This year is almost over.  Will be by tomorrow.  And so I really should do a review.  It’s what media do.  But, honestly, my year and the one before it would read mostly like an emergency ward medical record.  “How many band-aids?  How much blood loss?  Ooohh….that must have really hurt?”

I don’t think we need to spend any more time there, do you?

For some reason year-end tends to steer toward nostalgia and I am feeling a bit that way, I confess.  It might just be the arrival of our two friends who Sal and I have known for over forty years.  We lived on sailboats when we were younger and they were liveaboards, too.  Our neighbours.  Been friends ever since.

But, more than that was the call I just took as I was writing this.  My father’s best friend, John, called. He was missing my dad (long deceased) and I benefit from a weird form of hereditary closeness from that old frendship.  John is 90. And so we spoke for awhile, cracked jokes, caught up and made promises to get together next year.

I dunno……….there is some kind of magic in all that, don’t you think?

But that is not what an off-the-grid blog is about.  Let me give you an update: Sal and guests are out hiking in the woods.  Maybe they’ll set a prawn trap before they go.  Took the dogs.  Except for the phone, I am alone.  Quiet and living without expectations for the first time in weeks!  Who woulda thunk that solitude would be one of my best friends as I got older?

I don’t need a lot of nothing but a little now and then is quite delightful.

Tonight, a six-person New Years Eve party is planned.  Subdued, I hope.  We’ll keep the noise down. But, ya never know out here.  Last year a passing boater had her motor quit and so, in the middle of the evening, a dark, wet, somewhat distressed figure appeared at the door and made the party larger by one.  She ate and drank so much she promised to break down again this year.

I’ve been looking ever since on Craigslist for a cheap used 9.9hp hp outboard I could buy just in case.  I swear my intentions are good.  Just being helpful.  I swear.

Another neighbour was having battery-inverter-power problems yesterday and I was summoned to commiserate and wonder alongside him.  We hmméd and haaa’d and scratched our heads and came up with things to do but, really, if your batteries and inverter are down, whatever you do will take hours of genset charging to check.  He’s been running the genset since then.  So, we’ll see.

Weather is calm.  Relatively warm.  A bit of sun now and then.  Pretty good for the last day in December, actually.

I wonder what 2013 will bring?

None of the following should be read as complaints.  I don’t have any.  But I am trying to convey what living off the grid is like and, of course, some it is chores and routine.  To tell the story as it truly is means including some stuff that may suggest complaint.  Honestly, it is not.  We live in paradise.  And I live with an angel.  Bottom line: it does not get any better than this. 

Opened the water system, serviced the genset, turned on the propane and lit the appliances.  Everything was working again and tickety-boo (although it is amazing how inneffective a pilot light is when the appliance is ice cold – it seems that pilot lights help keep the gas warm and working better, too, as well as being a convenience for lighting).

Lit the fire in the stove.  Stoked it up and made it rage.  Stove thermometer soon read 600 degrees (a hot stove helps heat the house of course but it also ‘blows out’ any creosote in the chimney so it is a useful thing to do every now and then). 

“Pretty chilly.  But we should be warm and toasty in a few hours”.

Batteries were good at 49.6.  Always a good sign.

Temperature inside was 4 degrees C.  It took over six hours to get the temperature up to 15C!!  The cold N’wester was just sucking the heat out.  Didn’t hit 20 til the next day.

And the next day was spent getting the boat back in the water, putting things away and finishing a few undone chores from before we left.  I’d estimate about three to fours work that, somehow, took all day.  Mind you, all wood (decks and docks) surfaces were pretty slippery from frost and slime and so we took our time doing everything that needed doing.  Plus we stopped for a few hot chocolates and that is a surprisingly time-consuming respite.

Getting home is a two-to-three day affair for us.  It is the traveling and shopping, of course, but it is also the re-establishment of systems, relaunching of boats and the putting-away of stuff.  I am still amazed at all this, this grand logistical exercise whenever we go anywhere.

We used to do this sort of travel-visit-thing in the city in minutes and hours.  Last minute preparing, racing for the car, tearing down the road and just making the event by seconds was the norm.  Now, of course, the logistics are huge and that last minute ‘scheduling-brinksmanship’ is just way too edgy, way too much of gamble, way too likely to fail.  Can’t do it.  We just need more time to do anything.  Extra days as opposed to extra minutes.

