Seeking treatment

Posted on February 5, 2011 by jdavidcox

I am throwing this one up 150 blogs late. It was amongst the first of the ‘mental steps’ I was going through at the time.

From the archives: #1

Gail Sheehan wrote a book called ‘Passages’. It is about the phases we go through as we age. And, predictably it seems, I have just entered a new one. I am becoming of Cabin age. I need simple. I need small. I need nature. But, most of all, I need out of the damn urban cul-de-sac!

There is a new, more virulent form of cabin fever stalking the land. It is a money-resistant deviant form of Suburbanitis. It is Split-level Fever. And the only known cure is a cabin.

Status won’t help. Expensive restaurants won’t help. Even filthy lucre has not proven long-term effective although symptoms are somewhat alleviated in the short term by massive infusions on a regular basis. Tragically, the victim eventually becomes lucre dependent and eventually still needs the transplant. The patient really needs fresh air and space. And lots of it. Simplicity is the prescription followed by the advice: don’t call anyone in the morning!

That’s what I need, anyway. A great deal more of less. Preferably on the water, ten or twenty miles from some inadequately stocked hardware store, I believe there is a place for me.

It will leak. It will smell musty when we meet and it will likely be adorned in an eclectic mix of malfunctioning systems, cast-off furniture and dilapidated appliances. Sprinkled liberally about will be numerous tasteless bric-a-brac left over from the previous owner. The pattern of the curtains, counter tops and kitchen linoleum will somehow be related but not in any aesthetically pleasing way. Small, dried out rodent carcasses will lie where they can only be reached by someone who cared. And no one did. Some local but still indistinguishable debris from the beach or the forest will have been hauled in and placed in positions of pride or will adorn shelves and window sills for reasons that escape the casual visitor and, perhaps everyone except a psychiatrist. The cabin décor will be a colourful, three-dimensional Rorschach test. And I will see Nirvana in the vision.

I need one. I can no longer worship at the altar of Consumerism. I have seen the light and it is readily harnessed by Photo Voltaic cells. I have converted to wind-power, to composting and to Direct Current. I will walk again! I have become cul-de-sacriligious and I will not falter.

Forgive me if this sounds ever-so-slightly dramatic. Such is the response of most victims who have been dragged from the precipice of death-by-subdivision and, once again, feel alive and passionate about getting back to nature. I urge everyone to experience it. Flirt with a cabin, any cabin. Sleep with one.

It’s easy to get to this state – I think it comes with age – but it helps to have suffered a suburban-based chronic pre-condition to fully appreciate the primal calling. The ideally prepped patient has spent 25 plus years working in government or some other stultifying, coma-inducing environment raising two or more children in a house conveniently located inconvenient to everything.

The patient likely has two or more TVs and that does not count the one stored in the garage for no fathomable reason. Two cars will grace the driveway and, in advanced cases, a sparkling clean 4-wheel drive Behemoth XT will be one of them. Maybe an unused boat and unused RV. Closets will overflow, computers will be everywhere including the two being stored in the garage for no fathomable reason and none of the inhabitants will say a great deal to each other during the course of any given day.

The meaning of it all will be a question that looms large like the proverbial 800 pound Gorilla in the background but never gets addressed because of the heavy demands of the inhabitant’s schedules maintaining the equilibrium of the above described status quo.

Some people are terminal. Too far gone. Pray for them. They are too close to ‘their pension’ to actually change so freedom to live and love in a cabin is just another marketing phrase, an empty dream. But many can be saved….

Still, to hell with ‘em. This is about me. I gotta get out. And my last quasi-neighbourly thought is to suggest a mass exodus of the neighbourhood. Get out! Get out NOW!! Get a cabin. There is more to life than this cul-de-sac!

David Cox is a desperate 50-something who counts the minutes until his kids leave and his wife quits her job. Unemployable today, this previous member of the successful male ruling class cannot get arrested, let alone employed and so has turned, like many thousands of males before him to dreams of hermitage. The president and CEO of OH GOD (Organization of Hermits Gathering out ‘Der), David seeks to retain a semblance of connection to society through the writing of articles chronicling his slow decline into isolation and mental health.

Getting here: Why Builders Draw on Napkins

Posted on February 4, 2011 by jdavidcox

Basically, Sally and I built our own place. But not 100%. More like 80%. But even that is hard to figure out because building the cabin is only 50% of ‘putting the place together’. Constructing the actual cabin is only half the job of making a home. If.

But there is another variable as well. No one can do everything. We had orders of materials made up, design discussions with architects, deliveries, some basic framing done on the gen-shed, boat shed and the big house and, thank God, a lead-hand in the dry-walling. Local guys Merl and H. put the steel roof on – we simply didn’t know how. We still wax poetic about Big Bill Noseworthy, the dry-waller with a special place reserved in heaven (for big, goofy guys who work like mules and do it with humour and skill while sleeping on site).

We also enjoyed the occasional but always freakily-well-timed visit of someone who actually knew how to do the job we were just embarking on. Sally’s bro-in-law (another) Doug, my friend Steve H and my other friend, Gene-O have gobs of knowledge and experience and a healthy appetite for Sally’s food. They were a real blessing as were the odd (in every sense of the word) visit from neighbours who had ‘been there and done that’ to get where they are.

