MacBook, How We Love Thee

I spend a lot of time in this chair, under that blanket.
Evening entertainment provided by "The Sopranos" DVDs.
Mason's usually back there on that stool, reading on the smartphone
about the latest most awful thing that man in D.C. has done. 

We have joyfully rejoined the righteous clan of MacBook owners, and as a result of the luxury expenditure, I have made a pledge to update this blog more often. You notice I call it a pledge and not a resolution, because I’m posting this one week later than planned. Ahem.

It’s not as if I’ve been swamped, either. This is winter, after all, when Flat Top productivity grinds to a halt, with its feet up in front of the wood stove, which has been burning nonstop for several weeks now. The Arctic blast has us holed up like rabbits in a winter warren. We’re finally catching up on our New Yorker magazines, knocking out a few books. (I recommend “Dreams From My Father,” by Obama — the contrast between his thoughtful explorations and those of today’s president are almost too painful to bear.) We spend most afternoons up in the loft, where it can almost feel like a warm summer day, especially if I’ve turned on the oven for a slow, low burn on a Dutch oven full of meat for Mason.

We have left the mountain only once in the past two weeks, and left the house only to walk Nick and restock the front porch woodpile. This has been an unseasonably long stretch of cold here, and the larger woodpiles out in the yard are disappearing so quickly that we’re starting to wonder whether we have enough stockpiled to get us through the season.

Our beloved Nick, and his door obsession. 

Nick remains our sole, desperately needed object of distraction. Unfortunately, his rapidly deteriorating state has added some level of drama to the interaction. Twice in the past two weeks, we’ve been in the kitchen when we’ve heard a ruckus and turned to see his back legs dangling off the loft.  We raced to his rescue, and have temporarily added a piece of lumber to prevent a three-peat. He also has developed a dementia of sorts; if he’s not napping upstairs, he’s at one of the doors, pawing it politely to be let out. But often, when we open the door, he walks to the door’s hinges and can’t figure how to get out. We play this game at least a dozen times a day.

A sneak peek of the stair project.

Over our evening beers, we contemplate upcoming projects. First up is Mason’s truck, which decided to die on us in town after we had it loaded with lumber, groceries and Christmas goodies. The lumber is for finishing the deck stair project, which has been on hold simply because there’s no reason to work out there when it’s 30 degrees. And the winter’s chill has us plotting to upgrade the back door to a properly insulated door, rather than the interior French doors we used because, when we got here seven years ago, we may not have really known what we were doing.

Do we know what we’re doing now, you wonder? Yeah, we wonder, too.