Being in our 60’s must be part of it, I guess.  That must be slowing us down some.  But it doesn’t seem that way.  It just seems like we are doing more, being more careful and detailed when we do it and, to be fair, stretching the chore sometimes to fill the time allocated (Or sometimes accelerating it because the ferry influences everything.  Race and just make it or take your time and get the next one?).  I might call it being sensible if I didn’t know the two of us better.  I think I will have to stick with just getting older.

Neighbour needed a ride over from end-of-the-road this morning.  Sal went.  We have guests arriving this afternoon.  I’ll go.  We don’t often get sleep-over-guests in mid winter.  Or New Years Eve guests.  My plan is to re-set the clocks four hours in advance.  We’ll celebrate the passing of 2012 at 8:00 pm and be in bed before ten.  No one will be the wiser, I am sure.

See?  You just have to plan and take your time and even New Years Eve can be handled! 

It’s 10:00 pm.  We are finally home!  A day of driving, stocking up, buying another boat, dropping it at the mechanics and getting ourselves out of the madding crowd and over the seas has taken the whole day.  Left the city at 8:00 a.m. and sat down, finally, at 10 p.m.  “Hey, Sal, it’s late.  Maybe time we turned in?  Sal?  Sal?”

She was asleep.  It was a tough week.  

We both love our families.  We have very good family.  Both of us.  Lovely.  Nice.  Good.  But this Xmas thing is getting out of hand.  I calculated that I drove an average of three hours a day for every day of festivities.  Definition of ‘festivities’?  Sitting bloated on a couch in a room too hot catching up on the lives of cousins and partners whose names I can’t remember.   

I was also full with turkey and stuffing and all the trimmings the whole bloody time.  I was outside walking around only for the time it took to walk from the last house to the car.  I actually enjoyed none of it.

And not one minute of it was spent in any way related to Christ’s birthday. Or anything else to do with religion, for that matter.  And we all tended to gluttony even tho everyone was ‘holding back’.  It is just that the activity-of-the-day is eating. “If they cook it and you come, then you have to eat it!” (WP KInsella – from an early unpublished novel: Field of Food) . And there is no question that we seemed to worship at false idols (Apple Ipods and smartphones for starters).  A lot of people focus on them at all times.  Not good.

Well, we were nice to each other.

It wasn’t all bad.  I did enjoy the people.  And we honoured our parents, like the bible says.  There may have been a bit of coveting going on but I didn’t see it.  There was no stealing, that is for sure. Murder?  Maybe a random thought or two.  Nothing out of the ordinary. Well, one brother-in-law is a bit too poised for Armageddon in my opinion but, other than that, no homicides are being planned.

And I confess that the first martini on the first night after a long day of driving is a real treat.  And the food over the next seven days is incomparable (volume and gastronomy).  But, what is also true is that it soon becomes too much.  Way too much.  Analogy : like taking a thirsty man out of the blazing desert and waterboarding him, ya know?  I mean; that first bit of water is great!  But, like, couldn’t we spread the water (love and the turkey) out a bit?

I’ve been saying this ‘humbuggy’ thing now for a few years.  But I haven’t done much to fix it.  Don’t know how.  How do you tell people you love that you are not going to ‘bother‘ to visit them at Xmas?  Doesn’t sound very nice, really.  Does it?

But, when I tentatively brought the subject up, just about everyone felt much the same way.  The Xmas thing isn’t working for anyone.  We need to change it.  What we need here is real leadership!

I’m chicken.

And, anyway, the women seem to run Xmas.  Mostly.  I drive a lot and eat a lot  but that is largely my only contribution.  Well, I buy the tools if they are planned to be in the gift inventory.  And booze.  I buy booze.  Merry Xmas!  I am just not in a position to take the lead on this.  It has to be a woman.  “So, Sal……………maybe we should, you know, convert to Islam or maybe Judaism so that we can get all ‘uppity’ about Xmas and then not have to ‘do it’?  Waddya think?”

“I think you have been saying this for years.  And I am not wearing a hijab or burka!  And just because you are circumcised does not mean you are half Jewish!  So just suck it up!”

“Hey!  Was it good for you?”

