reluctant fire

When I come home from school, my room is still warm from last night's fire, although chilly. I make some tea and read, snuggled under a blanket in the afternoon light, allowing myself to drift. As the dimming light makes reading more difficult, I start to feel the chill even under the blanket.
I put back on the layers to go outside and pile a load of wood on my arms. During January and February, the climb up the stairs with the pile of wood becomes easier than in November. I sweep last night's gray fine ashes down through the grate in my soba and place two kindling pieces a few inches apart, crumple up some pages from a romanian language manual I used when I first arrived in the country for training, and place the crumpled pieces between the wood. After stacking more kindling perpendicular to the first two pieces, on top of the paper, I light a match. Today, the paper burned quickly, before properly lighting the kindling. I sat crouched next to the soba's mouth, feeding more paper, watching my kindling fall on top of each other, extinguishing what little flames had begun, amazed at how fire can engulf thousands of acres of California forest and yet catches onto my kindling so reluctantly.
Now the fire is noisily lapping up 3 logs behind the closed door to the soba's mouth. But it has transmitted its reluctance to me as I consider the rest of the week's schedule, summer plans, commitments.
Hopefully I will catch on to something soon.
Final