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.

Blowing 20 gusting to thirty today.  A Storm warning in effect.  Similar forecast for tomorrow.  Tomorrow is bookclub.  Location: our place.  All the little boats around the area are leaping and plunging at their lines in anticipation.  The women?  Not so much.  It can get a bit wet and messy out there. Attendance may be down.

Attendance will definitely be wet!

Our neighbour built a dock/wharf/float this summer. The floating part is about 10 feet by 20 or so.  Very substantial.  Strong like bull.  Built mostly of steel, it is more substantial (on scale) than the local BC Ferry.  But he is the fastidious, careful, worrisome type and he has been on tenterhooks since he left it and went home to the city.  “Would you mind looking in on the dock now and then?  Especially on the 15th or 16th of December?  Those are the two days the tide is highest and, with luck there will be a storm.  Maybe a storm surge.  If it rides well then, then it will likely fare OK from then on.”  

So Sal went out with her camera and Fiddich.  Before breakfast.  The two headed over the storm tossed sea.  In her motorized saucer!  She checked it out, bobbed around for a bit, took a few pictures and headed back.  All riders seeming to fare well on this stormy day.

Not quite.

We have a big cedar butt tied up on the beach.  It is the mother of all kindling.  Been wkackin’ at it for awhile now.  Damned if the thing didn’t get away in the storm!  ‘Course, Sal won’t have this!  So, after having made sure our neighbours dock was fine she headed around the corner and saw the cedar making a run for it.  While the wind was a howlin’ and the seas were a jumpin’, she tied a line on the old stump and began to tow it back to the corral in her little boat.

Normally, I can watch over this kind of thing.  And I do.  The bouncing of her boat would have tested the pain threshold on my black and blue butt but, in a pinch, I would head out and rescue or assist (taking a few pillows) in my own boat.  If I didn’t have to, fine.  But I have to watch!  So, with radio in hand and binoculars on my nose, I watch to make sure everyone is OK.  But I can’t see around the corner.

And she seemed to be taking forever.

Sal is pretty independent (an Albatross is semi-independent by comparison) and she does not like me ‘checkin’ on her.  I do anyway but I have to be somewhat discreet.  Gotta give her her space, ya know?

So, I wait.

And wait.

And wait some more.

“Yikes, Sal!  Wadda Hell’s going on out there!!?? Can’t see ya!  Ya OK?”

“Yeah.  No worries.  Big ol’ cedar got away.  Jus’ towing it back home.  Gettin’ a bit wet.  Be home soon.  Don’t worry!  I’m turning my radio off now!”

So, I turned mine on and this is what I heard………..

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house we’re born
Into this world we’re thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out alone
Riders on the storm

Girl ya gotta love your man
Girl ya gotta love your man
Take him by the hand
Make him understand
The world on you depends
Our life will never end
Gotta love your man, yeah

Kind of fitting, in a high-school kinda way, don’t ya think?

My numbers (daily readers) dropped off precipitously the more I talked about my butt.  You’d think there’d be more interest in that, wouldn’t you?  Apparently not. I am stunned!  Maybe I should include more pictures?

The ravens have not been around much at all.  Like, never.  They seem to be avoiding us these past few weeks.  Which is fine.  I am still a little ticked over the freezer raid but I would not expect that to be conveyed in any meaningful way to the ravens.  It is not like we talk!  And, even if my annoyance was conveyed somehow, they have a reputation for enjoying that kind of thing.  So, I don’t quite get it.  Ravens!  ‘Can’t live with ém, can’t seem to live without ém.’

Dogs got shampooed and shorn when Sal went to town the other day.  Sal likes to get them ready for Xmas.  But, really!  Think about that.  Ready for Xmas.  Dogs!?   What is a sane man to do?

Mind you, I may not be so sane.  How can one remain sane these days?  Got my Gold Card yesterday in the mail.  No books.  No movies.  But I got a Gold Card.  I’ve read it front to back.  Even looked it up on the net.  It is my gold ‘officially-a-senior’ card.  Seems I can use it to get on the bus.  We don’t even have roads!