“No!  It goes on too long and it is just a lot of work, really.  We are still talking about Xmas, right?”

“Look…..we could just leave in November and come back in January.  Or, if we can’t afford that, we could just say we did.  Who’s gonna come up here and check?  We could send a Xmas e-mail ostensibly from Guatemala or China, even.  We’ve been there.  We could fake it.  No one has to know.”

“Hmmm………..November to January, eh?  We could say we are volunteering at an orphanage or something, eh?  I mean, who would lie like that?  Who could be so mean-spirited?  So awful to family and orphans?  At Xmas, fer God’s sake!!??  You are horrible, you know that?  Despicable!  But, I must admit………….it just might work…………”

” I think I should go interview the turkey.” said Sal’s mum (85) as she rose slowly to her feet.

“For what position?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Well, when interviewing, one expects that the interviewee has applied for something.  You know, in this case maybe the dinner centrepiece or perhaps, vice-centrepiece?  Maybe executive assistant to the centrepiece?”

“What are you going on about you silly fool?” 

“Who interviews a turkey?” 

“Well, I suppose it is an old term no longer in everyday use, now that you mention it. What a cheek!  As you will, then.  I will go and see to the turkey.  How’s that?” 

“Jolly good.”  It’s a tradition.  I tease Sal’s mum on being so veddy British.  She claims to be a Canajun, eh?”

I turn my head. 

“So when the natural disaster hits, eh, and like all the people are like starving and crazed with fear, like, waddya gonna do, eh?  Share your food?!  I don’t think so.  It’s judgment day, dude.  Time to break out the heavy artillery, man.  You are gonna have to kill people to keep your family safe, man.  I say ‘be prepared’.  So said my brother-in-law as we resumed our conversation on the pros and cons of having assault rifles.

“Well, t’is the season, isn’t it? Ya got your school massacres and all this time o’ the year.  Rapid-fire season, I guess you’d call it? “

“Exactly!  Get ’em before they get you!”

“Yeah.  Keep a happy thought.  But you make a very good point about the natural disaster.  Inevitable.   Articulate, too.   I’ll give you that.  So what are you recommending?  50 calibre heavy impact slugs or a storm of high velocity small rounds?  And, more to the point, does any of this stuff come on sale Boxing Day?”    .

And from across the room.  A cousin read out loud his party favour joke.  “What do you call a multi-storey pig pen? …………………………….. A styscraper!” 

” I don’t get it?”  Said Ellen, a niece somewhat reknown for not getting it.

“Why did the man sleep under his car?  ……………………………….He wanted to get up oily!” 

” I don’t get it” ……said Ellen.

“Why does a sea gull fly over the sea?  …………………….Because if it flew over the bay it would be a bagel!”

 ” I don’t get it”…….said Ellen

A somewhat familiar face approached.  “So how was your trip over?  Ferries crowded, eh?  Sailing wait?”

I smiled at the cousin going through the motions.  Nice in an obtuse-haze kind of way.   I have been coming down island for the last eight years instead of coming from Vancouver but, what the hell, eh?  Asking about the ferries is tradition.  I just said, “Yeah.  Pretty crowded.  But we had reservations.  We were good.” 

And so it was.  Sugar plums, egg nog, annual face/name recognition-testing and another family Christmas with relatives began…………Ho Ho Ho

A month or so ago, I bought those expensive, knubbly, macho-tread tires for the truck.  We needed them.  But they are proving to be the thin edge of a weird kind of wedge.

The slope at the end of the road that goes down to the shore is illegally steep and gravel-muddy.  It is a hard scrabble up and down – worse when wet and impassable with any kind of snow or ice.  Our old tires needed replacing anyway and I felt as if we needed better claws.  I bought BF Goodrich BIG BUTT GRABBERS (or something like that)….the kind that seem like they belong on WW2 jeeps or on trucks that work up north.  These tires bite!

And they give you a free ball-cap with them that you can wear backwards if you want.

Sally: “Wow!  I can’t believe it!  Consider those tires my Xmas present!”

“Yeah.  They are good, aren’t they?”

“I’ll say!  I beached the boat at the bottom of the hill and it was snowing and cold. I could hardly even see!  I hiked up the hill barely making it.  It was so slushy and wet.  Then I got the car and put ‘er in 4-wheel drive and crawled down the steep hill over the dug-out potholes and down to the beach.  I loaded the car and drove it backwards up the hill with the falling snow obscuring my vision.  But it went up like a cat!”

