This is the End, My Friend, The End

I am thinking of the song by the rock group known as "The Doors." It is now in the 20s outside and the glass is covered with condensation, the little electric heaters are kicking out their BTUs and we are on our final logs of wood. The final pieces out of the most expensive cord of wood we ever bought two months ago. When I think of some of those fires back in early October, fires for effect more than necessity, when we did not really need them, I think: consevere, conserve! It is a lesson to learn, and learn again. Now we are "holding the fort" a day or two longer, through Thanksgiving, through the beginning of next week and it feels as though we are camping out here like swamp yankees, like Hillbilly Clampets by the Sea. The daughter loves this, of course, but its allure is diminished for me. I worry about the pipes freezing. This is more serious business. In only a week, we will be ensconced in an insulated, well-heated house in Providence. We will have money in the bank, our bills will have all been paid, and we can look ahead, I hope, to less constricted, less circumscribed times. Let's hope that all goes according to plan, and that Mother Nature forebears. May we eke it through somehow. We will survive. This is not "The end, my friend" as Jim Morrison once put it.