Of course, we would have ground to a halt and died on the site if it were not for the continual support of the best neighbours on the planet, John and Jorge.

The point: even if you are an introspective, psychotic hermit building remote up the desolate midcoast in the winter, people show up in your life one way or another. It is all weird. It is all learning. It is all good. And it is another variable in the mysterious process that is cabin building. This article following was written in the beginning with a bit of that in mind……..well, certainly the learning part, anyway.

The challenge of getting your cabin built on a remote site is often confused with the limited difficulties of actual construction. That is a mistake. They are not the same. Wilderness cabin construction is not complicated, difficult nor does it require exceptional skills beyond that of a normal brain surgeon or nuclear physicist.

But ‘getting’ a cabin built is an extraordinarily difficult undertaking requiring patience, cash, basic drawing skills, research, negotiations and, most important of all, the ability to communicate creatively and speak in numerous dialects of ‘bastardized’ English. There simply is no training for this, no education, no way to prepare. When you are at this point, buddy, you are completely on our own and it is at this stage the outcome of your project is largely determined.

The actual ‘drive-the-nail-into-the-wood’ construction part of the process only constitutes about 20% of the undertaking and the primary characteristic required of the do-it-yourself hammer-wielder is simply the ability to persevere under the typical constraints of inadequate tools, insufficient skills and domestic-grade materials while suffering from intermittent physical trauma, sporadic blood loss and constant dehydration. Admittedly, constructing off-the-beaten path is a major challenge but, in the larger context of ‘putting it all together’, it is mere child’s play. Let me explain……

Firstly, there are the foreign languages to master. Or, more accurately put, the patois English of the professional and construction trades. Every architect, contractor, supplier, salesman or tradesman has their own vocabulary and verbal abbreviations – usually just a series of half-sentences filled with strings of letters, abbreviations, non-words and sometimes a number is thrown in for colour. Example:

“You want to use ‘T-Y’s on a two over twelve pitch done dink-style or standard… whichever makes the most sense. Just don’t use that FTE crap. Better to use FTX with an overlay, I think. Or you could spray, I suppose.”

These instructions are delivered in the “I-assume-you-know-the-language-manner” that is primarily utilized to minimize questioning and promote confusion. By speaking this way, their fees are rationalized (by them). Take some solace in knowing that the construction trades are encountering the computer-geeks these days and that God and His revenge works in wondrous ways.

A neophyte cabin builder wandering unguided in the building community feels much like a Southern debutante lost in darkest Africa having to ‘rely on the kindness of strangers’ and a smattering of Swahili. The dependencies are humiliating. “Of course I am using a tied-off sona tube with pygmy fittings! I got the X9’s and the spray. But thanks for asking.”

Speaking more rapidly than they work, building consultants and suppliers explain in a mumbled slur of monotone incoherence what they are about to do using words derived from a minimum of two official languages not necessarily official on this planet. Sometimes it sounds like a mix of British slang and ‘Canajun-eh’. Other times it is just a slurry of macho mishmash punctuated with swear words, monosyllabic grunts and facial tics. But mostly it is a combination of all of the above mixed liberally with verbal short-cuts, industry specific techno-garble and sentences which only end when their cell phone rings or your credit card has been processed.

The communication styles also change with the seasons and the times. And, even more perplexing, they change with the different stores, neighbourhoods and even the time of day. After four in the afternoon, you can sometimes factor in a little beer to the conversation and depending on how much you have consumed relative to what they have consumed, the conversation either gets much better or much worse. I found that sprinkling every sentence with analogies to sports, women’s anatomy or engines facilitates most construction related conversations.

Plus my napkin drawings are starting to have some extra appeal.

Speaking construction gibberish, however, is not enough. One also has to learn to interpret. “We’ll do the full nine ‘f-ing’ yards, man, of siding like the ‘f-ing’ tanlines on a centrefold this week because my ‘f-ing’ guys are going like a hemi ‘f-er’on nitro”. Translation: we’ll cut the Cedar planks this week. Maybe.

In addition to the weird dialects used there is the absurd industry vocabulary itself. Nothing is as named or measured. A 2×4 hasn’t been a 2×4 for decades but did you know that a 3-foot by 5-foot window commonly referred to as a ‘3×5’` is not really a 3×5? It’s an inch and a half smaller in every direction. Did you know that sona tubes aren’t used for listening? Three-quarters inch siding is actually 5/8’s? Wire mesh is often plastic? Angle iron is not made of iron?

Did you know that the tenth bag of cement actually weighs twice as much as the first one? Or all of the PVC fittings in one store won’t fit the pipe they sell but they will fit the pipe the store across town has? And, of course, that store doesn’t sell the fittings.

But, I digress…..

Not all of those in the industry speak funny. There is a significant portion who manage by not speaking at all. They don’t answer the phone, don’t answer their e-mails and, when actually sighted and cornered, communicate primarily with shrugs and grunts. Only the psychopaths in the business will actually look you in the eye. Think about that. When that happens, look away, shrug and mumble a few words of incoherence. No wonder communication is bad, eh?

