I watch the news a bit.  Not much, just the headlines.  I don’t spend much time on it.  Too depressing and I have concluded that much, if not most of it, is lies anyway.  I don’t think I am alone in that.  I mean, think about it: the news is entertainment and is sponsored by advertising.  Like kid’s cartoons on a Saturday morning.  Even if what they say is even partly true, is it not surprising that every story only requires 30 seconds to tell?  And that nothing ever seems to happen most of the time in 95% of rest of the world?

Sorry, I could feel the blood rising……….a rant was looming………………..

But I do have an interest in the economy, I like to follow the goings on in the Middle East and Asia and, of course, I wanna see the latest ‘wardrobe malfunctions’. 

I am also fascinated by the United States.  But not in a good way.  It is not like I wanna go there.  Not anymore.  Certainly not to live.  To me, the whole country seems to be like a drunken bull or bear in a china shop.  You just know things are gonna get broken but will the whole place come down?  And these days, it seems, the beast is really staggering.

My guts tell me, however, that this is not yet the time for the system to collapse.  I don’t think you have to buy gold.  Buying gold may make you money over the short term but the money will still work.  So will your credit card.  It is when you have to use the gold to buy bread that it’s real value will show up.  That is when the system has collapsed. 

I have no real knowledge of anything but my guts have been right so far.  And this current financial debacle feels like just another couple of shelves of crystal going down.  Mind you, there is a lot of glass on the floor already…………

The books I am reading, tho, suggest otherwise.  They say ‘the end is nigh’.  I doubt very much that anybody knows and if there is one thing Capitalism is good at, it is ‘adjusting’.  This is a system that makes money when disaster strikes and makes money when the sun shines.  The one thing you can count on with Capitalism is the old adage about finding a silver lining in black clouds.  Hell, capitalists have found silver in black deaths!  Just  look to see how KBR/Halliburton/Blackwater made out like bandits after Katrina leveled New Orleans.  Capitalism has never met a disaster it didn’t like.

Somebody is making money these days.  

And it is that kind of survivability that makes me think that the beast will live long and (yech!) prosper. 

Don’t get me wrong: I want the world to prosper.  I like the world.  I’d just like a system that wasn’t quite so destructive to the environment and that was a bit more egalitarian in the wealth distribution.  But, then again, I don’t like sad movies either so my preferences don’t really count. 

Anyway: to the point………….finally, eh? 

Things are likely to get worse before they get better.  I just don’t see sunshine looming at the end of the day.  Not yet.  Certainly not in BC.  Worse, the people I read are forecasting more rain and freezing temperatures (well, some of them are forecasting unseasonal heat waves but the point is the economic weather forecast is not good).  I think that means that we will, once again, be ‘adjusting’.  We’ll be forced to use what we humans seem to have relied on for millenniums – the ability to adapt. 

And the point is that this next adjustment will be bigger than we, the post WW2 generation, have experienced to date.

At the very least, I think it is gonna cost a lot more to be a peasant.   

“Hold the Zhōngshì Yīngyǔ”. Literally: Chinese-style English.  (an anonymous comment left yesterday)

Yikes!  Censorship already.  Sal on my case and now this!  OHMIGAWD!  I am going to sign up immediately for membership in the Canadian Civil Liberties Union. 

I definitely believe in freedom of MY speech (but I am not so sure about my anonymous commentators).  Like most governments-in-exile, I am a bit selective in giving out licenses for free speech (better make a note of this for the Little Green Book).  Some animals are just more equal than others.

Anyway, the mix of Chinese and English (Zhōngshì Yīngyǔ) is often called Chinglish.  Not surprisingly, the same kind of name has been applied to the mix of Spanish and English as Spanglish.   I will definitely ‘hold up’ on writing in that style but the comment raises a fascinating point about language and communication. 

But my point will be this: there is nothing wrong with Chinglish.  For those of you who do not know about Chinglish, I will share with you a bit of what I learned about it.  (My kids would shout ‘BORING!’ right about now). 

