Four lines on the back of the water card

At 7:50 I turned the water card over and wrote four lines under the word TOMORROW: water in the house, wood in the house, the front door closing, her pens at temperature. The last one was finished at 6:15 tonight. The card reads 18 L this morning and 16 L now, so the day cost 2 L net, and tomorrow's water is already boiled and indoors.

The card, not the month

Third page of the notebook: a fuel budget to the middle of January, 24 days at 3.1 kg of wood a day. The butane counted in grams, turned into litres of melt at 16 g a litre. Nine lines in I stopped. That page was a plan for a month I cannot see, built out of numbers I do not have, and it was eating the daylight I needed for the creek.

Day 18 is why I stopped. A rumour got three days of my rationing and cost 6 L.

The month needs one decision about the walk east, and I have not made it. It needs three things I cannot buy: a second heat source, a car with fuel in it, a counter with a person behind it. The next twenty-four hours needed four things I could finish before dark. I have spent twenty-seven days writing plans for the month.

Two offers this morning had the shape of preparation. I turned both down. The 20 lb propane cylinder on the corner board, offered for 4 L of gas. Four litres is 44 km, and the car has 1 L in it and no battery. Trading a full cylinder for a number I cannot spend is not a trade. And the winter room: mattress, table and wood into the front room. Three days of carrying for a temperature I cannot promise at the end, with the fire and the water unwatched. Day 3 built the one warm room.

What came in through the back door was 22 kg of wood: nine armloads, split and stacked 1.2 m from the stove, 900 mm of clearance behind it. Seven days of fire at 3.1 kg a day, indoors and dry, where the next morning can reach it in the dark.

Ten litres on the sled

Out at 8:20 with the sled and the 20 L bucket, 400 m east, 21 minutes on the road. The sidewalk at the corner is still ice. The hole I used on Day 8 had 22 mm of ice over it. I broke it with the handle end of the axe, not the blade. Then I stood on the bank for a minute, because my left hand had already told me once.

Ten litres, dipped with the 4 L pot. I filled the bucket to the 12 L mark so it would not come over the top on the slope. Twenty-two minutes home, one hand on the rope. The dog was carried 30 m over the glare at the culvert, because he is 30 kg and his pads are not.

Boiled 4 L of it: 52 minutes on the butane stove outdoors, one minute at a rolling boil, 96 g of gas. The other 6 L stayed raw. 3.4 L of that went to the bucket, the rinse water and the dog's bowl. The rest went into four jugs on the shelf in the warm room, 400 mm off the floor and not against the north wall. A jug on the north wall read 1.5 °C at 6 a.m.

6.6 L into the house. 18 minus 8.6 plus 6.6 is 16.

It is the first day since Day 5 that tomorrow's water did not have to be made from snow at 16 g a litre in the dark.

The door, fitted badly

The sweep was cut from a bicycle inner tube at 9:40: 900 mm long, 45 mm wide, six tacks. I nailed it to the inside face with the door shut in the frame, the fast way and the wrong way. The strip ran across the latch side, the door stood 8 mm proud of the strike, and it would not catch without a shoulder.

The hall read 5 °C at 6:00 this morning. At 1:40 this afternoon it read 3 °C with the stove burning the same 3.1 kg. That was the mistake. I closed a 5 mm gap across 900 mm, opened an 8 mm one, and the house lost 2 °C for it.

At 2:10 I took the door off its three pins and tacked the strip to the stop, not the face. A 3 mm ply shim under the hinge end made the strip meet the threshold flat instead of curling at it. Back on the pins, closed on a 3 mm shim, pulled out, cleared. The candle flame at the threshold went from 40 mm of horizontal lean to nothing. The hall was 5 °C at 4:00.

The hatch above the stairs is 900 mm square and bare. Day 14 wrote that down and I did nothing about it for thirteen days. There was a sheet of rigid foam in the garage from a crate, 25 mm thick. I cut it to 905 mm with the drywall saw, laid it on top, and folded the wool blanket over it. The stair head read 10 °C at 2:00 and 12 °C at 5:00 on the same fire.

Her pad on the shelf

Her garage read 3 °C at the back wall on Day 20. At 2:10 this afternoon it read 9 °C at the door side and 6 °C at the back wall. The thaw comes in under the frame, and the concrete gives it back. Nine is outside the 2 to 8 that the leaflet gives, and the pens were 1.4 m from the door.

We moved the cooler to the back wall, onto a wooden shelf 300 mm off the concrete, with a folded blanket under it and another over the lid. The thermometer inside read 6 °C at 3:00. The bottle that goes in it is 1 L of cold water, never a frozen one, rotated at eight and at four. I said why out loud. A frozen bottle in a cooler with pens is the one way to ruin the shelf in an afternoon.

Eleven pens in the cooler, two in the kitchen. Thirteen, the same number she counted on Day 20, written on the pad and underlined twice.

She has written that temperature down at eight and at four since 2011, and has not missed a day in twenty-eight. I have not said the nightly one since Day 16. I have started writing the water number on the card twice a day, morning and night. I would like to say that is a different kind of thing. I am not sure it is.

At 6:00 she read the four lines and said nothing for a while. Then she took the pencil and wrote a fifth under mine, in her own hand: 5 — bucket out before the light. Four lines in my writing, one in hers, and the fifth is the one I would have done at ten o'clock with the torch in my teeth.

16 L tonight against 18 this morning. 8.6 L out at the card number, dog's litre included. 6.6 L in: 10 L carried 400 m on a sled, 4 of them boiled at 96 g of gas, 3.4 L to the bucket and the rinse. The bottle in my coat pocket is still empty and the walk east is still not decided.

What I should have had on day zero

• A sled with a rope, about $20, and a 20 L bucket with a lid that seals. Both were in the shed by June and neither was mine.
• 900 mm of rubber sweep and 12 tacks, about $9, bought in October instead of cut out of an inner tube during.
• A 900 × 900 mm sheet of rigid foam cut for the attic hatch, and the hatch measured on the same afternoon.
• Two thermometers, one for the garage shelf and one for the room, so 6 °C at 8:00 and 4:00 is a number off a dial and not a guess.
• A page in the notebook headed TOMORROW, written on Day 2, with four lines on it and no dates past the next evening.