lost in the rain at hungry hollow

my mind turns lazy sidewinding circles, plumes of steam rising off my eyebrows as i survey the small forest of felled cut split wet wood lying around me, air dense with mingling odors of different woods. this year our wood is wet. we moved in towards the beginning of july and i never got a good jump on it. alas, it would have been wet anyway. burning wet wood and not having a backlog (a real pun, i swear) teaches you many lessons all rolled into one unseasonably long miserable lesson. first off you lose at least 25% of your heat boiling all the moisture off, your fires don't start nearly as quickly, never reach maximum temperature or heat efficiency and just tend to sputter and wheeze their way through the day. it complicates matters when you have two little girls who need to stay warm and barely any time to split wood. plus our stove isn't nearly large enough to heat this whole huge house so i have to close down the vents to the upstairs and the doors to the bathroom, laundry room and upstairs. but we're getting by alright. with one of those oil-filled electric radiators in our bedroom we keep cozy and i've always been of the opinion that living with wood heat and experiencing those dreadfully cold first moments of morning breeds a stronger bunch. not that we'll need much of that once global warming really kicks in. shit. i should just invest in a bunch of surfboard companies now and ride that wave as long as it goes.