Since the weather was so ‘nice’ last week, with the windchill factor well below zero and all, I opted to try some more entertaining indoor activities.

I quickly realized how boring indoor activities can be. I started by sorting my compact discs, taking out the jewel cases that no longer contain discs and making sure the right thing was in the right box. Try to contain yourselves, it only gets better from here. I tried to alphabetize the VCR tapes, but that was too boring for even a boring day.

Then I got out my firearms for a good cleaning. I am down to the bare necessities in firearms for a country boy. I have a shotgun and a couple of rifles. At one time in life, I had more than a dozen guns, but some found their way into other people’s hands for one reason or another. Usually that reason was money. The 12 gauge my father bought me was stolen in a break-in a few years ago along with a worthless brief case and a jug of change and guitar picks. It really isn’t sensible to have more guns than you need these days, what with people stealing like they do.

After I finished, I decided to look through the closet and try to re-organize things there. Since my closet is nearly packed with all manner of clothes, camping supplies, unlabeled boxes and even a pair of air conditioners, I decided to give up that effort and focus instead on cooking a fresh pot of pinto beans.

You can’t go wrong with pinto beans with corn bread. I made sure to put in a nice piece of seasoning meat, salt and pepper, a little brown sugar and a spoonful of peanut butter. I made up the recipe myself, so if it sounds a little weird, that’s probably because it is.

By the time the beans, which had already soaked overnight, made it to the crock pot, I realized that I was about out of things to do. There aren’t many things I like less than being out of things to do. I had already carried in enough firewood to fill up the little rack beside the stove, filled the stove with wood, cleaned up the stuff around the stove and vacuumed the floor.

It doesn’t seem to matter what you do, the firewood finds a way to spread bits of bark, saw dust and dirt from the time I carry it through the door until I actually drop it in the stove.

Trying to find a way to pass the rest of my time, I thought of sorting my screw and nail collection, but that would have required being outside. Well, not really outside, but inside my unheated utility room on one end of the house.

I have lots of interesting stuff that I’d like to do in there, but the room has a dirt floor and barely any place to move around, so its hard to get in there and work without sitting several things outside first.

That’s not a good idea on a rainy day.

Realizing it might be best to come to terms with the facts of the season, I decided to make a nice cup of hot green tea with some of last year’s honey crop and just sit quietly by the fire.

I felt quite sure I might lose my mind after about three or four minutes of listening to my clock tick. At least I think it was the clock. The odd thing is, my clock is digital.

It is hard to believe how many noises you can hear when you are all alone sitting quietly. As I sat there, I heard the creak of the chair upon which I was seated as I leaned forward to get my cup and then the slurp of drinking the hot tea. It’s hard to believe how much noise that made, I thought.

I also picked out other noises from the house, like the refrigerator and the freezer occasionally kicking on and off, the whine of the wind through the trees and around more than a few nooks and crannies in the house and a few creaking noises that best can be described as sounds old houses make sometimes. I can recall my father calling it “settling.” After a few minutes, I decided to catch up on my reading. I like to sit at the kitchen table, a fact that is likely rooted in my youth. My father spent most of my childhood sitting at the head of the kitchen table drinking black coffee from a thick-sided mug and smoking Lucky Strikes — the short ones with no filter.

I sometimes would sneak a few, but seldom did I finish one. I would instead take a couple of puffs and feel that familiar ‘green’ feeling coming on, like the time I swallowed a mouthful of Red Man pilfered from the neighbor’s pickup truck by his son. Not quite so intense, but similar.

I don’t smoke now, although I tried it for a number of years. It’s like a lot of things, though. It sort of follows you around for years after you give it up, just waiting for the opportunity to come back into your life and mess things up again.

Soon I realized that I was daydreaming, my book lying open on the table beside my empty tea cup. I guess that’s what we all spend our time doing when the brain is in gear and the body is in neutral.

As I read a few chapters, I found myself losing concentration again, my mind taking the words from the book and letting them float by slowly like feathers in a slight breeze — not really meaning anything at all. I decided to close my book and head to the computer to write this column. It’s finally getting neigh on bedtime. I guess I’m like a shovel or a rake, not quite right for indoor use.

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