So, old guys, eh? Loners, grumpy, ugly, anti-social…what’s there to like?
Well, if we are talkin‘ the old guys themselves, there is not too much. Trust me. I know some of ’em. Turns out, I am one. Yuck!
‘Cept that ‘loner’-thing kinda keeps us hidden from view and, as a rule, we don’t tend to get as regularly underfoot as say, bookclub members or visitors or young people…ya know? I mean, there’s a lot to be said for some old dude hidin’ out in the forest who knows how to do stuff but doesn’t wander into the general marketplace of life very often. He’s kind of a hidden natural resource. Think Yoda.
OK, Shrek is close enough.
But, if we’re talkin’ about being one of them old guys, well, that’s another perspective altogether. Being an old recluse is a recipe for personal bliss. ‘Specially, if you got a workshop and a beautiful, sweet wife who can cook as a bonus package. Then? Well, then it just doesn’t get any better. Shrek and I are both very lucky but I am the luckier of the two (have you seen Fiona?!).
As you can tell, you prescient ones, this is a slightly-late Thanksgiving blog. It’s the end of the harvest season and, although we still reap and pay at Save-On, harvest at Costco, we still put away stores for the winter and we tend to hunker down some. Now and then.
I.e: the fire is on every day now.
We got it partly right again and it was a bountiful, happy year for us. And next year promises to be even better when the greenhouse comes on line. We are thankful. I am very, very thankful. It was a very good year and our cups runneth over.
So do the freezers. We got stuff. Lots of stuff. Frozen stuff. And we are getting to that time of year when the sun don’t shine and we have crap stuffed in dark places (freezers). That means less electricity and inevitable thawing. Or running the genset. Or eating a lot of frozen stuff. We are opting for eating our way out of this problem and then shutting off the summer electrical powered freezer.
Now there’s an OTG tactic I never considered – seasonal freezer use skillfully timed to coincide with depleting food levels. Timing, they say, is everything.
Actually, timing is more than everything, it is critical to survival. We are running out of fuel and, even though we are pretty frugal in that department, we still rely heavily on a small amount of gasoline for boats and gensets – especially in the winter. And this month, we are cutting it a bit too fine. Fuel barge comes in a week. We have three to four days of normal-use fuel left but, with care, we will make it. I may look around for an extra tank. I hate seeing the bottom of tanks.
Our summer friends are back in the city dealing with lawn care, doctors, socializing, visiting, Film Festival, bills, traffic, neighbours, rules, Starbucks and forced exercise regimes not to mention strata council meetings, parking, shopping and maybe even working still. If not working then providing free day care for their working children. Then there’s the doctor’s appointments that result from the first doctor’s appointments mentioned in sentence one. Specialists, don’t you know? Home, boat and car maintenance. And the list goes on.
Well, not out here. Out here it is quiet. Sally quilts. I look at Honda repair manuals. Scotch and Netflix follows a fabulous day and even better dinner. It would almost be hard to be grumpy if it weren’t bred so deep into the older male’s DNA.
Nature knows what it is doing.
Our Off the Grid Home 
Time to reject the stereotyping. Folks engage in spinning mythical straw men types of guys whom they have never met and would not recognize if they did meet one. But they think they know all about off the grid life. But as Red Green says, “if you can not be handsome be handy.”
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You are right, of course. Having said that I am so ordinary Stats Canada tried to recruit me for a poster of the ‘average Canadian male’. I am also the average grumpy old guy, the average reader of books, the average drinker of wine and so on. OK, I am a smidge heavier than average but if I was average in EVERYTHING, it would be a statistical anomaly and that would NOT be average!
It’s the rest of you that are odd.
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If you were completely ‘average” you would be stuck with the rest of us in the “rat race”.
Thankfully, you’re not.
The Oct monsoons are upon us. Dark from 5pm til 8am. Ugh.
We slaving plebes…commuting on the dark, rain soaked streets full of dark clothed, black umbrella’d, jaywalking pedestrians incessantly texting while blindly stepping off curbs…Emergency braking saves their inconsiderate, self absorbed “me first” lives only for your car to have a distracted driver behind you ram you so hard you win the ICBC “whiplash lottery” ….. wooooo hooooo. “Freedom 55”
I look forward to the wine fueled, eloquently worded, mid winter “screams” of isolationist boredom in the OTG hinterland.
They’re far more interesting than the latest “Heathers Pick best seller” from Chapters “Adult Coloring Books” which is either semi porn with crayons OR regression therapy with crayons…..either way…..I’ll pass.
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It is nice to have a reader who ‘gets me’….like Red Green does. Mind you, think of the company you keep?
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You are lucky to have a fuel barge stop by. We have to haul jerry cans and propane bottles to town to get refills. Seems like we are always refilling our propane, but with three 40 pounders we keep a rotation going so we never run out. Our fridge with a small freezer runs on propane, so it goes year round. We do go out more in the winter months. Our destinations are sunny to give us a dose of Vitamin D and wash away those winter blues that come with the clouds and rain. But trips are usually only a week long so we can get home and get our solitude factor back in line. Too much of any good thing isn’t good. Got to have balance in life. – Margy
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I think so, too. The barge is a real assist to us. We used to stink up the car and spill gasoline when doing the ‘jerry-can’ thing. That got old fast. And a 40 pounder of propane is NOT light either. A large part of this OTG thing is materials handling, logistics, scheduling and managing stuff. The ‘grid’ not only takes a lot of physical burden away, it also meters and allocates too. I remember just ‘paying’ the BC Hydro bill and that was all I had to ‘do’ with it. Now I am ‘involved’ in it right from the sunshine to the light switch. Same for gas. Mostly the same for gasoline, too. Park and pump and that was it. But don’t mistake any of the above as a complaint. It is NOT. I love it all. But it is different, isn’t it?
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Como você continuar a trabalhar os músculos do PC, em breve você
será capaz de fazer 25 reps sem quebrar um suor.
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