All day Saturday: baking and ‘prepping’ for our guests arrival. Sunday: book club and happy hour guests. Monday: shopping down in Comox at the new Costco to ‘fill up’ the larder/freezer/fridge and ‘picking up’ the two monster winches and loading them ourselves into the back of the Pathfinder. Tuesday through Thursday: work at the bunkhouse plus one social visit with the prawn guys squeezed in if possible. And Sal is cleaning everything because the ‘kids’ are coming (from Hong Kong).

Projects: lower funicular, garden table centre, new winch placement – all currently on ‘hold’.

“Gee, Dave, now that you are retired and live way out in the country and all, what the heck do you do all day? Get bored?” The answer is hard to explain except to say, “Omygawd! There is never enough time. I just want to sleep-in a few times!”

“Yeah, right! My guess? You and Sal have matching hammocks and never get out of them. Hahahah!”

The thing is – we’ve never been busier. Well, OK, we have been busier but we are certainly as busy as we can manage. Don’t forget, all those ‘taking care of the household chores’ is a much longer and more difficult task out here as well. It seems we are always doing chores and such to keep the old homestead running. Being busy is not the challenge, finding time for relaxing and goofing-off is! And, when we do find the time, it is not usually ‘together’.

Mind you, I still find a bit of time for the relaxing/goofing-off needs (I blog) more than Sally but she sure doesn’t (she logs!). If she has a spare minute, she and the dogs go play in the lagoon. And that requires a climb up and down a 125 foot, 30 degree slope just for starters. Then they make her fetch sticks!

At 63 I am slowing down, I admit it freely (or more accurately put: I want to slow down!). But if I compare myself to the local guys my age, I am about ‘normal’ in the energy and work-output department. Sal, of course, is in a department all her own although, to be fair, all the women out here seem to work pretty hard. I have never ‘bought in’ to the social stereotype that claims women have it so much harder but now that Sal and I are side-by-side, I have to admit that it is true. She simply works more than I do.

I like to think I am still useful and helpful, tho. If it weighs more than 50 pounds, I usually do it (altho, not everytime by any means!). If it weighs more than 80 pounds then you can be 98% sure I do it (but there are exceptions). Over 100 pounds, I definitely do it – but I then do it with Sal. Over 200 pounds, we try not to do it. And I sometimes make sushi and wash up now and then. OK, I admit to vacuuming on blue moons. But there is no denying it. Sal never stops and I am hard to start.

Anecdote: one day we were unloading a huge pile of supplies and taking it to Read. I also had to assemble the inflatable boat so we could do it. It was cold. It was wet. It was raining. And I was in a hurry to get it done before darkness set in. I jumped out of the car, unloaded the trailer and assembled the boat. I launched it and filled it with crap. In the meantime, my usually trusty partner had taken her ‘sweet time’ to find her glove linings, put on some chapstick, fix her hair, find her hat, change her boots and powder her nose.

I was not pleased with the division of labour.

When she deigned to show up, the job was virtually all done except for the 125/135 pound outboard motor that still had to be lifted from the trailer, carried down the ramp and placed on the stern of the boat. I had left that to the last because it was a two person job with one of us (me) having to be in waders.

“Nice of you to show up”, I said more than just a little sarcastically.

“What are you saying?”

“I am saying that you look all comfy and cute but there is a bit of work to do out here!“

With that, Sally bore a hole through my head with her glare while walking slowly towards the trailer. She didn’t take her steely eyes off me. Then, with a mere flick of her upper body, she lifted the entire outboard and strode off the trailer and into the water with it. Defiantly, she slammed the machine onto the boat and said, “Well, you just gonna sit there or are you gonna get in and fasten it to the transom?”

Sally weighs the same as the motor. Maybe a bit less! I just stood there, gobsmacked. How is that even possible?

What do we do all day? I dunno…………..ask Sal.