Ironically, these more elusive participants in the industry are often the most sought after. Playing hard to get is coquettish and fetching in romance and it seems to be the marketing strategy of the construction trades as well. One thing is always made clear, however, and that is that nothing is clear. The napkin drawings are always destroyed on the spot. No promises are made. Anything can change. And, should the unexpected happen, you are supposed to get informed telepathically as these guys are always too remote or too busy to phone.

Another given: whichever day is chosen, whatever time is selected, those are the times that will never happen. It is actually easier to predict the next sequence of numbers on the Lotto 649 than it is to confirm a date and time for anything in the building trades. To some extent, I think we all know this. That is not really news. But the discrepancies experienced in the more remote cabin building areas are exceptional.

When asked why a delivery was not made in the week it was expected, it is just as likely the reply could be: “Oh, yeah…right. The wife and I were in Mexico. Needed a break, you know. Ever been to Los Banyos?”

When they miss you in the construction business, they miss you big time. By weeks, usually. Sometimes months.

Hello?

“Hi, Dave? Jack. Got my crew here. Ready to start. But I think you should come down here. There’s a house in the way. Want us to demolish it?”

Jack? Jack, the foundation guy? Jack! I thought you were dead! Your wife remarried, your kids have graduated and no one has seen you for years!

“Yeah, well, you know…..things got a little busy there for awhile and well, we are ready to start pouring.”

Jack, that house you are wondering about is the house I was planning to build. The foundations were poured a year ago. I am living in it. You are a bit late.

“Damn, man! You mean you hired somebody else? You know, I am laying out good money for my crew here…….”

Building a remote cabin is more than logistics. It is cultural. And it is mystical. You gotta learn the languages, you need to know the signs, you need to alter your sense of time and space. Keep a handy supply of napkins together with a few felt tip pens at all times and make your peace with God.

And remember how this article started…..I said, “Firstly, there are the foreign languages to master”. Then there is ‘Secondly‘…………….

Learn from history, my friend

Posted on February 4, 2011 by jdavidcox

One of my twelve readers was inquiring about land, ostensibly for planning purposes. He is thinking of building a retirement cabin and was beginning the dream phase. To assist him in this, I have attached an article written near the beginning of the actual ‘doing it’ phase.

How to Build a Cabin With No Money, Skill, Materials or Friends.

I just spent a week mangling my hands and feet in an amateur’s attempt at building the concrete pilings for a shore-side pier. We planned on building 12 such pilings. We built five. We did not have time to frame the spontaneously re-designed pier nor deck it but it didn’t matter, on the last day neither my wife nor I could stand up or walk anyway.

Another half ton of Ibuprofen and a few extra days in massage therapy and I’m sure we’ll be fine.

The marriage counselor thinks so, anyway.

We undertook this task with little hesitation, no fears and few, if any,
real concerns. What the hell?! It was only concrete. I see it every day. I
even walk all over the stuff. How can one go wrong?

We also had no idea of the evil forces involved in this exercise nor were we burdened by any awareness of the material’s inherently cruel character. Concrete is the original ‘dead weight’ from which all other dead weights are measured. Dry or wet, concrete lays heavy and lifeless but somehow lurking and dangerous nevertheless.

I am now suspicious of concrete. Surprisingly, it has the audacity to be temperamental. Do it wrong and you have literally built a monument to your ineptitude. Be forewarned; it is sneaky stuff! It will turn on you. Concrete is the builder’s version of the watched kettle, it never hardens when you are ready or want it to. But turn your back and you have a just made a perfect wheelbarrow-shaped boulder.

Mixing concrete in a wheelbarrow isn’t half the experience, by the way, unless you do it perched on moss-covered rocks at a 35 degree angle. See for yourself the magic of gravity, the phenomena of slow motion, the pointlessness of crying over spilt cement. Once again appreciate the isolation and distance from the building supply store. Yippee.

Conclusion: all cabins, regardless of appearance or construction integrity are worth ever increasing amounts of money the further they are located from the building supply store. Once you are more than twenty miles by water from the store, the most humble cabin is worth more than any suburban mansion. I consider my half-built pier priceless.

I am not unrealistic in this – my evaluation is based on labour costs with an additional percentage for danger pay. We packed our many dusty and Marquis de Sade-packed cement bags on a twelve-foot inflatable boat and then ferried the tonnage across the water. Then we clambered up the slime-covered rocks like Michael Jackson moon-walking on LSD and fell down in a sweat and cement covered heap. It’s a good thing cement doesn’t harden in salty perspiration or else Sally and I would have accidentally self-interred ourselves.

And someone better explain to me the logic of putting cement in paper bags! Those marketing geniuses also managed to design in mid-bag vulnerability and supine-bag invincibility. The bag can easily split on your round pudgy shoulder but can resist repeated blows with a sharp shovel once it is in the confines of the wheelbarrow. How do they do that? Does Al-Queda have this technology?

Still, we managed. The pilings aren’t straight. No piling is equidistant from another. The whole schmozzle looks like a Greek ruin, actually, but it stands and it stands solidly. Like an old-time sailor on a worn wooden leg, the structure leans but looks like it will remain on the planet for a longer period of time than I will. This is especially likely if I continue to hurt myself in the style to which I have rapidly become accustomed.

