Spinning my wheels, or something

I'm not sure where to start. On anything. Everything is so disorganized and scattered that I find it incredibly difficult to find a beginning. The idea is personified in the living room, where stacks of things are laying around waiting to find their new home. Yet nothing can be put away yet. My thoughts feel like the dining room.

I still haven't figures out how to type on my new keyboard, but I think that longer fingernails are impeding my progress. And to think I worked so hard to stop biting my nails. That bad habit would come in handy these days.

The craving to smoke is back. No lectures needed, I won't light up. But oh how the feeling is there...

A Bright Red Roar

When I was a child, our home was heated by a giant wood burning furnace.
It was red, with a heavy black door, and took up almost the entire room.
We weren't supposed to open the door, but I could see the dancing flames as I watched the adults stoke the fire.
The heat caressed your face until it was so hot you had to blink - and then the door was closed again.
When I was 10, it did not seem unusual. Chopping, hauling, stacking wood was a matter of course. Part of
Winter.

I always knew Autumn was upon us; the days were shorter and the colors changed but the real test were the long drives to "the farm."
Some acreage, mostly wooded, with a few ponds and a ravine full of our large trash.
Refrigerators, tires, worn out furniture.
One year: our white dog who had grown deaf in old age and too aggressive with children.

Some days at the farm I managed to sneak away from the buzz of chainsaws to walk around with little purpose.
Once, I found a long black snake sunning itself along the shoreline.
Once, I walked until I came to a fence where I was greeted by a white and tan horse.
He blinked slowly at me until I wandered away again.

Autumn trips to the farm packed the truck full of wood to heat the house.
We packed until sunset and drove home in the dark, tired and sticky with tree sap.
The pickup would sit to the side, waiting for daylight, and then we would drive through the yard and begin unloading.
Cords of wood lined the fence and by the time we moved the bottom layers were sinking, rotting, into the ground.
The stacks were always crooked; the yard flooded with every heavy rain.