Got back late Tuesday.  Took it easy.  Too much stuff to schlep in one day so we left 95% of it in the trailer and truck focused on just getting home with the perishables and getting the house ‘on’.  Temperature inside the house: 10C.  First job; start the warm-up, then to the power-on panels, then to the water system.  Everything kicked up as expected.  Then to the freezer and fridge.

Couple of odd readings on the electrical panel but I don’t trust electrical stuff at the best of times and things powered up despite the weird readings.  How could I have 59.2 volts in a 48 volt system?

At 9:00 pm that night we remembered a critical item that needed fetching.  Started one of the boats (first go, thank God) and zoomed across the sea in a brightly moonlit but icy cold night.  Returned an hour or so later.  Forgetting something in the car was a mini adventure and we both felt very alive for it.  OK, it was nothing, really.  And yet it was something.  Maybe just a beautiful way to feel that we were home again?

Three hot water bottles in the bed and, after a long day, it was time to join them.

Next day we went to schlep stuff but first we had to get the other boat going (which we did first go, thank God).  And off we went for the first of four or five trips.  On this trip we took half the double-paned windows that weigh between 80 and 150 pounds each (depending on size).  Got ’em on Sal’s small boat at the beach and came across.  Got ’em up on the far shore and Sal started to go back in her boat and I just finished up.  I took a few extra minutes.  Sal was gone.  By then my boat had gotten stuck so I jumped to shore and pushed off.  And then I leapt for it.  I missed.  I was hanging in the water holding on to the boat with one arm and we were now drifting off.  Not good.  One arm was not going to get me back in the boat so I let go and sank lower in the water than I liked…I was wearing a lot of layers and they soaked up the water to the point that I felt like I was swimming in jello.  I made it back to the shore but had to ‘land’ on a fairly vertical but barnacle-covered wall of granite.  I stuck like a limpet.

Huffing an puffing and feeling like a very stupid limpet, I rested for a bit.  The thirty or so feet I swam had taken some effort.  Letting go to get to a better purchase was not easy to do.  I felt like I weighed twice what I do.  Letting go seemed like just dropping a lead weight in the water. So I searched and found my inner amoeba.  Spreading myself gelatinously over as large an area of sticky granite as I could, I then concentrated on wiggling the jello-blob (me) and using my fingers in unison to slowly make my way up the beach. Think ‘speed of a star-fish’.

By then Sal had returned wondering what was keeping me.  Barely suppressing a smile, she asked, “Wanna go get changed?”

“Nah.  We just have one more load of glass and you need me for that.  Plus I left the truck within the tidal range….wouldn’t want to leave it there too long”. So, I clambered in my boat weighing a ton and we went over and loaded her boat and took the truck up the hill to await another day.  Two trips plus a dunking would be enough for now.

Bloody Murphy.