Bring it in a Covered Wagon

Thank the gods we still have our Christmas tree. I found some clippers, shoved aside twinkle lights and pinched off a pine bough. We burned it to a toasty crisp. In the fireplace, because it’s February and we had no heat in the house last night. 

In hindsight, I probably should have been more circumspect in my clipping. The tree now has a silhouette that sort of looks like a toilet. Whatever. Survivalists living off the land, such as ourselves, cannot be troubled by aesthetic matters.

Here’s another incident that proves we’ll be just fine in a zombie apocalypse. Over the summer, our microwave broke and Tom decided to fix it himself. It took him three months to admit it was unfixable.

On the upside of the microwave situation, my husband made $150 selling parts on eBay. Who knew you could unload a used high-voltage capacitor for so much shekel! Then he made $29 on YouTube advertising revenue. Apparently lots of people watch videos featuring the flummoxed owners of sad kitchen appliances suffering through the five stages of grieving. 

On the downside of the microwave situation, we didn’t have a microwave for three months. I had to cook frozen vegetables on the stove like Laura Ingalls Wilder. I foraged our cabinets in search of a metal steamer I knew’d been jammed back there since the late 90s. I felt so close to nature.

Early on, during the first no-heat hours yester eve, I was thinking we should get ourselves off the grid. I put on three pairs of flannel pajama pants and my ski gloves and for once was really happy my laptop heats up like a smelting furnace. I looked into power generators and price shopped nuclear-powered space heaters. This continued until I realized we are off the grid. We have oil heat and we ran out of oil. We need to get on the grid. We’re far too irresponsible and lazy to man our own substation.

Tom went out and hunted down 5 gallons of diesel fuel in an old gas can. Diesel fuel is allegedly the same thing as heating oil, except Diesel fuel is dyed green and costs more. This sounded suspicious to me. Even weekend blacksmiths know what a green flame means. It means e-fucking-vacuate. I changed the batteries in the carbon monoxide alarm carried it around like a tray of hors-d'oeuvres. Tom commented on my helpfulness throughout this whole ordeal.