Last year's ice fishing rack has been modified to fit the new four wheeler and is ready for another season of use.

December 1, 2013 – Sunday

28 degrees/cloudy/calm

Pentoga Road

Mr. Sandman must have hit me squarely between the ears last night with a big ol’ hammer. I passed out around 10 PM and the clock was showing almost 8 AM when I awakened this morning.

I went to bed with the headache from hell and had taken a migraine pill plus a couple of melatonin tablets.  

Saturday was initially spent cleaning out the freezers. There was no room to add anything which meant it was time to get rid of any old meat, fish, and vegetables.

I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re food hoarders. There’re always those leftovers that get shoved to the back or some meat or fish that are overlooked. In the end, I hauled a garbage can of stuff to the back of the property and am relatively certain there were coyotes, foxes, and wolves, that slept with full bellies last night.

The job wouldn’t have been too bad except I had to partially thaw out the meat so any wrapping might be removed. Next summer, before we begin preserving vegetables, I need to empty both freezers then defrost and scrub each.

The afternoon was spent retrofitting the ice fishing rack onto the new four-wheeler. I made it last year to fit the much smaller Yamaha. The newer Polaris is twice the size. By day’s end, the rack was ready for another season of thrills, spills, and (hopefully) nonstop ice fishing.

Brutus and I played fetch for over an hour. I wanted to give him a good workout as he seems to have more energy than good sense these days. I succeeded. After almost an hour of nonstop fetch, midway into a run, he simply stopped and lay in the snow. He was all done in. The pup is still asleep on the hearth, just inches away from the wood stove. Evidently the sandman must have used a bigger hammer on him than me.

Sargie says we’re putting up the tree today and going to make Pentoga Road look like Christmas. I enjoy listening to the Christmas music, sipping a good cup of hot tea, and watching her work her holiday magic around the house.

OK, that’s a dream, a fantasy.

What will really happen is that I’ll attempt to sit down to watch, but before I get too settled, she’ll find all sorts of honey-do decorating jobs for me. In fact, she already has a list. Today’s decorating day on Pentoga Road… and that’s okay.

I think we’ll take our weekly Sunday afternoon ride into town after dark to look at the various outdoor Christmas lights. Last year, for one reason or the other, we didn’t do very much holiday light gawking. That’s going to change this year.

So there we have it. Another long list of activities planned for the day ahead.

I’m not surprised. We all know that a man’s work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road…