I get a free ride on the ferry on four of the five weekdays but, of course, I pay for the car.  Who do they think they are kidding?  How many people live within walking distance of the ferry?  And, of course, they keep raising the fee for the car.  How am I supposed to remain sane in light of that?

Ya know who is starting to look sane to me?  Egyptians!  Yeah, I know………I am surprised by that, too……..  Seems the Egyptians don’t believe what their government is telling them and so they are protesting in the thousands.  On the streets!  24/7.  And this after having protested the last government out of office.  These guys are saying, “We don’t trust you!”

Wow!  Who woulda thunk it?  The first to wake up and protest decades of entrenched political lies would be the Egyptians!?  Just as the BIG CONSTANT LIE seems to be the benign-but-standard ‘ BS message at the end of the day as we all strive to go forward‘, they say, “LIES!”

You’d think the cry of ‘LIE’ would come first from the Americans, wouldn’t you?  I mean the American Dream has been packed and shipped overseas.  They are left homeless with a shopping cart full of cheap plastics.  Your basic American should be ticked.  So, of course, should Canadians because, well, we are the tail on their dog and we have had a radical shift to the fascist right from decades of identifying with the corrupt Liberal left.  ‘Course we may just still be in shock.

Regardless, we should all be ticked.

One might expect REVOLUTION to have come from the Japanese……I mean, poor ol’, brain-washed corporate Japanese-man has been downsized and irradiated.  Where’s he gonna go?

Doesn’t matter where you look, people all over the world have a right to be outraged by their governments but I just never expected the Egyptians to be the ones at the head of the protest.  I am proud of them.  I am pulling for them.  They are standing up and getting counted. God/Allah bless them.

Like most Canadians (and Americans), I will just sit back on my black and blue butt and watch how it plays out.  I may be disgusting but I should be revolting.

What a gorgeous day!  I just might get off my black-and-blue butt and take some chances.  Maybe limp up and down a sloping path or something.  Cut a board or two?

Well, I am talkin’ big.  I am not quite there yet.  I am walking OK but not bending.  Not yet.  No yoga, that is fer sure (mind you, I don’t do yoga anyway)!

Damn!  The day is absolutely beautiful and we should be taking advantage of it.  Well, Sal will anyway.  She’s going up to the post office later.  We hope to get a few books today.  Maybe a movie.  The plane will definitely be flying in on a day like this.  Hopes are high.  I’ve read everything in the house with print including old newspapers and Sal’s Vanity Fairs!  I need some books!  Some real books!

Or a bunch o’ shoot ’em up, cheap B flicks.

I have likely given the impression that life is hard and challenging out here and that we have to fight off the bears and cougar-ducks, slog through snowdrifts and eke a subsistence existence from eating ferns and crap.  And, of course, it is all true!  But the biggest challenge is staying stocked up on good reading material.  I find it nigh on impossible!

Part of the reason is that I rarely read fiction.  Sometimes Conan Doyle.  Love Sherlock.  I had a thing for Ludlum’s Jason Bourne.  But, generally, fiction feels shallow to me.  I can make stuff up on my own!  So, I am restricted mostly to non-fiction and even at that, a lot of fantasy passes for non-fiction these days.  Try any of the Kissinger Fantasies for a delightful romp!

I have read just about all there is on the last ten years of the economy from Maddoff to Barnanke, from Friedman to Freakonomics.  And I have watched with fascination the spread of corporate globalization in a world not-in-the-least- ready for it.  That is an ongoing read when I can get another fix.  Add a dozen or so tomes on China’s economy, government, politics and history and well, it is an unholy mess out there.  Fascinating.

And I fully expect that Japan would be listed amongst the crippled economies of the Greek, Spanish and Portugese governments if they were not so bloody disciplined.  Japan is hurtin’.

But that is not my point.  No one cares about the global economy in my circle but me and George Soros.  And George is pretty calm about it all, really.  Well, at least according to his latest book – a series of lectures.  On himself, mostly.  Not recommended.  For a genius, he is a smidge boring.  I don’t really count him in my circle, actually (but don’t tell him that!).

