warmth

After a night of hiding deep under the quilt (reminder: our gas was not flowing adequately and so we were without heat), we spent the morning following the sun around the house. In the early hours, we could not get enough of it here:





Isis joined us (of course). We almost couldn't get ourselves to leave.





But we did leave. Isis reminded us that we have a day to get on with.


 


Ed located a heating and plumbing supply store that actually had the part (the malfunctioning regulator) he needed for the gas pipes. Which relieved me because although the "deregulated" gas was weak and inadequate, I imagined that it could also be out of control too strong at some point. Basically, deregulation scares me.

So we split up the noon hour nicely: I went to yoga (it's always such a beautiful stretch between here and there)...





...and Ed worked on the gas pipes. I was so overheated by the strain of the Vinyasa routines that I almost didn't notice that, when I returned home, the farmhouse was warm again. The fix was successful: the gas is flowing in a controlled manner once more.

I thought about which essential service I'd miss most (should it malfunction) -- gas, electricity, water. Since I've moved to the farmhouse (a year and half ago), we've lost water at Thanksgiving (that included toilet water) and we've had rare, sporadic, tiny outages of power and now, of course, we were, for these two days, without gas. I have to say that had an outage happened in the coldest months, every one of those would feel like a major event. But this morning, as I woke to that cold air just on the other side of the bedcovers, I thought -- not that different from when we camped in October. Cold. But nothing a good quilt can't ward off.


The house is quiet again. As if in repose. And we're quiet too, along with it. Sleepy, Ed tells me. Even though it's barely 8.

Dishes from dinner are long washed, put away. Not a complicated meal. Chickpea tomato stew. With a fried egg on top. Had I the spinach for it, I could have said -- Spanish.  (I'm missing travel just a tiny bit.)