it may someday kill me, it’s an interesting study of a real life “Fall of Rome” effect.

It’s an ugly situation. You can try for a doctor’s appointment but that’s just a joke. You have to schedule several months in advance. “I think I’ll be sick in June, how about a general medical visit in June.” If you schedule such a visit, it may not happen anyway. The doctor will probably be gone before then. (“If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.” Remember that? It was gold plated bullshit.)

The emergency room is worse. It’s a horror movie. I’ve been there done that and frankly it’s terrifying. Luckily, I wasn’t that ill. ER would be overkill and I wouldn’t go near those ghouls unless I was damn near shaking hands with the grim reaper.

So, the only game in town (within the ubiquitous medical monopoly) is a clinic. The clinic is cheap but horrid. It’s the main front gate to the monopoly which controls every nearby medical practice (with one exception) that isn’t dentistry or optometry. Welcome to my personal world of Obamacare 2019. Your mileage may vary, it might be just great where you are. Maybe my misery is just an irrelevant rounding error in some “fuck those hicks” calculation that favors population centers. Who knows? I only know what I experience. I also know the only way to find a clinic beyond the reach of the monopoly is to drive further than I had the health to drive. Such is the way of the world.

At the clinic, which is admittedly cheap and open pretty generous hours, folks will be stacked up like a crowd trying to score free concert tickets. It’s always busy. Always has been, always will be. You’ll wait in a room with some seriously messed up people. It makes you wonder what you’ve done wrong in your life to wind up in this sorry state. The crowd is garish and sometimes freaky. Many folks look like they failed “Taking Care of Yourself 101”. There will be a couple dozen snot nosed and impatient screaming kids associated with a dozen odd equally impatient and swearing women… some of whom aren’t actually patients (you’d need a score card to ascertain what kid goes with what person). Given the overall situation it seems like a great way to make sure six siblings are for sure guaranteed to end up with the pinkeye that generated one kid’s visit. The saddest are the really sick kids. They sit silently starting at space (that really worries me, nobody wants to see a sick kid just pining away). In addition, there will be tattooed freaks, meth heads, folks who desperately need a shower, and at least three random extras from Mad Max. All of whom are staring at their phones. I don’t see a lot of geriatrics there… they must have an “in” somewhere? Every time I go to the clinic I wonder where all the normal people are. The whole world can’t be “People of Walmart” or possibly “Cops” can it? Regardless it’s a horrid place when you’re already suffering.

And suffer you will, for hours:

After 3 hours of them coughing tuberculosis on you and you coughing bronchitis on them, interrupted by an occasional toddler shitting itself in the seat next to you, or maybe someone bleeding on something; you’ll get your turn at the grinding maw of the database. A perky non-doctor will process you through fifteen different non-medical forms. This includes lots of stuff that seems to relate to voting districts and welfare statistics. They’ll take your blood pressure and write it in the computer. They’ll ask if you want to be enrolled in a smoking cessation program and write it in a computer. They’ll ask if you have guns and write it in a computer. (Tragic canoe accident.) They’ll check with your wife to see if you beat her (as if Mrs. Curmudgeon would put up with that kind of shit!) and they’ll put that in the computer. They’ll pry into all sorts of demographic data to see if they can hit today’s quota of one armed, Islamic, LBGTXYZ, Urdu speaking, heroin addicts.

There is only one thing they don’t care about. They don’t give a shit why you’re there.

“Ma’am, I’m here because I’ve been vomiting blood and my toe fell off.”

“That’s nice. Do you smoke?”

They’re always comically but genuinely disappointed I’m not helping their “statistics”. I’m depressingly normal. I have insurance. I’ll happily meet the co-pay right now. I’ll pay cash. I’m not high. I usually (and thankfully) have only a minor illness. I’m a good patient that will do my best to get healthy asap. There’s just not a lot of “statistical value” in my reality as a mostly healthy white male. They’re not fishing for me.