Tragically, self-mutilation may be the inadvertent answer to my getting the cabin finished. Another few mashed appendages, a crushed vertebrae or two or another few hormonally based encounters with my increasingly muscular wife and I may qualify for a disability pension or a handicap grant. I can’t believe there isn’t a group out there somewhere called Cabin Vets or Construction Amps or something. In that government subsidized way, I may be able to finish the cabin and, despite the pain, enjoy myself. Maybe even participate in a rehabilitative therapy group already in progress?

Has anyone else noticed that most cabins are enjoyed and more fondly remembered by the second generation rather than the ones who built them?

Getting here part 3

Posted on February 3, 2011 by jdavidcox

After reading about our leaving Tsawwassen, it may seem like the whole process was all about satisfying me. Me, me, me. And, to a large extent, that impression would be accurate. But a small part was entirely for Sally’s benefit. Even though she was committed to the middle management fast track and more than ‘groomed-to-zoom’ up the institutional ladder, it was killing her. She, too, needed to get out.

OK, it was killing me but it wasn’t doing her any good, either.

Sally handled her first designated management position at the WCB with aplomb. After all, if she could manage the three of us, our home, the PTA and her previous executive assistant positions plus oversee a complex social schedule for all of us, managing a single department within the massive bureaucracy that is the WCB was a piece of cake. She shone like a diamond amongst turds. Hard not to see………….even amongst the brain dead that were her supervisors.

So, what did they do? They gave her a second department in addition to the first, of course. You know the old bureaucrat’s motto, Keep piling on the straw to the camel’s back until it breaks!

But she’s tougher than that and handled the double load like a colossus. ‘Course, by this time, I was doing a bit o’ cookin’ so that helped. Kinda. OK, not so much but at least I wasn’t causing problems. OK, maybe a few………….never mind!

Anyway, they then gave her a third department. And then some ‘special projects’. It was clear to me, anyway, that nobody but Sally was doing anything at the WCB.

Hell, one day some nutbar came into the main foyer yelling for someone’s head and who do you think goes out to quell the riot? Sal, of course. Bottom line: they were burning her candle from both ends.

I was pretty supportive (in my own way) and started to nag, whine and complain about her coming home late (I needed her to save the dinner) and so she started to come home on time, at least. Took me about a week to notice that she was doing this by getting up two hours earlier and going to work by 6:00 am.

The bastards were wearing the sheen off the diamond. Unbelievable. The most beautiful smile in the world began to dim. Her rosy cheeks disappeared. She was beginning to (gasp) lack energy! It was time to get her the hell out of that cesspool and so I suggested that she consider……maybe……kinda……….sorta…….like……..retire…..ing?

She’d have none of it. So, I pulled out the big inducement: “You know, if you quit and we leave and go somewhere and do something healthy and have some fun, I will, I promise, get you any dog you want. That’s right – ANY dog you want. ANY!”

I almost had her. I could see her wavering. She shook her head slowly ‘NO’ but it was not heartfelt. The heart wanted the dog. ‘D-O-G’, I whispered. I subtly hung out my tongue a bit and breathed heavily……………‘d-o-g’……………..a little whimper slipped out…………I tried to wag………………….‘a puppy, Sal. A little p-u-p-p-y……………….’

“Right”, she said, “a dog it is. A Portuguese Water Dog. I want a PWD. That’s it! I’m quitting this rotten rat race and taking my dog and……….(well, you too, I suppose)………….and blowing this chicken coop! Wahoo!”

So, you see. It wasn’t all about me.

Getting here part 2

Posted on February 1, 2011 by jdavidcox

In theory, the rot was always there – inherent malcontentism. It’s part of me. But as mentioned two blogs ago, most of that irritation with the status quo was fairly well controlled or, at least, veiled in a grey or blue suit and tie with accompanying car, martini glass and house in the cul de sac. I was languishing at best, aggravated at worst but swaddled in comfort and I took refuge in golf when it got really bad.

I began to play a lot of golf.

But there’s always a tipping or flash point. And for me, it came after we had taken the kids out of school early in 1999, spent a few summer months on the road traveling and seeing the bigger world and then, turning home just a bit late to catch the first few days of next-term school…………I remember that moment well:

“Well familia, we’re just coming up to the intersection with the I5 and I will have to turn right to get to Vancouver. We are definitely on the last leg of this trip! I am sorry to see it end…………………………..hey! Why end it!? Why don’t I just turn left instead and we can go kill a few months in Mexico. You kids might even learn a bit of Spanish and at least we’d eventually get home with a tan. It would be extra good to walk into school on January 1st with a tan, eh?”

Sally nodded an enthusiastic agreement with the spontaneous change of plans, her smile beaming brighter. I had one vote in the affirmative at least.

Seems the kids had other ideas. Are you crazy!? What is wrong with you two!? We have lives, you know. We have to get an education. Where is your sense of responsibility? What kind of parents are you? You just can’t take kids out of school, you know. They’ll report you. Hell, we’ll report you!”