I kinda count Paul Hawken.  We’ve talked.  E-mailed.  PH is another genius.  The right kind, in my book.  A green, economic, optimistic genius.  I like PH.  I also count Amory Lovin.  Rocky Mountain Institute.  I am not close to either but I like what they have to say.  They are visionaries.  They really are.

So, that is today’s plight: a blue butt, a beautiful day and no books to read.  Not perfect but not all bad from the western front, eh? 

Mind you, the western rear is still pretty sore!

Sal went to town today.  By herself.  She had to take a battery, the dogs, a bunch of things-to-return and, of course, she’ll come back with totes, coolers, food, another battery and the dogs in tow.  A few hundred pounds going out.  Almost double that coming back.  Knowing her, she’ll pick up a few off-the-list items, too.  She’ll be busy.

She dressed for it, though.  Probably got twenty layers.  Looks like a member of an Arctic Expedition.  Think: cute Pilsbury Dough-girl.  In red.

Her boat is the Miata-of-the-sea.  Eleven and a half feet long, almost five feet wide and probably only six inches or so deep.  To me, it is more of a saucer than a boat but she likes it.  It’s her size, ergonomically speaking.  She fits.  It also zooms.  The 15hp Suzuki pushes her along at a good clip and she gets that sports-car feel.

It’s mid-December on the wet coast.  Temperatures are pretty benign right now and the seas are unusually calm so she has chosen a good day.  But the key word is ‘day’.  There is not much of it.  It’ll be dark at four.  Or, at least, dark-ish.  By five, I’ll be looking into a black void.  We are both hoping she gets back before then.

Big risk?  Not really.  But then again, neither is working on a deck.  Accidents happen.  The big risk is not that an accident happens (’cause they do) but really it is about the ‘leeway’ in addressing it.  The time of day is critical.  Is there enough help at hand?  Is there enough daylight?  Will she be warm enough?  That kind of thing.  Basically risk out here goes from ‘oops’ to ‘bloody hell’ a bit more rapidly than in town.

After dark, it starts at ‘bloody hell’.

I don’t worry so much about her screwing up.  She knows her stuff.  But sometimes an accident happens anyway and requires a bit of assistance in the extrication and, out here, there are few passers-by.  Ya kinda hafta fix things yourself.  ‘Who ya gonna call?’  Nobody.  No phone reception. Who ya gonna wave down?  Nobody.  ‘Specially after dark.

Am I worried?  ‘Course not!  Complete confidence.  Total.

It is 2:30 pm.

I’ll start to worry in two hours.

Epilogue:  4:45.  She just pulled in.  Gonna wrangle a stray log and then unload the boat.  Should be warm and dry by 5:30.  Whew!

The average age of residents out here is high.  I have no idea what it is but my guess is that the median age is somewhere around 55.  Average maybe 40.  We seem to have a lot of 60-somethings.  More 60 plus than under 40, that is for sure.

Thank God we also have 70-somethings.  They are good to see.  Gives me some encouragement.  Something to aim for.

By the time one gets to 70 or so, one tends to slow down some and I am experiencing a bit of a preview of that what with my hip being all banged up.  Once again, I am projecting.  Sorry.  But seeing some active 70-somethings perks me up.  ‘Course there are 75 year-old marathoners and all that but your average doofus doesn’t do a lot very physical after 70.  Seventy, I think is the beginning of old age. OK, 75 fer sure.

I’ve been dwelling on age lately, it seems.  Sal says I am preoccupied.  She says I have been ‘sounding like an old geek’ for some time now. Easy for her to say – she could be the poster girl for Oil of Olay.  Hell, she could be the poster girl for Wilderness Yoga and Kayaker magazine!

I turn 65 in a few weeks and I guess I am just ‘coming to terms with it’ is all.  It doesn’t help (or maybe it does!) that I whacked out my hip and have been experiencing an accelerated sense of aging lately.  But I think it is more than that.  For me, 65 is a big number. A real milestone.

