Meet My Fireplace

Picturesque, its native stone dominating the living room, I've never shown you my fireplace because it doesn't cross my mind. Last lighted in 1991 as testified by the tenants before me, it blasted hot soot throughout the cabin,

requiring an actual disaster team for clean-up, and the charring underneath the mantel from that hot mess is still visible today.

Estimate for re-lining and repair: $8000, and the landlord wouldn't pay, or for the cost of running and installing a new propane pipe for a gas fire. Because critters came down the chimney and died behind the glassed-in hearth--here covered by a blue wintertime sheet of custom-cut insulation--I had the chimney sealed. The huge crack up the front was there when I moved in, and I shuddered in its draft for 13 winters, until this very day when I caulked it with caulk that's white when first applied but turns transparent. I also filled holes in the native rock, unworried about resale value. This cabin was not built for year-round occupancy and some say the chimney was faulty from the first.

Fireplaces are wonderful, so romantic--and they suck the heat out of the room, require careful maintenance and tending and the bringing in of wood, and I wish mine were the fireplace it aspired to be, but it isn't.

Everything and the 10-inch Kitchen Sink

October 1 is my 13th anniversary on the Divine Property, and it's 14 years 2 months if counting subletting from June 1998 to August 1999. (The only place I've moved into twice.) I will never leave this place where the extraordinary happens every day and the rent, plus 99 acres of land and an ideal neighbor, is $502 a month ("as is").

Inconveniences and Oddities:
-Single-pane windows, plus a concrete slab foundation, ensure that the cabin is a freezer in pitiless winters despite every strategy known to humanity.
-If it's humid, the living room carpet -- even though cleaned -- stinks of pee from a cat who died of bladder cancer in 1999.
-!$%&*!$!!! mice, termites, snakes, skinks, spiders, bats, crickets, etc. for roommates.
-Kitchen sink measuring  13" x 10," x 7 inches deep: smaller than a shoebox.
-No bathtub.
-No library serves this location.
-$30 a month trash service.
-A fallen tree on the gravel road means you stay home until the chainsaw guy gets there.
-Bizarre, intermittent wireless service.
-Six miles to the nearest doughnut.

True Loves:
-Shade trees.
-Peace and quiet
-Native stone screened porch with wooden screen door, furnished with picnic table.
-House aligned east and west so equinoctial sunlight shoots through perfectly.
-Bringing and inviting people here.
-Wildlife, flora, and most weather.
-Birds of the day and birds of the night.
-Most amazing neighbors.
-Landlord to call when something's wrong.
-Two-car garage.
-Red flag on the mailbox.
-Wild foods.
-Propane tank. I love the stupid thing and the blue flames it makes.
-Unable to see neighbors but sometimes hear their roosters or fireworks.
-99 acres of meadows and woods
-Conservation areas nearby.
-Well water.
-Gorgeous, vivid moonlight and night sky.

The Nest

I fitted out one room to live in and keep warm in while propane prices do whatever they want; just leave me out of it. I will NOT pay a petroleum dealer $1200 for 200 gallons, which is less than half a tank, so I'm conserving. The cabin's thermostat is in this room; it's set at 55. One of my electric space heaters keeps the room at 60 degrees, while the rest of the house is 40-some degrees and due to get colder as tonight's temperatures shrink to 0. Since I turned the thermostat down 48 hours ago the furnace hasn't kicked on even once. I sit on the futon propped up by multiple pillows and work, or watch The Weather Channel, and at night sleep in my wonderfully roomy new brown sleeping bag. Note the Weather Channel's map of how propane prices in the Midwest have risen in one week. Is that a stone fireplace you see in the room, to the left? Yes. Beautiful and nonfunctional. More about the fireplace soon. I'm lucky to be able to make a comfortable nest. There are people with families, seniors, and houses much draftier than mine, or no houses at all, or whose tanks are at 0 and don't have a choice.

Sudden Nationwide Propane Shortage

Propane heating was mysterious until I moved here and learned how to handle a propane tank, gauge, gas line and supplier. A propane tank is considered "full" at 80 percent capacity, and at 20 percent one should phone the supplier for a refill. The truck shows up in three to five days. Wait too long -- below 10 percent on the gauge -- and pay an extra $100 for emergency propane delivery. The bills (paid on delivery) are never cheap: my minimum has been $400, my maximum $880, and I fill twice a year. One hard year I sold my wedding-ring set to buy a tankful.

This cold nasty winter I've been burning that propane so yesterday I phoned for a delivery. Darn, the line was busy, and busy again and again. So I left a message and this morning at 7:55 the propane supplier phoned back and I requested $600 worth.

"Six hundred dollars will get you only about 100 gallons," said the clerk, "and our minimum delivery is 200 gallons."

"What?" I said, thinking, That's outrageous!

"We've never seen it like this," she said. Me neither! I asked if it'd be better next week. She didn't know. I refused delivery at that price and she advised me to conserve. Immediately I turned my thermostat from 64 degrees F down to 55, conserving my 25 percent (down from 80 percent in late October), and set my electric space heaters on High.

The news says propane wholesaled at $1.75 a gallon last Friday and hit $5 this week due to a sudden "nationwide shortage" that's not an actual shortage -- fracking has increased the supply. The papers say blizzards and bad roads have kept the supply from getting to the Midwest. The news also blames farmers who used a lot of propane last fall drying their wet corn (?).

I say it's a gouge, like the "energy shortage" of 1973-77, when supposedly the earth was drained of all its oil and a sweater-wearing Jimmy Carter called for sacrifice. I figure I can last two or three weeks and maybe ride out this "shortage" which will end, poof, when the state's Attorney General looks into it, which he's doing Monday. There are 5.5 million people in the US heating with propane. If the shortage were real there wouldn't be a 200-gallon minimum.

. . .And I In My Cap

In winter, the Divine Cabin's log walls and concrete floor all radiate cold, and its bedroom, a non-log, non-insulated add-on circa 1969, is the worst place to be. Beneath its single-paned window, covered with plastic inside and out, is my pillow. Delightful in summer to hear there the sounds of night; it's like sleeping outside. But the same is true in winter, so over the years I've assembled an arsenal: portable electric heater, electric heating pad, flannel sheets, piles of blankets and a quilt, and, on very cold nights, sexy black bed socks that Demetrius used to make fun of, but he's dead and I'm not so I got the last laugh. Because I can't both cover my head and keep breathing, I sleep in this fleece helmet when it's exceedingly cold, like last night's 7 degrees. I like it so much ($5 at Wal-Mart) I bought three in different colors, plus matching gloves with finger pads that let the wearer use a smartphone. The hats and gloves are color-coded: red stays in the car, gray is for indoor wear, forest green is backup for the items that will be lost around the time of the January thaw. Sexy? You betcha!

The Propane Man

That's my check for $880 he's holding, so the least he could do, I said, was pose for a picture. Love these trucks, always kept clean and bright. You remember last year I let the propane run out to nothing and sat for three days (long weekend) in a 49-degree house. Not this year, uh uh! No dumb bunny! Plus I turned up the heat by four degrees cuz no matter what you do to a log cabin it's still going to be chilly in here-the logs themselves are solid through with cold. The floor radiates cold. So this man, a very friendly propane man, is one of my truest friends. Will work for $880. (I don't want to divide that by the number of gallons and see the price per gallon, because I'll get mad.)