Baby steps with the spouse

[DavidV]

3 years ago, she was against me putting the stove in. I didn't exactly run roughshod over her on it, but I kept pushing forward with it and we had the stove installed by the time ourr second winter in the house hit. As time has progressed, she has learned more about using the stove and become comfortable with it. She sees the value in our boys stacking wood as a chore. She knows it saves us money. And it definately keeps the house and family room warmer than we would ever want to attempt with our natural gas furnace. This morning she was even brainstorming with me on the best place to build the woodshed.

It was warmer today than they called for. Nearly 70 degrees. The latest forcast calls for a dip into the 20's tonight. When we got home from Grandma's house the Stove had burned down to almost nothing. I didn't start a fire right away because I didn't want to overwhelm the place with heat. After about half an hour my wife said "my feet are cold". I smiled and grabbed a couple pieces of fatwood.
You have to be married for a while to understand "wifespeak". "My feet are cold" means "You are my wise hardworking god of fire. Protect me from the cold".

I'm sure that's what it means.

 

[BrotherBart]

Well, you blew a great opportunity is what that means. Oh wise, missed the opportunity to be the foot warmer, wood burner.

 

[begreen]

Bart, you need to sit down an write a book. That brought tears to my eyes.

 

[CrazyAboutOrchids]

Haha! Here it is the opposite. I sort of railroaded my husband into our stove. He works all day in a temperature controlled climate. I sit home and freeze my butt off trying to conserve. He wouldn't let me use our open fireplace when it was cold as it sucked heat out of the house. I got tired of being cold all the time. After a year of looking at stoves and finagling, my parents gave me the money for the stove, we paid for the install and liner and he went along with the game as you can't poo-poo a gift, right?!

He splits wood, I haul it, he stacks it out back. We keep about 1/2 cord in our garage and restock as needed. During the year, I stop and talk to tree guys and am sometimes lucky getting free wood, other times we pay for it but I am a steady customer of a guy who continues to charge me 160 per full cord of split hardwood. We split the hauling from the garage to the woodbox. The running of the stove is pretty much mine, start it up from embers int he morning when I wake, lucky as I am a morning person. He is a nioght owl and throws the lat logs in before he heads to bed. I ran off a 5 year history of our oil bills this summer so I could show him how we've improved. He also knows that even without the insert we run far less oil throughout the winter than the neighbors who surround us so he is cool with that. Yet now we are toasty!

Yesterday I showed him how to light his first fire so that when our neighbors came he could beat his hands on his chest and brag about his insert. Go figure......