We are all familiar with the Chinese-English that sounds like short sentences using predominantly English nouns and verbs but lacking the ‘connector’ and descriptive words that we call conjunctions, adverbs, adjectives, and the like.  I can do a passable imitation of Chinglish but it is considered politically incorrect.  It shouldn’t be.  It is very correct in so many other ways.  Kind of efficient in a harsh sounding way to unilinguisticaly pampered ears.

Here’s why: As you know, the Chinese language is written in what we call characters or ‘pictograms’.  The words are actually symbols that, when used individually or together, form the word currently being communicated. And it is the picture-words in groups that provide meaning through context – not by way ‘connector’ or descriptive words so much. 

So, their language is a lot of ‘loose’ words or pictures that make sense only when taken in the aggregate.  Context is everything. 

A small example of that is the ballpoint pen.  The Chinese had a pictogram for a pencil or something similar but the ballpoint pen was new and modern.  So they had to find another pictogram to ‘make’ the new word.  Oddly (for me, anyway) they had a pictogram for  ‘atomic’.  Don’t ask how that came to be.  Because the new, ballpoint pen came out not long after the new atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, the word for ballpoint pen was written as ‘atomic pencil’.  And that would make no sense unless it was used in the new modern context in which it was conceived. 

English doesn’t do that.  English, for the most part, is inclined to invent new words when something ‘new’ happens and so we now have all sorts of words that are new-but-accepted like say, doodle, microwave, movie, telephone, parachute and the like.  We have really new words that have made it into the dictionary quite recently such as ‘Google’ (used as a verb) and ‘text’ used as a verb.  Of course there are all sorts of weird words vying for acceptance all the time so the dictionary is constantly being updated.  And so is the language.

Theirs?  Not so much.  They just reconfigure the pictograms.     

It is a hard enough task as an new English learner to just get a grip on the nouns and the verbs.  But, if your mother-tongue was never big on anything other than nouns and verbs (as pictograms emphasize) and all descriptive and connective words are largely implied by context and association, it is a very difficult transition.  Instead of incorporating what would be seen as frivolous connector words it is quite reasonable to learn a new language by filtering out what is unnecessary in your own culture and sticking with the main words.  To hell with adverbs, adjectives and conjunctions!  Time is short! 

Now, I could be wrong.  It has been known to happen.  But I was told that this is the way Chinglish or Pidgin English has come to have a distinct character and delivery style.  So, Chinglish is much more than English-not-spoken-well.  It is English spoken as Chinese speak their own language. 

And, anyway, what could be more clear than: ‘No Tickee, no washee?’

I write this blog for myself.  Or, so I say, anyway.  But the truth is, I also kinda ‘modify’ it some for the reader.  I can’t help myself.  I have a whore-gene.  I like to think of it as ‘knowing my audience’ but, again, that’s just another word for pandering.  I think I tend toward sycophancy in my letters.

Plus, Sally critiques everything. 

‘Course it ain’t hard to write for your audience when you only have 25 readers.  In fact, I know that I have less than 25 because Alicia, bless her beautiful little heart, just signed up to encourage me.  She is in her mid twenties, living in Haida Gwai and hasn’t ever had an iota of interest in what I do every day.  Same for my old buddy, Sue, I am sure.  So there is definitely one ‘follower’ in name only, probably a few more.  I pretty much know everyone personally or at least by only one degree of separation. You are a select group.  

So, in a way, I am writing to ‘family’.  And you know how we all adjust to family now and then.  That’s what I am doing – ‘adjusting’.

Or suck-holing.  Your call.  

Joy, however, is a faithful fan.  So is Annette and Linda.  These are my real, true-blue regular readers and so I find myself catering to them somewhat.  It’s an unconscious thing.  Reading back over the last year I find that I am not as grumpy as I might be.  I am less ‘sexual’ in my innuendos, I play a ‘cuter’ role in my stories and, of course, I emphasize my love and devotion for Sally (women love that).  And, sadly for me, I limit my political rants. 

I am embarrassed to say that I even write more on decor, furnishings, cleaning, cooking and socializing because of them.  They like that sort of thing.   I want them to be happy. 

But I have just learned that I have a secret reader group.  A clutch of clandestine Chinese are covering my course in coastal living (all those ‘c’ words were meant to challenge them linguistically.  (I will be referring to alliterations emphasizing ‘r’s and ‘l’s over time.  Watch for it!).

