List of chores grows longer as winter nears

I hate this time of year. There is so much to be done. I don’t want to do any of it.

There are two cords of wood in the driveway.

When Nick Boetsch dropped it off in July, he made the mistake of recommending that it sit outside for a few months to dry in the wind. It’s not like it was coming inside the barn immediately anyway, but then I had an excuse. I have to move some stuff around in the barn before I bring the wood inside.

That is my latest excuse.

There have been winters when I left the wood outside until it froze into one icy wood ball. I had to take a sledgehammer to the pile to break off a few logs when it got cold. You should have heard those logs hiss when they hit the wood fire. There is a strong possibility that could happen again. See, I still have most of a cord left from last year, all dried and stacked indoors. That will get me to January. Maybe there will be a January thaw and I can bring the wood in then.

There are tables, chairs and my fabulous new chaise longue out on the deck.

These must come in before the snow flies. It’s one thing to get snow on your wood pile. But snow and ice on the new, bright blue, Telescope chaise is simply unconscionable. I will have to make room for them, somewhere in the barn. That will take some time.

There are storm windows to pull down.

This is more of a task than it sounds. Some of the windows have those screen inserts in them. Then the sills are always covered with a season (or two) of dead bugs, paint chips, leaves and other flotsam and jetsam. That means that the sills should be vacuumed before the windows are pulled down. Probably some of those windows need to be sprayed with graphite or some miracle potion to make them slide easier. God knows the windows and the storm windows need to be washed. It must be 15 years now.

(I hired a cleaning lady once. She promised to do a window a week. She quit after three weeks. The pressure was simply too great.)

There are leaves falling all around the house.

Now, I have never understood the leaf thing. I think they are so pretty that I let them fall where they might and leave them alone. I don’t see the need to rake, bag and transport the leaves to the dump. Can’t see burning them. Cobb Manor Style is leave them where they are all winter, then mow them to pieces in the spring. You can imagine how popular I am with my tidy neighbors.

There is the dining room to paint.

During the year of Hurricane Bob, a carpenter cut a hole in my dining room wall to accommodate a three-piece atrium door. He asked me whether I wanted him to paint the walls to cover up the signs of installation. I said I would finish the job, to save a few bucks. Hurricane Bob was in 1991. Who wants to guess how much of the wall has been painted? The best I can report is that I did finally buy the paint a few weeks ago, under heavy shelling from Blue Eyes, who insisted on some Mexican red-orange color based on the walls in the movie “Frida.” The paint has made it inside but the brushes and rollers and trays made it only as far as the barn. At least they made it out of the truck.

Actually there are so many things to do around here that I can’t decide which one to do first.

I blame it all on my father, who could fix anything, build anything and would, at the drop of a hat. He fixed the furnace, fixed the car and repaired the damage I constantly did to his house. In my Dick Tracy comic book days, I concentrated on breaking down doors. Got pretty good at it, actually. I realized early that I could never compete with him in the production department. I decided to take the opposite tack.

I am the laziest person I know.

Maybe it won’t even snow this winter. Maybe it won’t even go below freezing.

I should make a list.

I think it’s nap time.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.