Kickass hides from winter

Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes that among the warm places the keeper retreats to when frigid winter prevails is his basement workshop where he inhales the aroma of freshly sawn wood as he fashions some semi useless household accessory, or, as on a recent occasion, when he attempted to construct small display boxes for marketing his recently published novel—“Margaret’s War.” His initial attempt violated the “measure-twice-cut-once” rule of all woodworking, and the books would not fit into the first assembled box by 5/16 of an inch. While workshop humiliation is not rare in the keeper’s experience, this goof up was particularly galling since it pointed to an utter lack of attention to the basics as well as an inability to concentrate on anything beyond the sweet smell of White Pine sawdust. Subsequent efforts at box construction were more successful, and the keeper consoled himself with the thought that since he is obviously on the cusp of becoming a world-renowned novelist, he has better things to do with his brain than hide from winter in his basement workshop. Nowhere does it show that Hemingway ever felt obligated to slink away from the weather and build little wooden boxes.