As you know, we have ‘Chinese friends’ who are more than the typical Canadians of Chinese descent-type friends we all have.  These are Chinese-y Chinese.  Pur laine.  Still living in China.  100% through and through, living-the-Middle-Kingdom-life-folks who come to visit now and then.  And we go to them as well.  I found out today by e-mail that our friend B and some of her students are following my blog!

This is an unnerving surprise although, from a business perspective, you can imagine the potential for my blog!  If B and the kids spread the word and my blog goes PRC viral, my dreams of influencing the world (maybe even ruling it) have a chance.  1.5 billion Chinese following my teachings!  Imagine that for a just a minute (any longer may induce suicidal tendencies).  I might have to publish a little green book.

I look a bit like Mao, but with lighter hair, don’t you think?

Anyway, I now have to modify my writings even further.  I have no idea how it will show up.  Maybe tastier and more varied but making you hungrier more quickly?  I dunno.  Do not be surprised if the sentences get shorter and I drop a few adjectives, adverbs and particles.

Blog of future different!  

Lina and Sal are still at ‘spring cleaning’ and the place is starting to shine.  That’s a good thing.  I am rarely called upon except to bring a ladder and take it back, lift a chesterfield and put it back – that sort of thing.  That, too, is good.  I am not a good ‘spring’ cleaner.

I am no chauvinistic pig, however.  I clean.  In fact, I do a lot of cleaning around the house.  Mr. Domestic, they call me.  But I confess that I sorta pick what I do and then make a bit of a fuss over it.  It’s a male thing.

For instance, I always ‘clear’ the table.  I don’t always wash up afterwards but I always clear.  And, of course, I make a bit of a show of it and crack jokes and act goofy.  I make my chore memorable.  In this way it seems as if I am doing more than I am.   And on a regular basis, no less.  Reliability personified.

Then I disappear.  And you can count on that, too.

Just as well.  This ‘spring cleaning’ thing is a kind of cleaning I am not, it seems, very good at.  It requires being on your knees (can’t do that) and cleaning a thin film of dirt from here and there (can’t see that!).  It requires taking stuff from different places (didn’t know that was even there!) and doing different things to it before it is deemed clean enough to put back (what sorta things!?).  It is, as they say, complicated.   

I just don’t have the right stuff for this.  This kind of cleaning requires more than willingness, strength and good looks.  Ya gotta know what to do with a dirty comforter, lamp, rug and overhead fan as well as things with grout and cracks and God-knows-what-all.  Just cleaning the kitchen cabinets took them all day!  This is multitasking with multiple tools in multiple ways none of which I am familiar with.

I can’t even find things in the kitchen cabinets!

But that is not the main reason I am not doing so much.

We live in a 1200 sq.ft house – give or take.  But a lot of cleaning is done in little 2 sq ft areas.  I occupy at least 4 sq ft standing straight up with my stomach sucked in.  I simply can’t get in to 25% of the spots that are targeted for the ‘spring clean’.  And in those spots generous enough to accommodate me, they aren’t so generous that they will allow me to then move about with any ease whatsoever.  I can get stuck doing this kind of work and no one wants that.

Then there is the awkward problem of the 20 square foot areas.  Big enough for me….but not big enough for anyone else to be safe if they are close by.  When I ‘turn’ in the kitchen and someone else is there, they have to ‘watch out’.  It can get nasty in a confined space and no one wants that, either.

The exception to that rule is Sally.  Sally thinks the kitchen is hers.  And it is.  I am OK with that.  But, you know, sometimes a guy has to go into the kitchen……..

When that happens, Sally continues to roam the kitchen as if I wasn’t there.  It is the ultimate expression of denial.  She literally doesn’t see me.  She’ll walk right up to the sink while I am doing the dishes and turn on the taps, wash her hands, dump crumbs and put in a dirty dish as if I wasn’t even there!  That is not easy.  I am very much there.

When she crosses the tiny kitchen (from say, west to east) and I am in the way, she just kinda pushes past me looking a bit surprised by the unanticipated glancing collision.  Think: the USS Starship Enterprise traveling at warp speed and there is an unanticipated ‘vibration’,  “What was that, Scotty?” 