And that is how Sal managed to get all our stuff over to the other island the day before our departure.  She likes to pre-pack the car before we leave so that our departure in the morning is seamless.

We leave our car over on an adjacent island that has ferry access.  A neighbour gives us a lift over.  What with us and two dogs, it seems only considerate to spare them all the luggage and crap.  And in that way we just jump off with them hardly having to stop.

But, with my butt injury being exaggerated and exploited as fully as it is,  the loading job fell to Sal.  She is normally a bit hesitant about driving the hill in the snow. She thinks she may slide right into the sea.  When the tide is up in the winter months, it is a distinct possibility – one that has been proven in the past by overly brave and less-skilled drivers.  The conditions can be pretty extreme.

It is funny how the situation in which you live changes you.  I’d now like a bigger truck with bigger butt-grabbing tires.  I can now see the logic of a gun rack.  Having a barrel for fuel in the back makes sense, too.  I already wear big ol’ plaid shirt-jackets and heavy boots and I hardly ever shave.  I even play the harmonica a little – a little more if I have had a few drinks.  And I am glancing at banjos now and then, too.  Jeans, of course, are de rigeur and most of mine are ripped and stained.  Got two dogs, as well.  I may even add a twang to my speech and start spittin’.

I guess that is how pit bulls, tattoos and voting Republican happen…………..

But, in the meantime, the butt-grabbers are Sal’s Christmas present.  And mine?  She got us tickets to the Big Monster Truck rally, of course!!  Yee Haw!

Shopping ain’t easy out here (which is mostly a blessing) but it is definitely more interesting.

The regular shop is do-able enough, of course.  We go to town, buy cheese and wine and bolts and paint and then head home.  It has it’s logistical challenges but, basically, it is just like shopping in town – only more physical and time-consuming.  Usually more hurried, too.  A smidge more of an element of danger, too, I guess.  Especially in the winter.  But, still, our shopping is much like you’d think shopping out here would be like.

But not all shopping is ‘regular’ shopping.  Some needs have to be met by hunting farther afield.  And this is especially so with regards to many off-the-grid-type products such as pumps, winches, etc.  The 7/11 just won’t do it for for us.  In fact, in some cases, Home Depot won’t even do.  Believe it or not, Home Depot is too ‘lightweight’ for much of the stuff we need.

I can buy a shackle at Home Depot.  Maybe even get one that is designated 3/8″ (thickness of steel and pin) but, for me and my neighbours, 3/8″ is not a serious shackle.  Serious starts at 1/2″ and goes to 1″.  Even bigger shackles are made, of course, but we are not that serious.  Docks held by chains to the shore will be considered secure with a one-inch shackle.  The thing is: anything over swag-lamp specifications and Home Depot is inadequate for us.

So we have ‘accounts’ with companies that serve industry.  We all do.  And, in the spring and summer, it might even be argued that we shop more at such ‘industrial-level’ stores than we do at ‘normal’ stores.  Hell, sometimes I shop more at the scrap metal/salvage yard than I do at Save-On.

Another way to ‘try‘ to shop out here is by way of the Internet.  Natch.  But that doesn’t work like it does for urban people.  Shipping can be prohibitively expensive for us.  Sometimes artificially so.  Postage is crazy-expensive but sometimes the companies shipping charges make it even crazier.  Plus we can’t get a heavy object by mail because things come in by float plane and say, a two hundred pound winch with cable would be as much to deliver as it would be to buy.  More, in fact.

Good example: a neighbour wanted to ship a largish cardboard box that was fairly lightly packed to Toronto and the cost was going to be almost $500.  It didn’t get sent.

Another example: I ordered a small box of special tape from Toronto (24 rolls – in a box about the size of a couple of pounds of butter) and the shipping was $3.00 to Campbell River, $30.00 to our island.  The box of tape was $18.00.  We had it shipped to a friend in Campbell River who was good enough to bring it when he next came out to the island.

