Light My Fire

It has been so cold here the past few days that my husband insisted we light a fire last night. We hadn't put logs in that fireplace for the last few years, mainly because I hate the job of cleaning out the fireplace. He cleaned it occasionally, but more often than not, I had that fun job.

Besides that, ever since my friend A arranged candles in her fireplace for Thanksgiving, I've been doing the same thing with candles in our fireplace. And now my husband wanted to burn logs in there? "I promise to clean the fireplace out myself in the morning," said he.

Into the garage my husband walked last night, and out he came with two logs. Two? Wouldn't one be enough? Two will burn till midnight and we hardly ever stay up that late. "Two will be perfect," said he. And two it was. (And we had to stay up till midnight. Note to my husband: One log next time. Just one!)

Anyway... he made a roaring fire and it was very warm and very nice to look at. Okay, okay... the logs were warmer than the candles. And this morning after he walked Gracie, my husband set out to clean the fireplace, just as he promised. He even took out the grate, so he could get every last molecule of ash out of there. When he was done, it looked perfectly clean.

So there he was... getting the grate back into the fireplace... and the tip of the grate touched the little trash-can, tipping it over, and about two cups worth of those ashes spilled out onto the carpeting. We both just stood there looking at the mess. It was a Laurel & Hardy moment.

I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing. So did my husband. We laughed like two fools before he asked me to get him the broom. He lightly swept up most of it, and I got the vacuum and that got up the rest of it. When we were done, you'd never know that ashes had been spilled there. Note to ourselves: when it's time to replace this carpeting, we need to get a dark color just like we have now.

It's a good thing that we can both laugh out loud at ourselves.