“I dunno capt’n but whatever it was we are already a thousand light years away.” 

How is that possible?  It is like she is living in another dimension and our dimensions ‘collide’ briefly in a rift in the time/space continuum.   In a strange way, I have only 25% of my normal presence in the kitchen.  It is weird. 

But, that too, is OK with me.

I just ‘beam’ myself up and get the hell out!      

Up and at ’em first thing this morning.  The tide was low and we had some submariner business to address.  Shallow submariner.

First, introduce Lina to the local oysters and clams.  That is always fun.  Teaching a new person about such things, offering them one raw for eating-on-the-spot, that sort of thing.  Old geezer-type fun, ya know?

“Aach!  I don’t think so.  Do you eat them raw, David?”  

“No.  Not really.  Only when I feel the need to assert my manhood.  Sadly, I don’t feel that way much anymore.  I prefer them cooked.  I like cuddling more, too”. (Hmmmmmm, maybe I should be eating more raw oysters, after all?)  

While Sal and Lina went on a killing spree, I raked up sea-weed for later mulching into the garden.  At this time of the year the kelp is ‘unattached’ and easily raked up.  I filled buckets and dumped them into a larger receptacle nearer the beach.  Gathered a hundredweight and heaved it up the rocks to where the high-line will haul it up to the garden area.  Not much of a story, really.  But that is what we did.

Well, the story has a smidge of drama; the Old Pudding hurt her back yesterday and her boots leaked today.  They filled, actually.  Miserable way to start the morning.  So she was being a trooper schlepping in the mud.  She just keeps on truckin’.  Maybe I saw one less smile over the work-time.  Maybe not.   

Rubber ‘wellies’ are hugely important out here and most of the ones on offer at the stores are junk.   Mind you, the ‘junk’ is cheap and lasts a year so there is always a reluctance to invest five to six times as much in something better.  I mean, at our age, are we really bothering much with investing for the future? 

Well, short term, perhaps; tomorrow’s dinner is in the bucket siphoning itself clean of sand and the oysters are milling about awaiting their fate in the same bucket of Sal’s great home-made chowder.  Man, that is gonna be good!  Clam chowder futures – the best investment we ever made. 

But all is not entirely well.  I have a wind generator and we have had a lot of wind.  I thought my batteries would be topped up.  They were not, not quite.  Went out to the shed-that-requires-brains and looked at the gauges.  The old ammeter indicated that nothing was happening.  Damn!

The windgen is spinning for all it is worth and no juice seems to be coming out.  Not good.  And that pretty much determines my schedule for the day……  I’ll get back to you on this.

………………………..and, I am back.

Seems the gauge is whacked.  The juice was flowing (so said the other gauge: the multimeter) but the gauge in the shed was sleeping.  Which gave me a thought……………….

So, I had a nap. 

It was good.  Didn’t sleep much, tho.  The gals were hard at it and banging things around but, if you are horizontal (and they are not), there is not much room for complaint so I just enjoyed what peace there was (not much) and the hour or so release from the rigours of gravity.  The way I figure it: it is gravity that kills you.  I mean, think about it….every dead person is horizontal.  Coincidence? 

I gotta say: one of my greatest pleasures living up here is being able to think.  Or, better put, having the time to just sit there and slowly think something out.  It is a real treat. 

Don’t get me wrong; little is the better for all this thinking.  If anything, less just gets done.  But I am OK with that.   Just thinking is a pleasure.

One of my neighbours confided in me last week or so that she, too, valued and enjoyed the freedom to just sit and think.  She described it as I would have.  I guess it is a country thing.  I sure don’t recall having a lot of time to think when I was in the city. 

But, of course, you knew me then and probably noticed that. 

Keeping a blog – especially a frequently updated one – is a bit of challenge.  On the one hand, you want it to be interesting or, at the very least informative about an off-the-grid lifestyle.  Being mildly amusing or just a bit peculiar now and then adds a little je ne sais quoi to the mix as well.

On the other hand, it has to be real.  Ya gotta tell the truth.  But that, in itself, is not too hard.  After all, I have nothing to hide.  Well, I do, actually.  But not much and I’ll likely continue to hide it for awhile.  At least until I have a publisher lined up. 