Yep, it’s really like that nowadays.

All this non-medical bullshit gets typed into the computer. Once the computer database is filled out, their job is done and they practically forget you’re still there. In fact, they seemed annoyed you insist on treatment. You can almost feel the lack of concern: why the heck do you persist in hanging around bothering them after the all-important database has been satisfied.?

After a while, they’ll grudgingly put you in a different and slightly less crowded room where you wait some more. Then you’ll see not an actual doctor but some sort of “semi-doctor like person”. He or she may have adequate training for my piddly little problems or he or she may a quack who barely managed a gentleman’s C at the worst medical school on the planet. When I’m sick, I can’t tell the difference. This individual will ignore you while they spend a few minutes (tops!) reading questions off a computer screen and typing your answers in the form. They will not look at you. They barely notice you’re there.

I knew it would go like this:

“Have you been sick a week?”

“No only 4 days, I think I have bronchitis.”

“Do you smoke? Take illegal drugs?”

“No, I think it’s bronchitis.”

“C’mon man, look at that beard you’ve got. You been tweakin?”

“No! I’m not even sure what ‘tweak’ means. I’m generally healthy. I was working out before this thing hit me. I’m having trouble breathing. Cough a lot. It’s very painful.”

“Sure, whatever! Come back after it has been a week. After a week we’ll give you whatever the computer says to give you.”

“I already have bronchitis. It’s pretty obvious. What’s the point of waiting? Is there some advantage waiting for it to become pneumonia?”

“The computer says seven days. If you can’t stand it, go to the emergency room and wait there while car crashes and heart attacks come before you.”

“So, the point of treatment is to wait exactly seven days?”

“The computer says a week.” Glancing at a timer on the screen. “In fact, I’ve been talking with you too long.”

“You’re only here for a few years until you can get a better job, aren’t you?”

“Hell yes, this place is a shithole.”

“Nice talking to you Medical Practitioner Hajieesh Pumbar Plxuminothinoth. By the way, where did you go to school?”

“Bangalore, hell of a lot better than this dump. How can you idiots live in this icebox?”

“I wonder that myself.”

“Bye. Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”

Like I said, that’s how it really is. Some things I exaggerate. Not this. It sucks that bad.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to end on a down note. Conclusion to follow…

The next day I had the pre-dawn alarm on but I clearly had bronchitis. All night I’d been hearing Jethro Tull’s Aqualung in my head and I’d coughed enough I probably had black eyes.

I was pissed. If I’m going to have a respiratory system this weak, I should at least have the fun of being a chain smoker!

Once again, the furnace gave out. It was -30 that morning. Mrs. Curmudgeon and I were both shivery. “Well, it’s been a good run,” I thought, “but now we’re gonna’ die.”

Instead Mrs. Curmudgeon cranked the stove (I’d forgotten I’d hauled the wood!). We both sat near it. Barely warm enough and totally miserable.

After a while, I bravely went back into the basement. There was still a trace of fuel oil. A puzzlement.

With more investigation I discovered the laundry room lights, kitchen lights, and the freezers (!!!) were kaput. Also, the oven’s clock was reset to 12:00 and the fan in the bathroom didn’t work.

What fresh hell was this? We had some power but not no power and not all power? Is not home AC power a binary construct. What the hell is indicated by “half power”? I was baffled.

Back in the basement I started mucking about with the circuit breakers. None seemed tripped. Yet checking appliances and two dozen staggering trips up and down the stairs verified that some circuits which were ostensibly ON had no power but others (which were also ostensibly ON) did.

I flipped circuit breakers and checked lights and couldn’t figure it out. No heat or smoke from any threatening places. No clearly tripped circuits, it was very windy outside but that would cause a “power outage” not unspecified localized inside-the-house brownouts.

My working theory was that the -30 morning had chilled something somewhere and that shrunk it just enough to sever a few contacts. It seemed a stretch but I had no better ideas.

