Discombobulation:

A state of disconcerting confusion

It’s been cold lately. Ok, for So Cal, cold. We’ve had unseasonable precipitation lately. Ok, not snow, rain. Not a blizzard or even a flood. But still. I asked TCG to make a fire last night.

We had two presto-logs left: a five hour and a two hour. He lit them both. In the fireplace. At the same time. Together.

TCG: It’s 6 pm. We’ll have a nice warm fire til midnight.

UCC: !

WISIMH: Actually 2 + 5 = 5 hours of fire if you start the two logs together at the same time. You could have started one, and at the end of its life, put the other in. Had you done so, that would have given us consecutive fire instead of concurrent fire.

UCC: Great. Thanks for the fire. It’s getting smoky in here.

TCG: Yeah, it does that in the beginning. Until it warms up.

UCC: Maybe if you didn’t turn on the blower until the fire caught…

WISIMH: … you moron.

(The blower is set of six 2” pipes bent in a “C” shape to hold the wood in the crook of the C. The blower is a fan that takes air in from the bottom and blows it out the top. If there is smoke in the bottom, it is heated, atomized, and blown into the room in a fine fog. Not something wise for a guy with COPD. )

TCG: But then you don’t get the heated air, and I’m freezing.

WISIMH: It’s more than choosing my battles. It’s choosing whether to invest any of my dwindling patience in an attempt at communication about something. It’s a communication triage: what do I really need to communicate, vs. what might merely be nice to communicate. Besides, I like inhaling smoke as much as the next guy. Coping mechanism or cry for help. Besides, he is cold and he wanted a quicker, hotter fire.

UCC: I do appreciate you being around.

TCG: We have it pretty good.

UCC: Yeah (coughing) we do.