The bathroom is finally clean
I had a love-hate relationship with my childhood home. The empty house this past winter This was my brother's bedroom - the wall in the back is damaged because of a chimney fire. We were happy kids. My memories of that house are mostly good - feelings of being cozy, and warm, the house heated by two wood stoves before it was cool (and not bad for the environment) to burn wood. Wood was our only source of heat, which resulted in a few chimney fires, one of which left a hole in the floor in one of the upstairs bedrooms that was never repaired. Burning wood also kept us kid busy in the summer and fall, chopping wood and then piling it in the shed where the growing piles gave my dad a sense of happiness and providing for his family. On school mornings, I woke up to the sound of my dad crinkling newspaper and the squeaking of the handle on the stove door as he threw in kindling to start the fire. Then, the sizzling of snow on the big block of wo...