We argued about five litres for two hours

At 7:10 this morning the outdoor thermometer read −6 °C and the kitchen read 6 °C, and at 11 p.m. neither had moved more than a degree. I wrote the three totals on the card taped to the fridge: 14 litres, two propane cylinders, 22,000 calories. Then I sat on the basement step for twenty minutes with the pencil in my hand and added nothing to it.

Six nights, twenty-four and a half hours

I have written my sleep down since Day 1, in hours, because I did not trust my own sense of how tired I was. The page reads 5, 4, 3.5, 4, 5, 3. That is 24.5 hours across six nights, or 4 hours 5 minutes a night. Adults need 7 or more. I am 17.5 hours short, and the shortfall is not spread evenly — it is stacked on the last two nights, which is why today is not Day 4 again.

Two things take the sleep. The first is the heater in the front room. I set the travel clock for 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. and got up to put my hand over it and smell the air. I did not trust it and I was right not to, but the two checks cost me an hour a night. The second is the dog. She barked at 2:10 this morning at something on the sidewalk. I stood at the window for fifteen minutes with the curtain held back, saw nothing, and lay awake another forty minutes.

By 11 a.m. it was in specific places. My hands were slow on the rope I was using to lash a blanket over the back door. I read the same paragraph of the radio notes three times and could not have told you what it said. I stood up too fast at the top of the stairs and put my hand on the wall. I also put the kettle on a burner that does not exist, which is a thing I did in the first two days and had stopped doing.

The house was at 6 °C in the kitchen and the bedroom. The front room held 12 °C with the heater on low and dropped to 8 °C within forty minutes of turning it off. Two cylinders left, 1 kg each.

The argument about five litres

At 2 p.m. she said we should go to 5 litres a day until we know more. I said that was sensible and started moving the jugs.

Here is what I got wrong, and it is the same mistake I wrote down on Day 1 in different words. Since the trip on Day 5 this house has averaged 4 litres a day. Fourteen litres came into today and 8 are left. The 6 litres that went today was 3.8 for drinking between two adults, 1.2 for cooking, 0.4 for washing hands and rinsing the pot, and 0.6 for the dog. The dog needs a litre. I wrote that on Day 2, in this notebook, on the same page as the 8.6.

The signs were there and I filed them under cold. My urine has been dark since Day 6. I have had a headache since Day 6 and have been treating it with a hat. The dog has been eating snow off the porch step. I let her, because it kept her quiet and it was free. She has had loose stool since yesterday. Snow is not water for her either. That is the mistake, plainly: I cut drinking water to make a number last, and I cut the dog's share first because she cannot ask for it.

The argument ended at 3:10 p.m. with both of us right about different things. Five litres a day makes 8 litres last 1.6 days. It also puts two adults and a dog at 6 °C into a state I have no way to fix without a hospital. She put it flatly, and I wrote it down as she said it: the number is not how long 8 litres lasts. The number is how many hours until we have more water. We agreed to drink 2 litres each today and tomorrow, and to spend tomorrow morning getting water instead of saving it.

I do not like that answer. It means the arithmetic I have done all week — days remaining — was the wrong arithmetic. Days remaining is only a real number if the supply is fixed. Ours is not fixed. It is just expensive.

Twenty-two thousand calories in the top cupboard

I did the food count properly at 4 p.m., with the labels facing me. The shelf has 9 tins, 2.1 kg of rice, 340 g of peanut butter, 6 stock cubes, half a jar of instant coffee. The top cupboard has 1 kg of pecans and 500 g of dark chocolate bought in October for Christmas baking. I added the labels: about 22,000 calories. At 3,000 a day for the two of us that is 7 days. The dog has her own bag with 3.2 kg left in it, which at 300 g a day is 10 days.

The pecans are the good food. They are also the most calorie-dense thing in the house at 690 calories per 100 g. That makes them the least rational thing to save. I carried the bag to the front room at noon and put it back. I carried it again at 3. I opened it at 3:50 and we ate 80 g between us, sitting on the floor, and I wrote 80 g and 550 calories on the card and dated it.

After supper I sorted the socket set by size on the basement floor, 26 pieces, twice, because the first time I had put the 13 mm in with the imperial. I wrote a list of 14 things I would buy, starting with a 20-litre jerry can, and I have no way to buy any of them. At 10:40 I stood in the driveway for five minutes and looked along the street to the corner and up to the tracks. No window on the block had a light in it. At 10:55 I counted the pecans four times and got 41, 38 and 44, and on the fourth count found I had been counting the almonds in twice.

The front room was 12 °C at 11 p.m. and 8 °C at 11:40, when I turned the heater off to save the cylinder. The card on the fridge says 8 litres. Tomorrow morning I melt snow, and the first thing I write down is what it costs.

Forty minutes on the front room floor

At 5 p.m. I sat down on the floor between the sofa and the heater and did not get up for forty minutes. I was not tired in the way that sleep fixes. In front of me was the list of 14 things I would buy, and 8 litres in the jugs, and no money, and two cylinders, and 6 °C in the room behind me. I read the list twice and put the pencil down.

I said something out loud. It was four words and three of them were swearing, and it was aimed at God, and I noticed that while I was saying it. I have not prayed since Day 2, when it was clumsy and short and I wrote two lines about it. I do not know whether today counted. I wrote the time on the card, 5:44, and three words under it, because writing things down is the one habit that has held. If it was not prayer then I have gone five days without any, and I am not ready to write that sentence either, so I left both of them on the card.

The dog put her head on my knee at 5:50. She needed water and she needed the door. I got up because of her and for no other reason, and I poured her 0.3 litres into the bowl before I took anything, and wrote it on the card. That is the whole of what got me off the floor.

What I should have had on day zero

• A sleep log on the fridge, not in my head. Six nights at 4 hours is a number I could have read on Day 3 and acted on.
• A 20-litre jerry can with a tap, filled before the storm. The gap between 4 litres a day and 8.6 is a container, not a decision.
• Four 1 kg propane cylinders, not two, and a written note of how many hours each one actually gave.
• 14 litres set aside for the dog and not counted in ours. One litre a day for two weeks, in its own jug, marked.
• One address within 400 m that I have walked to with a bucket: the creek at the end of the street, a well, the woman two doors down. I have driven past all three for eleven years.