Mrs. Curmudgeon told me to call an electrician. I complained that I’d never yet coaxed an electrician come to my house without weeks of begging and I’d tried many times. She made the call. I went back into the basement and swore a lot, then the furnace and the lights went on. All hail the power of swearing!

One of the kids showed up, sussed out that the heat was on (which matters not one bit to the lad) but the Wi-Fi was down (which is a DEFCON 4 tragedy). He grabbed the car keys and fled. That’s how it’ll be in the zombie apocalypse. Me and the dog will try to hold the fort against overwhelming odds (and fail), Mrs. Curmudgeon will be trying to call for help from a service guy that’ll never come, and the kids will split for a Starbucks somewhere.

Clearly out of my league, and too sick to rally either body or brain, I collapsed in the chair by the fire.

Later, something interesting happened: I fixed everything. I cleaned mouse droppings out of the breaker box with my shop vac and was having a fine game of pitch with my loving family. This made no sense because I was about to play a joker on Trump and there’s no earthly reason why you’d play pitch with wildcards. Also, my shop vac is out in the shop beyond snowdrifts and I was in no shape to brave -30 to get a fucking vacuum.

Then I woke up. So much for that. Even in my dreams I work like a dog.

Once again, the furnace was off. So were some (not all) of the lights.

Careful to make sure I was awake lest I set something on fire, I lit one of my many oil lamps. (It’s better to light one in the daytime than try it at dark.) Then I muttered something about poltergeists and crashed in bed.

Relative time of 90 seconds passed (4 hours by the clock) and an electrician came. An electrician came to my house! Holy shit! Mrs. Curmudgeon came through again!

I took him to the panel and explained the anomalous information; no power to the furnace, no tripped circuit breakers, no pattern to the dead circuits, intermittent power on and power off.

We heard a sound.

“Does that sound like sparking to you?” I asked.

He whipped off the panel cover and we both got a clear view of the 100-amp main breaker sparking. I was delighted! The easiest diagnostics you could ask for.

He explained that interrupting the “B” leg of the A/B 240 line in would affect “every other” circuit. The sparks were on the B leg and not the A leg. Bingo! I love simple explanations!

It’s a ten-minute job to replace a breaker and he was costing a mint just standing there. So of course, he didn’t have the part. We spent an hour working the phones (him and me both… cell phone only because my landline phone was off it’s rocker due to power surges). Eventually he procured something and installed it. I haven’t yet gotten the bill but I’m sure it’ll cause a coronary.

The situation had nuked my main Wi-Fi antenna. I still have (and run) the old router though. (Two Wi-Fi routers in my house! Two is one, one is none!) With the old Wi-Fi running, Mrs. Curmudgeon had Netflix which is a key component of her healing process. The kids had YouTube which is more necessary than air to a Millennial. Sadly, my squirrel stores were off line. I keep the squirrels on a NAS/RAID and had unplugged it in the middle of the electrical issues. It’s on a surge protector but so was the newer better Wi-Fi router that died. Also, I didn’t trust my addled self to reboot the precious NAS/RAID in my condition. All this is fine, keeping the family happy was highest priority and I couldn’t think straight anyway.

Things went from bad to worse. Mrs. Curmudgeon staggered off to work; where she’d either pick up more germs from the original sources or spread hers back into the environment. I’m convinced offices are tailor made to spread germs. They’re probably less safe than skinny dipping in a ditch in the Calcutta slums.

Meanwhile I was toast. I called in a day off work and promised myself I’d “beat this thing” in time for the afternoon session. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

I was suffering. It took hours to work up the head of steam needed to brush my teeth! Holy shit was I floored.

I wound up sitting at my computer with bits and pieces of the Squirrels story scattered everywhere. I was making no progress and had paper printouts spread on every surface. I don’t even remember what I did or wrote.

I was shivering. Very slowly I realized my shivering was NOT just a fever. I’d let the woodstove go down to coals and the furnace wasn’t picking up the slack. WTF? That’s why we have a furnace… for times when I’m too messed up to play with firewood (or away traveling).