Put another way: my neighbours are safe for the time being.  But let me say this: they are the motherlode of stuff interesting.  

The truth is that living off the grid is not all octopi and w’fers.  It is not all wind-towers and funiculars.  It is not all killer whales and ravens.  Believe it or not, it can get a bit ‘slow’ around here on occasion.

And such a time is with us now.  It is raining.  And it was raining yesterday.  And the day before.   Heavy rain limits the appeal of the great outdoors and that means staying indoors.  Staying indoors means the computer.

You can see where this is going.

Probably not.  I can’t either.  This is just a bit of mid-morning musing, actually.  So, here goes……

Morris called.  Morris G.  He is a welder down south who specializes in wood stove repair.  Like some of the marvelous people I have yet to reveal to you, Morris is extraordinary in his own way.  He is first a real human being who has a good heart, a smart brain and a deep interest in, of all things, woodstoves.  And the people who love them.  The man has been in the business for over 24 years and speaks of baffles and vents, chimneys and bricks, different gauges of steel and various techniques for welding with the enthusiasm of a 16 year old boy with his first Playboy magazine.

We’ve never met.

When our stove needed a rebuild, I called a number on a card and talked with Morris.  I explained our situation and, of course, the challenge of having to drive by quickly on our way south and of having to drive by equally as quickly when returning.  Both such times he would be at work.  “No problem.  Leave it at my house and pick it up a few days later on your way back.  I’ll leave it just outside my garage.  It will be safe.”

We did.  It was.  And it was fixed literally better than new.  That was at least three years ago.  The other day I called and left another message.  When he called back, he said, “Oh, you’re the guy on the island, right?  With the Artisan model that I fixed by beefing up the side rails and things.  Hey! thanks for the flashlight”. **   

We spent the next hour discussing stoves, possible improvements, my learning to weld, what kind of welder to buy and I even got an offer of a few hours of lessons from him if I ever get one.

Sally said, “You spend more time on the phone talking to a guy you have never met over the insides of a stove than I do in a whole week of conversations with my friends over books we have read!”

“Well, that says more about the books you read than it does about the fascinating world of wood stoves.”

That is one way to put a spark into an otherwise dull day.

** (sorry for the hanging thread……..Morris was so good to us that, when we paid his bill, we sent him a gift of a nice flashlight – something we were in the processing of becoming experts at the time.  He was appreciative and remembered us from that.)

As a rule, I do not have an addictive personality.  I am not even disciplined or regular in my habits (bowels, however, are good, thanks.  Good of you to ask).  I just don’t like routine.  Don’t like schedules.  And I am even coming to resent, more and more, the commitments I make of my own free will. 

In fact, I am starting to think I have something closer to BREADS (bored really easily, attention deficit syndrome)…..gotta try something new, ya know?  I basically dislike doing the same thing too many times in a row.  It’s boring.  OK, sex, ranting and scotch.  But, other than that…………b-o-o-o-o-o-ring.

I mention all that because I just noticed that I am acting quite opposite to what I just said.  I am getting hooked on the bloody computer.  It’s weird.  I will go looking for stuff I am not interested in.  Worse, I forget to look up the stuff I really should look up.  The only time I really notice this is when I hit a key and a pdf. file loads.  Then I get reams of data on hundreds of bits of crap that I have no interest in and it dawns on me, “What the hell am I doing here?” 

Well, it did rain heavily for the whole day, Sal went to yoga and it is too early for scotch so that only leaves ranting! 

I have to make a funicular cart.  It will carry our boat out of the sea like a marine ways.  Exactly like a marine ways.  So that means it should be heavier than water.  ‘Can’t have me one o’ those floating marine ways, ya know?’  Need one that sinks down under the water (while still sitting on the rails) so that the boat can float over it and we can then pull them both up at the same time.  Makes sense, right?

So, I figured to weld up some tubes and all that…………….’cept I can’t weld.  So then I figured I’d place the rails the same distance apart as the wheels on my boat trailer.  But then some doofus stole my boat trailer.

The universe was showing the usual resistance to my plans. 

