In recent weeks, I find myself a bit on the slower side as the weather has turned from wonderful to nasty. I had been berating myself for slacking off my workout schedule at the Wellness Center. However, when asked by a friend, I noted that I was too busy as I once again filled my mouth with popcorn and turned the channel back to the football game.

Even so, I have been suffering from the winter blues. Unable, or at least unwilling, to spend much time outside, I have been spending the majority of my days in more sedate way — hibernation. My gut testifies to this fact by helping me to better fill out my clothing in a way befitting a man of my limited activity level.

Anyway, I was thinking about that as I headed outside to gather in the day’s firewood, a task I get to do at least once, but sometimes twice, per day. At least that’s something.

With the snow that fell and blew all over the place and the ice that joined it, I now have the added pleasure of breaking the firewood apart and then carrying it in. I usually smack it with a hand-sized stick until a few pieces come loose and then carry it into the house. It takes almost as much time to clean up my dirty footprints and the pieces of wood bark from the carpet as it does to carry in the wood. I’d rather go outside that vacuum any day.

But this is the time of year when trips outside are at a premium. If it isn’t freezing cold and windy, which it was, it is raining or snowing.

If the weather looks fine, you can bet the ground will be saturated and thus transformed into a giant mud pie.

Nonetheless, I decided I would take the opportunity of being outside to try and clean the snow and ice off the vehicles, one of which being the used van I recently required for family outings involving up to seven people. Well, I suppose I could put more in there if I stack them up or shove a few in the back under the lift gate, but who’s counting? That’s when I realized my battery was dead. I apparently left one of the interior lights burning. It is hard to warm up a vehicle with a dead battery, so I went out to the building to get the jumper cables, only to recall that they were in the truck the last time I’d seen them.

I was getting more exercise than I bargained for.

Since the forecast had been calling for heavy winds and ice and all that bad stuff, I had moved the truck to the side of the road above my driveway for safe keeping. Of course, I locked it and didn’t have the keys with me. So it was back to the house to fetch the keys and then back to the truck. I had to walk up a steep hill to save a few steps, which really didn’t make sense given the weather, and subsequently fell down and got snow in my pants. Snow in the pants with temperatures hovering around 10 degrees with the wind blowing isn’t a good idea. Nonetheless, I rushed on up to the truck and opened the door, only to realize that I must have taken the cables out when I cleaned out the truck before sending it to be repaired.

I was nearly out of breath after trekking up the steep hill in front of the house to the truck. I should have walked up the driveway, but it looked more treacherous after melting and refreezing.

I finally decided to just drive back down. I did so without incident, which is a major accomplishment at times.

I walked back to the building and sorted through the five gallon buckets of stuff that I had removed from the truck. I still can’t believe what all I was carrying and I didn’t take everything out — just the stuff that looked valuable. To relate a portion of the inventory, I had two tow straps, a collection of bungee cords, a 50-foot section of nylon rope, a good-sized coil of cotton rope, two heavy logging chains, a survival knife, a fishing rod, an alarm clock, a horse blanket, an emergency light, a DC/AC power inverter, a tire guage, a four-way lug wrench, a wrecking bar, five pounds of three-inch screws, my chain saw, an extra chain and sharpener and much, much more.

I don’t really think my truck was as badly in need of repair as it was in need of cleaning out. No one could need that much stuff in the back floorboard of a pickup truck.

It was even worse when I had the toolbox on the back. I also carried all of my carpentry tools, plumbing tools and parts and a few mechanic tools, just in case. I was a rolling hardware store.

Just looking through the items, I realize that I usually don’t fish this time of year, I don’t have a horse, I don’t sleep in the truck (at least not these days) and I usually don’t go around pulling nails on a whim. However, all of those items had found their way in there at some time or another and were sucked into that mysterious area that lies just behind the front seat of every man’s pickup truck. I might have had a couple of kids back there if I had waited a little longer before looking.

Anyway, I had all this stuff in five gallon buckets, with the larger items stacked on top, nearly blocking the access to my little storage area. Once I found the end to the jumper cables, I started pulling them out, only to find out that they had mysteriously threaded themselves through everything else in two of the buckets. Ropes and extension cords will tie themselves in knots when thrown to the ground and jumper cables are hardly ever handy when I need them for my own vehicle. These must be unwritten laws that help govern the world as we know it.

I finally got the vehicles all running and cleaned off just in time to find the leak in the pressure valve on top of the water heater. Not plumbing again. Oh well, at least I’m getting some exercise.

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