Last real milestone was 30.  I stopped trusting myself.

I have good reason to re-emphasize that thought: I am also setting a record for longevity on my Mother’s side of the family.  No one made it to 65.  Well, I will set the new record if I get past Christmas.  We had a few relatives tough it out into the last few months before their 65th.  But they never made it.  By Xmas, I am it.  I am #1.  Woohoo!  Still, that is a pretty low height that bar was set at, don’t you think?  Russians live longer!!

I’m not that freaked.  Not really.  My dad’s side stretched it out.  Mid 80’s for the most part.  Not my dad, actually.  Seventy-six for him.  But the rest of the family lasted longer.  ‘Course they were generally a wicked bunch and, it is said, that seems to help.  I’m counting on the wicked gene.  It’s my only hope.  I know it is there.

Anyway, this blog is about aging more than it is about me.  And here’s the point: Older people live more rural.  Younger people live urban.  It is not a hard and fast rule but I think it is generally true.  And it makes sense, kinda.  When you are young and trying to get into the gene pool, you go to where the genes are swimming.  And, of course, the more the merrier.  Ergo, the young swim in the city.

But once the genes have paired up, there is not as much reason to stay in the pool.  So, some head out to make a nest.  Some go far.  And that means some of them move out to the country.  That scenario, alone, makes for a slightly older group in the country.  Add to that the stereotypical cottagers who go to live in their lakeside home year round, the possibility of working by computer and the increasing pressures (and fears) in the urban infrastructure and there are more and more influences discharging the older into the country.

It may not show up in the numbers but I think that is because the numbers are dwarfed by the younger set still going in to the city.  The net flow of youth is in.  The net flow of old is out.  But there are more youth so the numbers don’t say it.

When you think about it, it is a reversal of the history of mankind.  In the past, it was the youth who headed out to find their fortune.  Today, it is the old who head out to find peace.  Frankly, I think fortune is overrated.  Anyway – at my age, maybe we should just give peace a chance?

I haven’t added a blog for awhile.  I have been too horizontal.  Hard to type while lying prone.  But more than that and sadly yet another tragic admission, very little is happening in the prone position for me these days. My bed is dead.  No memories are being made on the memory foam.  What’s an invalid to write about?

Well, I am healing.  And that is good.  And Sal has not left me.  Not yet.  Not physically.  Maybe emotionally.  Not permanently, anyway.  She does seem to spend a lot of time in the woods, however.  And she refuses to give me a walkie-talkie.  But, other than that, we are pretty good. She is exceptionally generous with doling out the sleeping pills, though.  That’s good, right?

And I need them.  Still can’t lie on the damaged side.  It is weird how being restricted in your movements makes sleeping difficult.  You’d think that sleeping itself was restrictive but apparently not.  I have to turn over now and then and every time I do, I wake up.  I am not really whinging, I am just surprised that freedom of movement is so necessary for me to sleep well.

Oh well, I am at least 50% healed.  I won’t be modelling swimsuits or underwear anytime soon but my public has always required a strong stomach and, preferably blurred vision. Beauty is not my strong suit.  For the next little while, keeping your eyes firmly shut when we meet is strongly advised.  And, if the situation presents itself, we probably shouldn’t shower together, either.  Trust me.

I am not so sure that this latest incident will be included in the book.  The chapter on accidents is already too big.  So is the one on being stupid.  Even the chapter on deck building is getting up there.  We  may, however, spin off an off-the-grid first aid supplement.  We’ll see.

This book challenge is starting to come together. We can see a theme.  It will be a comic tragedy with strong elements of your basic slasher/horror movie.  But we’re going for a happy ending.

Closing scene: cut to an empty bed, slowly pan left to an open window with a curtain bending in the wind.  Cue a framed photograph of a happy couple situated on the bedside table, an empty bottle of sleeping pills is juxtaposed beside a brochure for a Caribbean cruise.  And a big yellow taxi is just pulling away from the house.