I didn’t give up easily. “Look, you guys are smart enough to catch up on the drivel they teach you. Read a few books and you are ahead of the game. Read some classics and you’ve improved on it. You don’t need no stinkin’ school. You guys will do just fine. And, anyway, what has your high school ever done for you? Don’t you think it’s high time to live life to the fullest instead of vegetating in some stupid classroom like the lobotimized sheeple that are your teachers and peers? Do you want to become just another brick in the wall? Da da dumm!” (I was humming Pink Floyd at the time)

They would have none of it. “Look! Just turn right. Turn right, right now or I’ll phone the cops on you. Nobody wants to see two old hippies in an American jail, now, do we? Just give it up you old coots and nobody’ll get hurt. Now turn right!”

Emily brandished her cell phone as she spoke and I knew that she wasn’t bluffing. I turned right. But it was just another nail in my urban coffin. I could hear the faint rattle of my premature death getting a smidge louder. This conventionality was going to be the death of me. It had already taken my kids. Screw them! I gotta get out!

From that day on, I could not wholly commit to the cul de sac, good manners, the work ethic or even, for a period of time, to good grooming and returning my calls promptly. I didn’t realize it at the time but these are the signs of rebellion, modest as they may be. When the lawn grew way too high, I could see the writing on the wall.

A couple of years of discomfort in the sac ensued. I was unhappy just being there. I hated cleaning the pool (before, it was like a Zen-thing, ya know?). Golf was not enough. I was beginning to rebel in other ways, too. But, at what? Where was the cause for the resistance? I had no idea what was wrong just that it was wrong, wrong, horribly wrong and I was starting to see myself as roadkill on the highway of life.

Actually, I was starting to think I might try my hand at writing and it was sentences like that last one that fed the fantasy.

Plus, Emily, at 17, (bless her beautiful little heart) won a scholarship to York University in Toronto and wanted to go. The voice that forbade my escape to Mexico just a few years prior was now arguing for a parental permission slip to head East. It was not hard to say YES!! A thousand Yes’s on you, blessed child! Away with thee!”

Ben had already settled in Victoria at UVic and, with Em’s departure, there was nothing holding me back.

Freedom, Freeeeeedddoooommmmmmmmmmm, F-R-E-E-D-O-M!!!!! (Richie Havens)

“Not so fast, big boy!”

Sally had worked her way up the management hierarchy at the WCB (read: managed to get herself jammed into the gearbox from Hell) and wasn’t so eager to flee the scene. Not so soon, anyway. There were meetings to attend, re-orgs to implement, draft proposals to vet and a zillion things to do that meant nothing to anyone. Heady days for her. Hard to resist the temptations of Dilbert. And, quite humbly, that driest, most boring, most useless waste of time on the planet seemed too have more appeal than did I. She had a briefcase and she wanted to use it. I had to shut up and bide my time.

I was a patient rebel with a working wife and no real cause from which to argue. I started to fix dinners and even put on the laundry a few times (Sal quickly put a stop to that after things went a bit awry). How pathetic is that!?

It was a hard time for me and it became impossible without the salve of scavenging to keep me focused and happy. I began to haunt junkyards and garage sales, second-hand stores and auctions, scrap metal dealers and crazy, whacked-out collectors of junk and debris that, somehow, I felt a kinship with, a bonding-thing. We were brothers in this amorphous blob of a rebellion and even though we didn’t know why, we recognized each other. I made not just a few very weird friends.

“Watch your back, ol’ buddy!” They’d say. “Stay locked and loaded.” I’d counter.

I really should get a gun.

I was beginning to relate closely to the old, completely mute geek in Ladner whose backyard was filled with great junk like 64 sft plate glass slabs one inch thick, large S/S barrels, old hand-logging paraphernalia and various motors and gearboxes, tools, gizmos and all sorts of great stuff. He did not discriminate in any way. The guy knew something. He was like a junkyard Yoda. I didn’t know what it was but I wanted that knowledge. I wanted the force. I kept at my training……………whatever it was for.

Pretty soon I was doing some serious collecting of my own. The garage was full of large steel things, old greasy tools and boxes of weird stuff that promised to be of crucial importance at some not-so-distant future. I frequented Popeye’s almost every week. It is a marine second hand shop. I was also a regular frequenter of BC Hydro’s salvage department. I got some great stuff. Even greater stories.

Bunch o’ crazies attend Popeye’s and BC Hydro so watch yer back, bro!

But here I have to stop and remind the reader that all of this was happening at an almost unconscious level. I had no idea that I was going to build a cabin in the woods. I had no idea I was going to go off-grid. I was really just giving vent to a weird urge. Honest.

OK, not-quite-so-honest. Somewhere along the line, maybe half way through this collection fetish, I started to visualize building stuff. And the inspiration for that was Mother Earth News.

For some unfathomable reason, I googled Mother Earth News sometime around the year 2000. They had forums. I joined. Over the next five years I was to meet all sorts of personalities from NRA freaks to dreamers, from urban roof-top gardeners to Old Order Mennonites (OOMs) in remote enclaves. I met ranchers, poor people in rural Mississippi, long distance truckers, farmer’s wives and lonely old hermits. And we talked about ‘getting out’ and living off the grid. I had a community.

And so that was another part of the answer to your question…………..

