Bob the bug guy showed up. Two hours late, but at least he came. He claimed car problems as his excuse. Anne earned kudos from him for doing such an amazing prep job. Bob said that he would be able to get the spraying done faster because of her effort. He also told us not to return until four, so that the poison can dry. We immediately decamped to the laundromat. It was so much warmer in town than at the cabin, which was lucky for me because all of my warm clothes went into the washer. After laundry we went next to Penney’s Kitchen for a late lunch. With still plenty of time to kill before we could return to the cabin, after lunch we went down to the locks to look for some boats. There was plenty of boat traffic at the locks. So much so that we lost track of the time and were walking back to the car just as the meter maid slipped a ticket under our windshield wiper. Returning to the cabin, we found puddles of poison everywhere. You couldn’t walk across the floors without tracking it everywhere. Bob had left plenty of his own wet footprints. It is all over the windows too and who knows where else. I’m glad that Anne put tarps over the furniture before we left. There is a souvenir store in the Soo called The Gift Haus. It has an old-world German vibe, but in German the Gift Haus means the poison house. Strangely appropriate today. What a mess!

Since the SILs departure, we have had only one fire in the pretty good room. Mostly walling off all of that cabin-cave complex and contending ourselves with hunkering down on the kitchen porch. It being semi-winterized and having a wood stove. A stove that is way more efficient than the fireplace and can be left to safely cool unattended. We do not want to violate the cabin’s prime directive: Do not burn the cabin down! Thanks to Jane’s innovation of a wood splitter appropriately sized logs are now easy to make. Since we’ve cleaned the stove’s window, it is possible to see the fire now, but it is still not as picturesque as the fireplace. In the photo, a nearly split log forms a chimney and acts like a torch.

It is still quite cool here, lows in the forties, with highs in the sixties, but there is a slow, almost imperceptible day-to-day temperature rise. Today it might warm enough to justify opening some windows to help warm the cave. This morning, we made a hazmat run and toured the back half of the Chippewa County Recycling Center. The decor was very GFL. This errand cleared the decks for Monday’s appointment with Bugman Bob. Unfortunately, it has done little to clear out the cave. It did help with the shed though, giving us room to move stuff back there. Two steps forward, one step back, if I have that right.