Anyway, I decided that since there are tubes and receiver tubes, there might be receiver angles and fixtures.  Maybe I could bolt a carriage together?  So I Googled it.  Found reams of pdf. files showing me metal angles.  I started to look at them all.

By this time, hours had gone by. 

I could have learned to weld in less time! 

“What am I doing here?!”

Don’t worry.  I’ll get it together.  Just have to spend a bit more time on the computer………. 
 

Wow!  The chemistry in our house changed overnight.  Women, eh?  Can’t live with ’em.   Instead of watching a shoot-ém-up last night, we watched the Time Traveler’s Wife.  And then they (les femmes) picked Remember Me for tonight.  I’m getting nauseous. 

“Geez, couldn’t you find something that had some cars blowing up?  Or, maybe some guy morphing into a monster or something?  Maybe a sci-fi thing with spaceships?  You know, good movies?“

They both look at me, said nothing and walked past me as if I wasn’t there.

Oh well, I have monsters from the deep.

John stopped by after his prawning efforts and tossed one of his traps ashore.  “Hey!  You guys may want to have a look at this guy!”

In the trap was a beautiful reddish-coral coloured octopus about the size of a very large grapefruit with attendant tentacles.  He/she was in the trap and chock full o’ prawns.  He had feasted before John got him.  We managed to release him from the trap and placed him on the steel grids that make up my stairs and landing at the beach.  We were pretty sure he’d slip through the spaces and skedaddle off.  That is what octopuses do.  As a rule.

Not this one.

He just seemed to get stuck.  We think he was too full of prawns to get through the space that he would normally easily pass through.  So now we had to coax him.

“Oh God!  Don’t let him die!”

So, we poured water over him as we pushed and prodded and tried to ‘herd’ the octopus back into the sea about 15 feet away.  He was a reluctant puss.

I tried lifting and pulling him first by one arm then by ‘gatherings’ of arms but his suckers on the remaining arms clung to the rocks so strongly that I thought I might tear him in half.  So, the brute force technique was abandoned.  We were going to try psychology instead.   “Think!  Think like a….an…..octopus………kinda………..what would you do?”

“It is easier to think like Jesus!  What would Jesus do!?”

We put a large bowl full of water beside him thinking that his natural instincts would pull him in to the water and then I could fling the puss out with the bowl-water.

He headed up hill towards the boathouse instead.

“I thought octopi were supposed to be smart!?” shrieked Sal getting exasperated.

Lina just stood there transfixed.  And looking like a land-locked Swiss.  And I was wearing my slippers on the beach.  Marine biologists we were not!

Opportunity!  Puss passed over some loose kelp.  No firm ground to ‘stick’ to.  I swept him up and rolled him downhill towards the water while Sal poured water over him.  It is hard to imagine an octopus losing his sense of dignity but, as much as that is possible, rolling him down the hill must have been mortifying for him.  He looked ‘redder’ in the face.  Wherever the face is.  Must have been embarrassing – especially being man-handled by a man in slippers.  He eventually righted himself and slipped into deeper water.

“Well, our work is done here people.  Let’s move along, now.  Nothing more to see.”

Thank God that ended well.  For a while there it threatened to be another movie where we all ended up crying.

Lina is 20, from Switzerland and is our new W’fer. She is pleasant, intelligent, fun and a good worker. And we are enjoying her company. Of course, I feel obliged to teach her how to chop wood – for the sake of her overall Canadian Experience – and, for me, that is one of the best ways to enjoy someone’s company – watching them chop wood.

I am not entirely scheming in my motives. Even though I appreciate very much the additional wood for the shed, the reality is that students of the splitting maul don’t really produce that much split wood. Heat, yes. Wood, no. It is more of a learning (and sweating) experience. And that is where the fun comes in.

Lina was no exception. She looked at me chop a piece of wood and thought (I am sure) “Hey! I can do that! Doesn’t look hard to me.”

But then I get to hand her the instrument of biomass destruction. The damn thing weighs eight pounds and it feels like twenty after a dozen or so ineffective whacks producing nothing. The round just sits there. Ain’t splittin’. “Sheesh, I wonder what I am doing wrong. It doesn’t look hard but it is!”