In jammies and slippers, I ventured into the basement. The furnace was cold. I checked the tank. Holy shit! I’d meant to call for a fuel delivery on Day #1 but in the rush of the day I’d plum forgot. I had 1/16^th a tank left… tops.

Even so, a furnace, like a real (non-electric) engine, runs until it doesn’t. Almost out of fuel is no biggie. Like the Federal debt it’s a problem that’s not a problem until it is a crushing one. The tank would inevitably run dry in the near future but everything should work fine right until the last minute. Thus, the dead furnace was a mystery.

Ten minutes of flipping switches and messing with the thermostat and it roared back to life. Huh!?! I didn’t really know why it had gone out and I didn’t really know why it had started. I wasn’t thinking clearly anyway.

I enjoyed what heat we had and called for a delivery of fuel. After some verbal begging they promised to come the next day… which they almost certainly wouldn’t do. (I gave 1 in 5 odds of a delivery in less than 3 days.) The alternative is I fill up with #2 off road diesel from the pumps at the nearest town. This works fine but is labor intensive. I didn’t want to mess with it while I was feeling feverish. (Imagine dragging a five gallon can of fuel through a snowdrift when you can barely brush your teeth.)

By mid-afternoon Mrs. Curmudgeon showed up. She’d tried mightily but had to bail on her work too. She arrived with juice. What a hero!

There was regular orange juice and a wildcard: cranberry-pineapple (two fruits that shouldn’t exist on the same continental plate). It was surprisingly good. I’ll try it with vodka when I’m feeling better. Honestly, in my condition I’d drink anything either hot or with sugar to soothe my throat.

I made weak motions that I was going to fire up my truck and head for the sunset workout. Mrs. Curmudgeon is a genius. She didn’t argue with me (which wouldn’t have worked). Instead she handed me a 16-ounce fuzzy navel. It was delicious and soothed my throat. I practically passed out after the first sip. By the time I woke up, it was too late to tilt at windmills. She’s a keeper!

I recently mentioned I’d been “blogging” using an Alphasmart Neo2 (a used obsolete $30+/- “teaching tool” word processor that runs on AA batteries) in a room lit by oil lamps. You may think I’m exaggerating. Nope. I’m not making this shit up!

These handy tools bear mention, for they’re useful old friends that I trust

First and highest ratings go to my “Bit Shovels”. I’ve mentioned the Alphasmart Neo2 and it’s sister product the Alphasmart Dana before. Check out: Buying A Spare Bit Shovel (which discusses my “upgrade” to the cruder and ironically superior Alphasmart Neo2 in 2016). This came after A Belated Acknowledgement Of An Elegant Device (discussing the Alphasmart Dana I purchased in 2011).

The point is that both devices work. They work now. They work if I’ve left them in a freezing truck all night. They work if left them in the barn. They work if I forgot to charge them (oddly the AA battery option is better than the rechargeable batteries). They work if Godzilla chewed them up and spit them out. I toss these hearty bastards in backpacks, saddlebags, tool boxes, and everywhere else… and they just keep working. Try that with a decrepit old laptop… which will age in OS if not in function.

A Hammer and a Bit Shovel. Both are cheap, utilitarian, and reliable. These are mine, get your own.

There is a modern “alternative”. The Freewrite is hipsterific eye candy that looks great but isn’t necessarily superior. I do like the looks but for the price differential I can live with my childish “toys”. They work with no muss / no fuss. Here’s a link to the “Freewrite” which for only $500+ more than a humble Dana, includes “screen savers”. How much do you like screen savers?

It’s pretty but is is $550 worth of pretty?

