A barn; 75 feet by 40

If I had the strength I'd haul myself out to the trailer in the driveway and take pictures of our progress, but I am 100 today, having aged 40 years yesterday. Honestly, who knew that simplifying one's life would require such grinding physical labour? Yesterday was a "purge" day. Where did all this junk come from and why have I been hauling it around all these years???

Thoreau said, "How many a poor, immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and 100 acres of land, tillage, mowing pasture and wood-lot! The portionless, who struggle with no such inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to cultivate and subdue a few cubic feet of flesh."

He didn't address how one rids oneself of the barn and gets down to the subjugation of the flesh. I suppose you could bulldoze, but in this day and age of environmental awareness you have to dismantle anything timber by timber and nail by nail. Your guilt at filling the landfill with usable manure overcomes the temptation to simply pour gasoline over it, throw a match and run like hell.

However, what irks me most is that, despite all this exercise, one thing I haven't shed is weight. You can throw away old clothes and give away extra sets of steak knives, but your fat clings to you like a colony of octopuses, and is just about as attractive. (Don't visualize that, I don't want to damage your tender psyche.)

On a brighter note, the six replacement cabinet doors arrived yesterday. Ian's friend Dean cut them out for us, of beautiful white Russian Birch. (What a generous gift!) Ian sanded and primed them last night. It was a shame to cover that beautiful wood. Had the trailer's interior been *that* color of wood I would have happily left it alone.

We also insulated and covered a 20" x 20" vent in the side of the trailer which served as the air intake for the old propane fridge. Since we are switching to an electric fridge we don't need a 20" x 20" open hole behind it. That should cut down on heat loss in the winter. Knock a huge hole in the side of your house when it's -25 degrees and try to figure out why it's cold inside as well as out!

I'm feeling cozier now. My main worry for this winter was staying warm enough. I don't want to become a senior-sized mom and popsicle during a cold snap mid-January. The Inuit traditionally disposed of their elderly on ice floes. Sometimes their old would go off on their own, looking to catch an ice floe south. That is not our intent!