“It is all in the rhythm, girl. You just gotta get into the swing of things.” (sadly, bad puns are wasted on ESL guests)

The truth is, it is mostly in the rhythm but a little bio-mass of your own doesn’t do any harm. I have that. In spades. But, really, a small, thin person can whack wood once they get a rhythm-and-timing thing working for them. And that part is fun, too. One minute they are looking awkward and proving ineffectual and the next minute the wood splits and so does a huge grin across their face. Two days later, the wood starts to fly. It’s great!

Lina landed in Anchorage! Direct from Switzerland. Now that is a weird route. And now she is working her way south. At 20. Both Sally and I remarked at her courage and curiosity. This kid sells books at a bookstore and just decided one day to get on a plane to Alaska and then go see some of Canada. It would seem that the hippy, back-packer spirit is alive and well. In Switzerland, anyway. Good to see.

Lina spends some time w’fing, some time traveling and some time just pokin’ around. She expects to be in Canada for a few months. A week with us. (We will happily refer her to a friend should anyone want a house guest.)

I guess we’ve hosted about a dozen, maybe a few more, w’fers over the last few years and, tho each one is different of course, they all are fun to have around, are eager to ‘pitch in’ and seem to love the ‘life’ we are living. It feels good when you can give someone enjoyment by way of easy hospitality. They are appreciative in every sense – from the setting to the lifestyle, from Sally’s cooking to the chores we assign, from the dogs to the conversation around dinner. They seem to like it here, generally speaking.

And, I confess, I am amused by the chopping.

Did our favourite annual chore today – cleaning the chimney. It’s a treat! First, you get all the tools and plastic bags (forgetting one, of course, until you need it right in the middle of the chore), then you take the chimney pipe apart being careful to sprinkle the soot in all the places you can’t get to afterward. Then you carry the pipe outside and clean it with a ‘pipe cleaner’ and put all the soot gathered in the plastic bag with the unseen hole in it. Then the fun begins…….

We burn ‘gift’ wood, the stuff that floats in or close by to our shore. We retrieve it, haul it, buck it, split it and stack it – just as you would expect. But, because we get salt-water-laden logs, we have to dry the wood for some time. Still, not a difficult task and one we have set our mind to. We have the system down pat. Almost. Our wood dries for about a year before we burn it. So far, so good.

But the salt doesn’t go anywhere just because you dry out the wet. The salt stays. And salted wood ‘eats’ out your wood stove when it burns. No way ’round it. Goes like hot water on a cube of sugar, just a bit slower. So, I have a bunch o’crap in the stove that used to ‘be’ part of the stove that also needs cleaning out.

There’s a baffle in the stove so that the heat is not lost up the chimney too quickly. That baffle is like the sacrificial zinc anode on a boat. It is the piece that goes first. And this baffle has been in for two full winters now. Maybe three. It is ‘cheese’. Just a bunch o’crap metal that is flaking apart like cooked filo pastry. Literally.

So, we clean everything (like crude surgeons) in preparation of the baffle-cum-organ removal. Get the firebox all ‘tiddly’ and then shuffle and pry the old baffle out while the shards and flakes fall onto your face (you have to lie on the floor to gain access to it). Then, if you have the foresight, you take it outside and get the ‘new one’ to put in it’s stead. If you don’t have the foresight, you get a trip to town as the booby prize.

Mind you, you have not lost out on the booby prize entirely. In town, they charge you $185.00 (plus tax) for a piece of metal that looks like a flat, square cake. An inch thick and about 15 inches square, it is a hollow box of steel with some strategic holes drilled into it to make you think that you are getting something.

We must be getting something because the damn thing works like a charm. The stove keeps the house warm on the coldest winter nights and we go through less wood than anyone we know. A wheelbarrow full will last us three days and some of our neighbours use two barrows per day! So it is a good stove. Pacific Energy. The small one.

The problem is the salt wood. If we burned unsalted wood, the baffle might last five years. As it is, it lasts two, maybe three. We rationalize this poor habit by saying, “Well, we don’t have to fall a tree. We don’t have to limb it and get it here. Our wood comes a’knockin’ and we just have to let it in.”

But baffles ain’t cheap and there’s no such thing as a free log/lunch, I guess.