Tuesday 01/13/2026
Busy morning, tidying up for the housekeeper, and running over to CVS to pick up a prescription. But also wanted to write something because it has been over a month since I’v contributed to the writers group. The prompt was, “winter memories” and I had nothin’. But I called Dennis and he reminded me of hot rocks, which I hadn’t thought of in decades. So I wrote about that (see below).
Ran my two loads of laundry in between lunch, the housekeeper, and the line dance class at 1:30. After supper, Joanne came to my apartment and we watched the movie Train Dreams, which she had wanted to see. We agreed that it was beautiful and did a great job of recreating early 20th century logging and other period stuff. But there really wasn’t much story for the last half of the movie.
Hot Rocks
In the two-story farmhouse where I grew up, my parents’ bedroom was on the ground floor, but i slept on the second floor.
The ground floor was comfortably heated from multiple sources: the wood-fired range in the kitchen, an open fireplace at the far end of the living room, and, central to the ground floor and near the staircase, a large, handsome, enameled, wood-fired stove. (Chopping firewood and keeping wood boxes filled were my primary chores.)
The second story was heated, rather optimistically, by convection: warm air finding its way from the kitchen and living room stoves up the staircase.
Winters in Western Washington are characterized by endless, misty rainfall. Temperatures are not drastically cold; people would remark on it when the puddles had a skin of ice on a chilly morning. But it is consistently damp and chilly, and going to a chilly bedroom to climb into a chilly bed could be discouraging.
Hence: the hot rocks.
Our land was basically glacial till, the mix of rocks and sediments left by ice-age glaciers as they retreated back up the skirts of Mount Rainier. Which meant we had a plentiful supply of rocks, many stream-rounded. My father had collected 3 or 4 smooth ones, each about the size of a coconut and weighing 3 or 4 pounds. These rocks sat, during the day, on the flat top of the enameled wood stove in the living room. They got hot; not hot enough to burn but too hot to be held comfortably in the hands.
When it was time for bed, I would take a sheet of newspaper from the kindling box and wrap a rock thoroughly in the paper. I can still remember the scent of hot newsprint. I would cradle the rock in my arms and climb the stairs to my chilly bedroom, and shove it down between the sheets to the foot of the bed. I would hastily change to my PJs and climb in to the chilly sheets, and probe with my bare feet for that blistering-hot orb at the foot of the bed. It was deliciously warm.
The rock would stay hot long enough for me to fall asleep. Usually it would be a cool stony lump bumping my toes in the morning, but if I was active in my sleep, it would sometimes find its way to the edge of the bed and drop off onto the floor with a heavy thump. Either way, I would remember to bring it downstairs the next morning, back to its warming spot on the stove.
Codgerville 