But, by far, the weirdest way to shop is by way of Craigslist or Kijiji or some other ‘net-based classified ads’.  That requires a lot of hoop-jumping.  You’d be stunned at how many times I have responded to an ad and told the seller that I live remote and can’t get there for a couple of weeks only to be met with silence or an e-mail accusing me of running some kind of scam.  It seems that, if a seller doesn’t understand where or why you live outside their neighbourhood, you are likely a crook trying to cheat them.  Very weird.

The counter to that, of course, is the seller who somehow relates to our situation and makes an effort to accommodate us.  I suppose it helps that I rarely dicker.  If I find something that I need for $100.00 and I am going to have to ask the seller to wait until I come to town in a few weeks, it is only fair to pay the going rate (given that it is close to fair in the first place).  So that and the fact that they can relate has made for some interesting transactions.

In one such case I bought a box of silicon bronze screws from a guy in Victoria.  But I wasn’t going down for months.  He was OK with that.  As it turned out my son was able to get over to his place a week or so later and the guy was so pleased with meeting him and the fact that he had sold his screws to a guy up the coast that he ‘threw in’ a few small tools to ‘sweeten the pot’.

Some people just ‘get it’.  And that is great.  Some people ‘get it’ and do something helpful just because and that is even more great.  And some people have been so good that we have become friends. Yes, Gail.  I am talkin’ about you.

And I am talkin’ about a few others, too.  Mountain Equipment Co-op is by far the best ‘big company’ for this.  Their shipping is accurate, prompt and no more expensive because we live remote.  In fact, their shipping costs are relatively low. There are a few other good ones but MEC stands alone as the best so far.

We have met some pretty nice people shopping on Craigslist for weird things.  It isn’t always perfect but the good ones are frequent enough to keep me going back.  In fact, I have to admit that I actually kinda like shopping this way.  Not a lot.   But a lot more than dragging my sorry self through malls.

Folks out here celebrate Christmas.  Off-the-gridding is largely a WASP (and aboriginal) culture, after all.  (NOT 100% by the way).  But we do ‘the holidays’ differently out here, that is for sure.

Not too many people buy Xmas trees, for instance.  Like, NONE!

Most years there is a winter solstice party on the 21st somewhere.  Clearly, paganesque.  Mind you, we do the summer solstice, too.  Even MORE paganesque, I understand (I don’t go to that one.  I have a pending court order against public nudity………or as Sal says ‘YOU WILL HAVE!’).  And, around here, a local always hosts a Boxing Day do and a lot of people end up spending the night.  So it is really a big Boxing Day Sleepover (which, I confess, I find a bit odd given that everyone is over 60 and not drinking much anymore.  It is probably just a winter-weather-traveling-by-boat-thing.  I am pretty sure they all just go to sleep!?).

And then there is the well-attended but weird and wacky ‘gift exchange’ (erroneously, in my view, referred to as the ‘white elephant’) whereupon everyone brings modest gifts and names are drawn one by one and the current receiver gets to open their gift and then decide if they want to trade their choice for a gift already opened and currently held by another.

Most items are just just silly but usually there are a few trouble-makers who insist on giving something nice.  This, of course, means the ‘nice gift’ is chosen and re-chosen and subsequently lost and hard feelings can sometimes result. Lesson#1.  Don’t forget a present has to be brought by each attendee.  Lesson#2: Don’t make it the gift-of-all-time.  Lesson#3: Some presents you just don’t mess with.

I inadvertently fell prey to that don’t-mess-with-this-one-syndrome once when  a few years back I received a lovely ‘My Little Pony’.  All pink and glittery.  One of the local teen boys had something better.  I can’t recall what.  Maybe a jar of jam?  I was feeling impish.  I walked over to him and ‘swapped’ his jam for My Little Pony.  The air around him went cold.

The next day I went to his place and gave him a new LED flashlight to make up for my blatant cruelty.  I had no idea that sitting with My Little Pony was such a stigma for a 14 year old boy but, really, I should have known.  I’d likely have trouble myself.  Even today.  The flashlight only got me half-way back to our previous relationship.  I have had to add a few other minor things since.  Plus a steak BBQ.  Five years later, I think we are good.  NOT great.  But good.

There is always a large turnout for the school play, of course.  Despite the fact that only five or six kids are in the school this year, over 60 people will usually show up.  It is the school play!