More mundane but just as handy are my oil lamps. I have several but my “go to” lamps are a pair of dirt cheap “Montana” oil lamps. They’re perfect! The best feature is that they hang on the wall (removable of course).  This is an important feature because they’re always ready. Fill ’em up, dust ’em off once in a while (or don’t), and they’ll be there when you need them. This is key: my other lamps wind up on shelves, pushed into closets, etc… (Also, lamps that aren’t wisely secured to a wall are more likely to get broken by getting jarred or dropped.)

I highly recommend these lamps. They’re about $30 a pop. They’re not built super strong, like a lifetime lasting family heirloom, but for $30 what do you want? They work well, look pretty, and never need batteries.

Don’t let the picture fool you. They come with a wall hanger that serves admirably to keep them readily available and you can light them while on the wall. They’re pretty too.

Day #2 started on a high note. Already weary of body but in high spirits I marveled at the warm morning (+10 degrees!). The truck was so much easier to warm up and I sipped coffee while basking in the heat during my drive in.

At the workout I was comporting myself well enough given my age and physique but had to miss the last few minutes of the session. One of the fellas in our group turned pale and scampered off; presumably to die in some corner. We’ve all been there.

I was dispatched to ride herd on him and make sure he didn’t stroke out alone in the locker room. This is just good safety protocol and I agree with the sentiment. I sat 10 feet away trying not to breathe any germs while he hurled in the can and apologized for interrupting my workout. (This is something men do, they apologize for having physical limits.) Apparently, he’d picked up a “bug” somewhere and just couldn’t work though it. I assured him that there’s no shame in tapping out provided you’ve given your all. Besides, we were unanimously happy he barfed in the can and not on the floor. I meant it too, there’s no shame if you don’t make it across the finish line provided you tried to your limit.

After session #3 I went back to the grind and already I hurt everywhere. Three workouts in just over 24 hours had me on a diet of aspirin and coffee. (No surprise there.)

The predicted blizzard hit solidly and soon I was out there freezing my balls off trying to plow the driveway with our decrepit 20-year-old ATV. Stressors were building up during a time when I wanted to focus on just one thing! Was it about then that I heard the opening strings of a country music song? You know how those songs go; your tractor breaks, your dog dies, and you drown your sorrows in lite beer… something like that.

I barely cleared the driveway but failed to clear the parking area. The ATV died. Kaput. Done. It was dead as the Monty Python parrot. I had no time to mourn it. I pushed it into the garage and warmed up my truck to rush to session #4.

Meanwhile Mrs. Curmudgeon arrived home. She was looking a bit green around the gills. She works in an office and it’s a law of nature that office workers coddle their cold germs like treasured pets and lovingly set them loose in the nearest workspace. (Schools do the same with kids.) As with the dude in the morning, I refrained from getting too close to her. I hopped in my truck and fled.

Workout #4 was great. The morning guy was nowhere to be found, which was to be expected. I wished him luck and thanked the stars I wasn’t dealing with a “bug”. In fact, I was doing pretty well! I felt like a stud. How awesome is that?

Then it happened. While driving home something flipped a switch somewhere in my body and everything went pear shaped. I was hit with illness like a runaway train. Very sudden. Oddly fast. The full Ebola. I have no idea why. I’d avoided the morning guy and my wife but by the time I got home I was in trouble.

Four workouts in just over 36 hours and I was beat. More aspirin and sleep. My sudden illness and ominous sore throat were worrisome. Maybe I’d sleep it off?

The alarm went off again the following morning at dark thirty and there was naught for it. I was somewhere between very ill and slightly dead.

I turned the clock off and stayed in bed. I’d been looking forward to my workout challenge all year and crapped out far too soon. Damn it!

But wait… there’s more. Stay tuned.

[This post was typed in an unheated room, by oil lamp, on a Neo2. And I’m a wreck too. My internet router is down so the laptop is pointless. As is, I suppose, blogging. Who blogs without the internet? Who knows when I’ll get this posted?]

I’ve been looking forward to this week for months. I participate in [REDACTED]… let’s call it “a sporting event”. If it makes it more fun, you can fill in the space with something cool: Synchronized shotput?