“Stop with the answering already. I am not asking the question. I do not need to know why a nut-bar goes nutty. I just accept it!”

“Well, it helps to know the nut-bar’s motivation and inspiration. And, anyway, I have to start this book in some way. So just bear with me. There’s more to come.”

Tripping the path disaster

Posted on January 31, 2011 by jdavidcox

Temperature dropped last night. Another threat to the water system which can best be met by draining the system. So, I did. No big deal.

‘Course, I make it a big deal by choosing to wait until both Sally and I have had our showers and then, naked and with wet hair, I slip on my boots and (are you getting that picture?) trip under the house (across the slippery, bendy plank in the dark) to close and open valves, draining the water and shutting off the pump and water heater. The exercise is pretty automatic now but it still takes about ten minutes. The worst part is standing there in the below zero temperature waiting for the water to drain out. Naked.

Every single time draining the system is undertaken, it is when it is dark, the temperature is freezing and every single time I do it, I take the expedient route of going naked.

Five minutes into the exercise I wonder (yes, every single time!), “Why the hell don’t I put something on before I come down here?” While I am mulling over that particular glitch in my programming, the system drains and I return to the house only shivering slightly. Of course, the best way to warm up is either standing in front of the woodstove or cuddling up with Sal.

Which do you think I choose?

Honestly, the stupid things I do on a constant basis amazes even me. I will not describe my use of the chainsaw. It defies logic, safety and even the survival instinct and will eventually become clear to you when you visit me in hospital some day. We really should book a time. It is inevitable.

It is not so much that I am stupid (although that is something to be considered but, obviously, not by the subject in question, right?) it is rather that I operate on an ‘exceptional’ modus operandi. Meaning: This in an exception………’Just this once……..I can run naked across the log, fetch the end of the rope and just ‘nip’ back to tie it up before the log rolls and spins me into the sea. I am sure. Pretty sure. Well, let’s give it a try. It is easier than going to get the pike pole. It’ll just take a sec’.

When I was younger, that kind of ‘shortcut’ worked for me 9 times out of ten. A little balance, a bit of timing, a dash of dare-devil and a dollop of luck and I was done! Quick, easy and efficient. The one time out of ten it did not work out rarely killed me (can’t think of a single time) and only resulted in some bleeding or bruising plus a slight embarrassment now and then. It seemed like a fair trade or ‘rough trade’ as it were to get the job done quickly.

But this getting older syndrome eats into your balance and timing. It is not as easy to leap from rock to rock or jump the gap or balance on one leg while hanging over a cliff trying to get a bolt in to granite with a slippery crescent wrench when you are post 60. The odds have dropped. I am now as likely to hurt myself as not. I am no longer a safe 9 out of ten on NOT-likely-to-screw-up-scale, but more like a 5 out of ten or, for you math freaks: one out of two! Those ain’t good odds.

I am really going to have to opt for the road less dangerous rather than the path of expedience or the shortcut of impatience. Otherwise, I will become the man with few functions and even fewer digits and limbs. I really have to smarten up.

Dressing warmly when it is freezing is a good place to try out this theory, I think. I may just give it a try next time I drain the system.

Why? Because time is catching up with me and, if it does, it is likely to find me naked.

We can’t have that, now can we?

Getting here

Posted on January 30, 2011 by jdavidcox

This confession may come as a mild surprise: I am, by nature, a bit of a malcontent. A whiner, if it must be stated out loud. I believe this is somewhat surprising to anyone who knows me because I clearly have it ‘made in the shade’. I am, without a doubt, the luckiest, happiest person I know living the best life in the world with the greatest partner to have ever walked the planet. Our kids are perfect. Even our stupid dogs are really pretty good (but they are still dogs!).

So what’s to complain about?

Not so much, really, but discontent with life is not so much a fact-based condition as it is a personality quirk and I have it. I am well acquainted with Churchill’s black dogs (I see the glass half empty) and I also particularly like change as a partial response to those black dogs. I, therefor, don’t like the status quo by almost any definition. And I don’t usually even like what is going on at any given time. Ergo – I am a habitual malcontent.

Scotch helps.

The key word in that self-admission, however, is ‘bit’. I am a bit of a malcontent. There is an element in my character that predetermines a minor but constant irritation or frustration with everything but, of course, that can be and has been largely controlled. A great deal, if you must know. And, for a long time. All testosterone-infused men have had to do this to some extent if, for no other reason, than to get laid or have dinner (depending on age, whereabouts and with whom). We are boiling cauldrons of rage. Kinda. In my case, more like a cuppa soup but, still, a rather hot cuppa soup. At times, anyway.

I am, like most men, a testimony to willed-harmony-with-others-to-get-what-I-want. I go along to get along. One must try to get along, mustn’t one?

A couple of thousand years ago, I would simply have chopped off their heads instead. That option still comes up now and then, if you must know, but it runs into the willed-harmony thing most of the time. It would be so much easier to chop heads rather than learning to live happily within polite society but, in the long run, that is a recipe for ostracism and loneliness if not becoming prematurely bald myself. I chose the easier dinner route.

