the passion of the log

when i was young, my mom always promised, "you girls will end up with someone just like your dad!" i saw this as a threat of sorts. i couldn't see myself with a man who wore cowboy boots and managed to char every piece of meat he put on a grill. and lets not even discuss the stubbornness or how he votes completely contradictory to how he lives. this is what concerns you as a teenager. but after several years with the sweetie, i'm beginning to see the similarities. both can look at any object and figure out how to repair it, rebuild it or improve it somehow. both have an excessive passion for ugly vehicles they've owned and both love fire. and both believe they know how to violate laws of physics.

so this morning the sweetie was building a fire. things weren't going well. there was a huge rainstorm yesterday and the wind blew sheets of rain up onto the porch, spraying all the dry wood. this is because we didn't have a tarp ready before we bought the logs. we moved the whole rack back a foot or two but to no avail. so the sweetie spent much time muttering about how the problem was wet wood and he didn't think he got wood that was actually cured (none of the logs we burned before this morning brought forth this complaint). there was a subtle hint at some point that maybe i'd simply picked inappropriate logs to bring in this morning. i let that slide. i selected the highest quality logs.

but the sweetie's frustration continued. to his credit, in the past ten years i've seen him build countless fires in fireplaces, woodstoves and campsites. he is competent. but not today . today he opened the ashpan to create draft. this is when the specter of my dad showed up. to many of you, opening and ashpan is meaningless. you should know that the men who installed the stove said, "do not ever open the ashpan to create draft for the stove." to men like dad and the sweetie, advice like that translates, "most idiots can't figure out how to open the ashpan the right amount and they catch things on fire or blow the fire right out, but you could probably do it. you know what you're doing." i could actually see him remembering it that way, so i said, "cut that out," and the sweetie said, surprisingly innocently, "i'm not doing anything." this is what little kids say when you walk in and there's a tube of toothpaste smeared all over the bathroom, the child is covered in toothpaste and is holding the tube in one hand. i'm not doing anything. my high school kids would know to come up with something. "i was asking for a pencil." "he didn't know what page we were on and i had to tell him." that type thing. but the sweetie is no good at subterfuge, just like the dad, so this was his response as flames whooshed through the stove and probably sent fire out the chimney to scorch the local birds.

"you're not supposed to open the ash pan. the guys told you". i tried to say it in such a way the dangerous translation wouldn't slip through. you could do it. no such luck. "i'm only opening it a little, just to get a draft going." the problem with opening the ashpan is it creates a draft so strong a nearby dachshund could be sucked right into the woodstove and up the chimney. well, maybe not the pudgy one. and probably not the old one because he would just give the stove a look. but it creates quite a draft. and this is not good. "i know what i'm doing," says the sweetie. and i could almost see my dad standing behind him, a hand on the sweetie's shoulder, nodding.

so, on to the firewood. i mentioned to a friend recently that i've looked at quite a few canvas tarps. this is because the sweetie is all about protecting this precious resource we now have in surplus. the firewood. now that we suffered so greatly with damp logs. it is possible to buy wood covers but they're disturbingly expensive and they're really just tarps. they're cut to a certain size to keep the top wood dry and keep the bottom wood exposed so it will get air. all this is more than you need to know, but it will help you experience this fully. and you need to. the sweetie, being who he is, would rather make his own cover. i am all for this as it will probably end up saving us quite a bit of cash which i can then invest wisely in arborvitae and rhododendron.

you make your own log cover out of a tarp. but not just any tarp. because plastic tarps are ugly. that's right. a grown man with a job says he doesn't want to put plastic tarps on the woodpile stacked up next to an abandoned factory because they would make the woodpile ugly. i think that is just precious, so i agree. plastic tarps would be ugly. whatever are the other options? canvas, he says. but you have to be careful. plenty of folks advertise tarps as canvas and they're really polyester or plastic, he says knowingly. when did he become my grandmother? so we look at cotton canvas tarps. they are beautiful. beautiful enough to cover logs stacked in our yard. absolutely. and the sweetie wants to know what i think about colors. i am barely able to pick out my own clothes but i am lucky. cotton canvas tarp choices tend to run to the browns and greens, both of the two colors i wear. green would be nice. but the sweetie hesitates. what about brown? it would match the wood. match the wood. really? i look at him and he's serious. it will blend in. i'm just not that worried. it's a tarp covering hundreds of logs. right now the logs are blocking our view of an old loading dock and one of those pigtail propane tanks that sit at the front of the abandoned factory next door. i guess we might as well go all the way and get our cotton canvas tarp with reinforced grommets in a color that will smoothly coexist with the landscape. but there's a snag. the sweetie notices two shades of green. one is hunter green and the other is- be still my heart- olive drab. and it is darker than the available brown. this is important because darker colors absorb more heat which means the logs will be warmer and therefore, drier. dry logs are happy logs. happy logs will burn with a ferocity most people can only imagine. i am absolutely sure dad has used this same argument to select the color of something. a car. roof shingles. patio furniture. so olive drab canvas tarps are on the way.