As part of this, a group of like-minded folks get together annually to “get the lead out”. It’s a yearly blitzkrieg of workouts and it pushes me pretty hard. I either “push the envelope” or “wind up crushed”; depending on my level of machismo at the end of the week. That said, I love it. I look forward to it for months.

I need to occasionally climb a figurative mountain because to NOT do so wears on the soul. [RANT]I don’t give a fuck what some dispshit in Gillette’s marketing division says, there’s plenty of good in the “manly lifestyle”. Dedication, strength, diligence, hard work, the opportunity to excel paired with the opportunity to faceplant; it’s good for ya’! It pisses me off that they turned that into fucktards encouraging bullies. That shit exists in the minds of clueless nincompoops and not in real life. Have they ever met an actual man? I should also mention that our little group has plenty of women so “manly lifestyle” is something of a misnomer. But still, Gillette marketers can kiss my ass.[/RANT]

Lucky for me, the logistics are all handled and I’m really not too important to the event. All I’ve got to do is show up (which is fine by me).

As I drag my increasingly geriatric ass to our tame and safe version of Thunderdome I feel good about it. If I do it a sufficient number of times I feel like a hero. Yes, I mentioned “number of times”. The “event” is just a simple workout. The challenge comes from scheduling several in rapid (from my point of view) succession. Start with a workout at dark thirty on day #1, follow it up with another workout 12 hours later, then repeat every 12 hours for five days. Ten workouts in five days doesn’t sound like much but (at least for me) it’s enough. Twelve hours doesn’t give a lot of recovery time between sessions. It builds. Of course, it’s not a marathon or Marine boot camp but I’m not a 19-year-old recruit either. What I’m saying is for me it’s a challenge and I look forward to it. I’m not blogging about it to brag or to invite abuse from DudeBros who can bench press a Volkswagen; rather, that’s the background for my story about a week that went off the rails.

Experience has taught me that by day #4 I’m usually half zombie and I coast/stumble through day #5. Then sleep a few days afterwards. That seems pretty much the right calibration for me. Plus, the people in my little group are all normal people (meaning we have jobs… quaint idea eh?). If it was more time consuming, most of us wouldn’t be able to fit it around work.

So, it begins:

Day #1 at dark thirty I fired up my truck. It was -12 degrees (Fahrenheit). My diesel truck wasn’t happy and neither was I. I HATE mornings. As far as I’m concerned there’s no need to see the pre-dawn light unless I’m fixing to shoot something edible or I’m stumbling home from last night’s drinking. Sleepy and grumpy, I cursed my stupid ideas but did my thing to the best of my feeble abilities. I rewarded myself with a nice pancake breakfast with Mrs. Curmudgeon. Awesome!

Then it was back to the regular grind of life. This got a little hairy because the weather report indicated a blizzard was on the way. In a rush, I hauled a face cord of firewood to the house just before sunset. Due to bad planning on my part (and doing all the labor myself I might add) my firewood hadn’t been properly stacked in the woodshed. It had gotten lightly covered with snow and then froze solidly in place. I wound up whacking each piece of wood with a handheld sledge to bust it from the ice before throwing it on the trailer. My kid (who didn’t help me stack wood in the fall) kindly helped in this much harder task. I was thankful. Maybe he’ll learn a lesson in planning… but then again, I blew it so I’m hardly a good example. He’ll probably not learn a damn thing. Regardless, we both found it cold and exhausting.

I got it done just in time to hop in the truck and drive to workout #2. Not my best example of time management! What the hell, life is what it is.

The evening workout ran me ragged. Or maybe it was doing the day’s second workout immediately after a couple hours of struggling with iced firewood?

I scooted home and collapsed in bed. In subjective time the alarm clock went off 5 minutes later. UGH MORNINGS! I like a bit more “downtime” between physical challenges… my muscles hadn’t had time to “heal” since the last go rounds. Then again that’s the whole point!

Stay tuned…