But, of course, there are some things that just ‘set me off’ despite my gargantuan will to contain-the-hot-soup. There are some circumstances that I just can’t tolerate. There is a state of being I have no choice but to reject decisively if not violently. It seems that the one thing I just can’t handle is ‘polite society’ as it is taught, written, expected and promoted. It just bugs me. Ya know?

Just to illustrate by way of a small example: I hate town planners. I hate the idea of town planning. I can barely tolerate Official community plans, even. Weird eh? Don’t get me started on playground design, playground rules or even queueing at bus stops. It took me years to accept the idea of stop signs and I am totally rejecting the idea of renewing driver’s licenses and passports every five years! And that is just the beginning. I could go on.

Routine, order, rules-for-no-reason, authorities, even ‘professional organizations’, unions and overall societal expectations get under my skin but when any of that actually interferes with me, what I want, I get increasingly irritated. When I have endured that irritation for any length of time, I get annoyed and frustrated to the point of acting out – a little, anyway. Like writing a blog or a rant to the editor of the local newspaper. And when I can’t seem to inject into life variety, creativity, spontaneity or even argument and debate-without-suppression, it is time for me to move on.

“Dave, where is this going? I am starting to get irritated myself!”

Well, it is part of the answer to the question: “Why did you move off the grid?”

“I didn’t ask that question!”

Somebody out there must have.

Anyway, it is not the entire answer by any means. I will elaborate more on that later on (if anyone does, actually, ask the question) but it is part of the answer. That minor discontent, that pea-under-the-mattress, that-burr-under-the-civil-saddle is just part of me and it has resulted in lots of different jobs, different careers, different lifestyles, different politics, different friends and now, for a completely different change of pace, a remote, off-the-grid-lifestyle that is unlike anything before.

Ooooohhhh………and that is just part of the answer!

A question for my learned faithful

Posted on January 28, 2011 by jdavidcox

US unemployment is officially around 10%. But in reality, it is higher. The US Inspector General said that the financial overhaul isn’t over and they wouldn‘t end future bailouts. Recently, a second wave of housing busts hammered more cities, unemployment rose in 20 states, and Merrill had to settle fraud charges with the SEC.

In 2010, an all-time record was set for both the number of home foreclosures (2.87 million) and the number of home repossessions. Repossessions hit 1 million in a year for the first time ever. Americans also posted the highest number of bankruptcies last year (1.53 million) since their bankruptcy law was overhauled a few years ago.

An all-time record was set for the number of Americans on food stamps (43 million). Yes, 15% of America’s citizens are using government assistance to buy food. Officially, 47.8 million Americans are now living in poverty — the highest number in the 51 years of their official record keeping.

950 more banks are ‘in trouble’. Hundreds failed in 2007/08/09. 157 banks failed in 2010. US housing prices have fallen 26% since 2006 – more than during the Great Depression. And this is after the 2007/2008 recession was called ‘over’.

People believed that I guess. The US Consumer Confidence Index climbed to an eight-month high…? Holiday spending numbers from November 5 through December 24 hit a record-high $584.3 billion! The Wall Street Journal reported pay on Wall Street broke a record high for the second consecutive year in 2010.

They paid out $144 billion in compensation and benefits!!!!!!!!!!!

Oil, gold and most commodities continue to rise. And despite or maybe because of that, the Dow continues to rise. Poverty increases, the stock market goes up!!??

And I don’t know a single Canadian who is doing well – economically, anyway. Many seem to be ‘holding their own’ but I just don’t see any signs of wealth like new cars, new houses, or even new clothes! (though my neighbourhood may account for that). Hell, I don’t even see boats out there burning fuel!!

I know, I know, I am no pundit. I don’t know squat. In fact, finances, wealth creation and ‘getting ahead’ have always eluded or avoided me to a large extent and when, they weren’t snubbing me, I was snubbing them. David Bloomberg, I am not. Nor do I want to be.

But doesn’t this seem like worse economic news than the usual doom and gloom that is the mainstay of the newspapers? I mean, I know the media trades in ‘bleak’ futures but isn’t there a point where the future is actually and truly more bleak? And, isn’t this sounding like that? Or is this “same ol’, same ol’ and steady as she goes?”

A teeny rant

Posted on January 27, 2011 by jdavidcox

We pay taxes. Everyone pays taxes. We complain about them now and then – but not often. Everyone complains now and then. Taxes are annoying. We hate taxes. We especially hate taxes on second hand items. To my mind, there is no rationale for taxing a second hand item. It is ‘green’ to recycle and, more to the point: the government has already taken their ‘bite’ when the item left the shelf when new. I hate taxes like that.

But, like I said above, I don’t usually complain. Not often, anyway. First it seems pointless. It is like complaining about the weather. There is nothing I can do about it so I try to ‘accept’ that which I cannot change. I try to live by the “!%$##$%” Desiderata whenever I can. “Gawd, give me the patience and the understanding…………..blah, blah, blah”.

But the main reason I don’t complain is because we get a tax-supported benefit that is invaluable. We get a gift from the government that is to die for. We swoon over this. We love them for this alone (there is nothing else to even like them for). I am talking about Books-by-mail. It is the library for the alone, the remote, the isolated, the social pariah, the loner, the hermit and, well, us and the likes of us.

