Last night was a good night to just slow it down. Snow rolled in here at about 3:15, while we scampered about fixing an early dinner and wrestling conference calls. By 5pm the roads were slick to the point of treacherous. Thankfully, Xandra's Girl Scout leader agreed and canceled their evening meeting. This meant that for the first time in weeks, we had an evening where no one had to be chauffeured anywhere. Xandra ended up taking a nap for a while. I tried to engage Sam with some TED videos ( she watched, but we ended up back on YouTube watching music videos.. sigh...) and I built a fire.
During the winter weeks when the girls are at their dad's house, building a fire is actually a common thing for me to do. When they are here and needing me to drive them places in the evenings, it is significantly less common... usually just on the weekends. During all the hustle and bustle and crazy driving, I forget how healing the calm act of setting and burning a fire is. I can lay in the giant beanbag chair with my laptop, letting the crackle and hiss of the wood burning soothe the workday crankiness out of me. Somehow in the act of burning, I release my tension and stress and return to a more basic mental state.
These are not small dinky single log fires, I build a fire going that talks and sings. It also builds up a good bit of heat. These are embers in the bottom of the fire after 5 hours of fireplace use last night- this would be hot enough to melt glass.
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