New Years may see a party or two but none that we are aware of.  We don’t get those invitations.  We wouldn’t go anyway.  It is the one party that has the expectation of staying up til midnight (and longer than three hours) and that is simply a non-starter nowadays.  Especially if you have to go home by boat.  In the dark.  In the winter.

No, the gift exchange is the BIG one.  Maybe the Boxing day sleepover (BDS).  I am pretty sure the BDS was a much more fun event in the 70’s and 80’s when it started.

Truth is, many folks go away at Xmas.  We go to visit family.  So do others.  Some go to warmer climes.

Living off-the-grid…………….what a concept, eh?…………. a lifestyle change that seems to involve changing even Christmas traditions.

There is the assumption that we off-the-gridders suffer from greater hardship and inconvenience than do our comforted and comfited urban counterparts.  And, in some ways it is true.  But not in many others.

The new bridge in Vancouver is closed due to weather.  The ferries have stopped running.  So has much of Transit.  As many as 60,00 people are without power in the southern part of the province.  The homeless shelters are full and the streets are in gridlock.  We don’t have any of that.

Yes, the weather outside was spiteful (but the fire inside was delightful).  We are facing the same storm.  But Sal and I are good.  Lights are fine – because we make ’em fine.  Heat is good because we make the heat.  Traffic is endurable ’cause there isn’t any and we are snug.

Yes, I know that a large part of that snugness and smugness is due to our NOT having to go to town to work.  I know that.  I am very thankful for that.

But I guess we are still somewhat smug.  And I don’t mean to be – at least not obnoxiously so.  I just mean to point out that convenience and modernity are not without vulnerabilities and worse, those vulnerabilities seem to be showing up with increasing regularity.  Frankly, hardship, weather-related disasters, population-related problems, infrastructure failures, institutional impotence and government incompetence are seemingly becoming the norm from where I sit.

26 people were shot to death at an elementary school the other day.  And this is just the latest incident of such similar horrors we have come to know over the years. 

I am thankful I am not in traffic.  I am doubly thankful I am not in traffic confined in a mass transit rolling cocoon.  I am triply thankful I am not reliant on public utilities.  In fact, I am ecstatic to be the hell away from that rolling disaster-waiting-to-happen we call modern living.  Basically, I am saying that I am thankful not to be as dependent on others as are people in the city.  In this instance, independence is the true convenience.

Our power will go out.  Our outboard will pack it in.  Our water may freeze up.  We will have challenges.  But we will also have the choice if not the obligation to go fix it.  We won’t sit and wait.  We do not have to wait on BC Hydro, BC Transit, BC Ferries or BC Anything.  We may get as miserable as the homeless on some nasty, short, brutish occasion but, with our neighbours and ourselves, we will make relatively short work of it.  I am more ‘comfortable’ even in the uncomfortable times than I would be if I were trapped and reliant on strangers in the city.

Honestly…….it is actually more convenient to live off the grid in many, many ways.

Sal and I have bacon and eggs for breakfast three times a week.  Give or take.  We have poached eggs for health reasons of course, a tip o’the hat, as it were, towards healthier eggs as we plunge past into the debauchery of de bacon.  All set on a couple of slices of toasted sourdough and occasionally accompanied by some fried tomatoes.  Maybe salsa if Sal is feeling a bit crazy.

We don’t think the one or two slices of bacon is so bad.  You see, we buy local as much as possible and the bacon is local, lean and lacking the corporate seal.  Practically wild.  These hogs get to wander around and have a pig’s life before they grace our table.  Somehow that seems better.

But it does raise the question.  “Can ya hunt?  Can ya hunt deer, Dave?  Can you eat what you kill?  Got the guts?” And the answer has always been an easy and automatic one.  “Eeew, yu-u-ck!  No way! Gross!”

But I’m re-thinking that.

No, I am not re-thinking that because of the inherent hypocrisy and unconsciousness required when eating animals that have come to be ‘merchandised’ as bright red, bloodless and plastic-looking, cello-wrapped on styrofoam.  I rationalized that a long time ago.

And it is not so much that I feel that a real man should be able to hunt.  I abandoned that real man standard with the acceptance and adoption of cheap B flicks.  Too many more-real men out there.  Let Rambo do the hunting! (I mean, it is not like he is employable anywhere else even at the best of times, is it?).