This how it works: we go online to the library and order a book. It shows up on our screen with the expected wait time – not unlike going to your local library and putting your name on the list. Typically, you wait a week or so for a ‘normal’ book that has been out for awhile and maybe as long as two months for a recent or popular one. So long as you have enough books ‘on order’, you are generally well supplied with reading materials. I go through a couple of books a week, sometimes more. It is absolutely one of the best societal benefits I have ever experienced.

It may be the only reason I count myself amongst you.

And yes, that statement remains true even when compared to health care. ESPECIALLY when compared to health care and doubly so when compared to public education. Best bang for my tax dollar? No question – the library.

But not lately. Lately, things have gone awry. Two years ago the ‘old dear’ that was the library linchpin for the remote retired and they hired, in her stead, Isabelle Incompetent and her assistant Suzi So Stupid. It is like being served by morons.

Ironic, don’t you think, to have idiot librarians? I mean, if they can read, they should be able to package, address and mail. Ya know? Not true for our duo of dumb, our cuckoo couple, our tag team of twits, our librarian loons! For the last 6 weeks, nada! No books! It is almost enough to make me listen to the CBC!

OK, I am exaggerating. Nothing can make me listen to the CBC for more than the news. And even then………….. (yesterday a ‘main’ news item was about a Quebecois film that is up for an Oscar in the foreign language category. They hadn’t won or lost yet. They were just nominated. THIS is CBC news!)

“Well, Sharon, something might happen somewhere, but we are not sure. This is Larry Flaccid reporting from a comfortable Vancouver office. Canada lives here !”

(whatever that means)

“Thank you, Larry, tee hee, ha ha, heh heh heh.

They have recently taken to hiring fourteen year-olds who ‘laugh’ as they are talking. You can ‘hear’ the grin in their voices which is punctuated at the end or the beginning of every sentence with a little ‘half-giggle’. If there is a better way to announce to the world that you have suffered recent brain damage, I can’t imagine what it might be.

Our own Catherine Rolfsen (a local) is the exception, of course.

OK, this may just be the ‘bush’ talking. Seems one can get a little ‘bushed’ staying the whole winter up here. People get a bit odd, it seems. It’s a regular occurrence.

For them, tho, not me.

kindness in one of it’s many forms

Posted on January 26, 2011 by jdavidcox

When most people in the city come to visit you, they bring a bottle of wine or, perhaps, a nice bouquet of flowers. It has become somewhat traditional in polite society, I gather (Sally covers those bases for me, as a rule. I just have to show up – a duty I am increasingly failing at ).

People behave much the same way out here, of course, but the items presented at meeting vary more. We have had wine and flowers, of course, and at least half the wine is home-made (Rieko’s is the best) and the flowers are usually in clusters and lumps and presented in plastic bags. The point is to plant them not just vase them. Vegetables come that way, too.

A dozen eggs would not be unusual. These would be your real free-range, home-grown, wandering-amongst-the-orchard-chickens we’re talking here. Real chickens. Real eggs.

Just as likely we’d get a few pounds of apples in the summer or a nice fish (sometimes salmon from the fishing guides) – had a few of those over the years. Even had a few pounds of prawns from the commercial guys in trade for an apple pie. And Judith once gave us (the dogs, really) a bunch of deer bones with plenty of meat and blood as a nice bonus.

Books are naturally and freely exchanged but that is not so much hospitality as it is simply community consideration and, sometimes, a little not-so-subtle ‘influencing’. We get books on issues dear to the heart of the giver. The more ‘dear-to-the-heart’, the more of an obligation to read them. Movies are equally as freely distributed. In fact, one of the locals set up a lending library that boasts about a hundred or so titles. We do the same with some clothes, too, if they are pretty much intact.

Naturally, hardware, boat items, bits and pieces and garage-sale-type items are also exchanged and money is never involved although one can ‘carry the debt’ if the item given was pretty good. Mind you, there are exceptions to that, too. For the Q-hut woodworking shop we have been given outright a lot of stuff from electrical supplies to tools, from the generator to the wood required for the workbench. Most things are just gifts.

There is a lot of give and take up here and no matter how hard you try to keep it square, it seems that there is always a lot more giving going on. These are very generous people.

I have to say, though, that it would be hard to top our last ‘hostess’ gift. It came from one of the Dougs. Last week we were talking ‘pecker poles’, the long (thirty foot plus) logs that are essentially too small to mill. They float out there amongst the bigger logs. Typically, they are no more than eight to ten inches in diameter but I suppose one with the thick end at twelve inches would still qualify. Pecker poles are used for posts when building small buildings like wood sheds and such. I had mentioned the desire to ‘get me some’ of those ‘pecker poles’ some day. Doug had mentioned that he goes pecker pole hunting all the time. I mentioned that I’d join him some day. And that was that.

Today, Doug dropped by with a nice, small bouquet of pecker poles in tow. Four of them. Smelled bee-yoo-tee-full, they did. He stayed for a coffee and a visit and we talked boats for awhile and then off he went as Sal and I went upstream again to clear debris from the water pick up.

When was the last time someone dropped in with a nice bunch o’ logs for ya?