I am thinking of hunting for a couple of more practical reasons.  One, the food would be local and organic.  That has to be healthier than the factory stuff.   Secondly, it is more convenient.  I mean, think about it…!  They wander all over the place!  I stop my car for them on the road!  A deer is like a walking convenience store (meat counter, anyway).  It is virtually delivered.  No fuel.  No boats.  No trucks.  No line-up for the ferry.  No unnecessary packaging to contend with.  For an off-the-gridder, it is a no brainer.

Which brings me to my third reason.  No brains are required.  This is primal man’s jurisdiction.  This is where the cast of Quest for Fire shines.  This is their kind of thing and, we all carry a bit of them within us.  Wouldn’t this be like getting in touch with my inner Neandrethal?  Killing defenseless animals as a way to further personal growth?

I dunno……..I am thinking about it, anyway.  The counterpoint to the above paragraph is that we have been equally as programmed to like big eyes and long legs.  Think: Barbi.  And deers have big eyes and long legs.  The phenomena of loving and worrying about Barbi/Bambi appealed to a primal and basic instinct, too.  So, maybe I should just try finding a seedy-looking, short-legged deer with little beady eyes?

I dunno.  Jury is still out.

Book club is here today.  Good books, goood food and Sally’s rummy Xmas egg nog never fails to pack ’em in.

Over twenty women are here today not counting the kids.  And I saw at least three of them!  I had a chance to say ‘hello’ before being banished to the back room but saw two of the little ones – still at the crawling stage.  Two little boys.  Each with a different set of parents, of course.  None of the parents looks even remotely alike.  The two kids look like twins!  It’s amazing!  I swear to God, if they were dressed the same, the moms could easily take either one home and never know.

‘Course, it could just be me……?

I was offering to drop my drawers to show — anyone interested – the nasty bruise I was sportin’ but no one took me up on it.  Most pretended they didn’t hear me.  Wouldn’t look me in the eye!  That was when I was sent to my room.  I was not to be part of the gathering.

Women do this kind of thing.  You know….gathering?  It is usually associated with book club but they are inclined this way all the time.  Potlucks, school play-cum-lunch, community work days where lunch is made.  It is pretty neat.  They all gather and chat and eat and cluck and scratch.  Buk, buk, ba-awk!   Wandering around the house.  Smiling.  Bobbing their heads.  Saying nice things to each other.  (Yes, Sal saw that reference to clucking and glared darkly at me.  But it passed the censor!?)

It is all kinda weird.

Don’t get me wrong.  Please.  I like the gathering thing.  And I respect it no end.  Very nice.  Good stuff.  Really good stuff.  Keeps the community together and all that.  The women out here are the glue for all that.  Regardless of how they might regard one another, they treat each other nicely and with consideration and respect.  It is very nice.  Lovely.  Men just aren’t like that.

I guess some men are.  Rotarians, maybe.  Oddfellows, perhaps?  But not the ones I hang with and, to be frank, I don’t really hang with any.  I like a few guys, of course.  And a few like me.  We nod at each other.  From a distance.  Twice a year.  Maybe three times if the social calendar is a busy one.  That seems to be enough.  Anything more is, well, who knows…..?  There never is more!  Men just don’t seem to ‘hang out’ unless there is a reason and, even if there is a good reason, we usually have more good reasons to keep it short.

“Táin’t no reason we can’t wrap this up in under three hours.  Anything more than that is relationship building and I just came here for the building, not the relationship.  Now pass the hammer and get outta my way!”

My friend, J, feels that way (I am ‘quoting’ him above) about community activities, dinner parties, weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs.  Three hours is the limit for just about anything.

I didn’t use to be that way but, I confess, I am getting there.  Never been one for chit-chat even at the height of my most gregarious stage.  If I am gonna talk, I want it to be a significant conversation. Something real.  I learn something or else I teach something.  I listen or you do.  This back-and-forth thing, and; “how do you feel about that?”, well, I just don’t have the patience for it anymore.  I am all business.

Or not.

The first ten seconds of any encounter, I have noticed, is the best ten seconds for cracking stupid jokes.  The goofier the better.  I like to drop a few real dopey ones quick-like.  Cracks me up.

But, after that…..?  Well, my contribution has been spent and the 3-hour clock starts.