I have had those kinds of conversations before.  I am likely to have them again.  It is really just the standard conversation of people getting older, ‘you tell me your story for the last number of years, and I’ll tell you mine’.  It takes fifteen to twenty minutes if there is any real sharing going on, half hour tops.  Most stories follow familiar themes.  Like Hollywood movies; same but different.

By then it is clear that you still like each other but have taken different paths not very much of them common or shared. Theirs is a film noir, yours is an action comedy. Or vice versa.  Some tragedies, of course.  Some pure farce. You express good wishes and move on knowing deep down that you are unlikely to meet again, the ‘call me when next in town’ suggestion notwithstanding.  Life is like that. Somewhat fleeting.  Full of choices. Some good.  Some bad.  All are different and yet all are much the same; cheap B flicks.

Life is really just a big, giant, weird alphabet soup in which we all simmer, some bits rising to the top, others sticking to the bottom and getting burnt. A lot like Chinese hot and sour soup, actually.  And, like life, their soup never ends.  Some is ladled out during the day and then it is added to before the next.  Somehow, the soup remains the same even though new ingredients are added and a large portion is distributed every day.

And, to beat the metaphor to death by a thousand cuts, it is both hot and sour, sweet and dry, thick and thin and all with rain and cloudy periods.

That is where that goofy metaphor begins to make some sense for our story.  We chose NOT to have the soup this time.  In fact, we didn’t even enter the same restaurant.  Living off the grid is nothing much more than refusing the daily gruel and looking for something different.  Better would be good but different was the primary goal.  Let there be difference, let there be learning, let there be experience.  We went looking for new spices at the very least.

And, while we were at it, we put a hold on some of the routines and tried to kick some of the habits.  The stuff of life off the grid is the same as life on the grid, really. Breathe in, breathe out.  Eat, sleep and poop.  Do something useful during the daylight hours. But, within those restrictions, there is a lot of creative opportunity if you look for it.

If you have lived off the grid for most of your years, then try getting on it for a while.  We’d been on that merry-go-round for a long time so we opted to get off it. In fact, we also left the amusement park.  It just so happened that we ended up off the grid in the forest.  Some people end up off the grid sailing the seven seas or worse, being plucked off the grid and put in prison.  Makes no difference how you describe it, making life changes is just removing yourself from what was your norm and placing yourself in what is now strange and different.

Why would anyone do that?

As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  Ergo, before you answer that question, you have to start with examining your life.  And, if you are like me and everyone else I know, you do not ace the exam.  If you get high marks in the 90’s then maybe you stay the course, become a lawyer, get a BMW and increase your surplus dollar count. Valedictorian.  If you are getting B’s then maybe you just try harder. A few divorces, a few heart attacks.  Woohoo!

If you are like most of those who get a failing grade at U of UL, you drop the course and the university and enroll in one somewhere else, one hopefully more to your liking or, usually for most people, less challenging and with lower standards.  I dropped out of the University of Urban Life after barely getting my masters (the bachelor part was easy) and ran off with my bff student buddy to try the College of the Wilderness.  We are getting passing grades.  It is hard but fun.  It is doable.  We like it. We may graduate summa cum laude from this one.

Or die trying.  We may just run out of time.

I recognized him instantly.  The $2000 suit was quite a hint but the silver-templed, perfect-postured and extremely well-shod gentleman locking up his 7 series Beemer right in front of me could only be my old friend, Jack.  “Yo!  Dawg!”

“Dave!  What a great surprise.  How are you?  Long time.  What are you doing here?  Say, do you have a few minutes?  Grab a coffee?”

We walked into a nearby Starbucks.  Jack turns heads.  Even at 70.  That is because he is 6′ 4″ in perfect shape and looks just over 50. He has the aura of a movie star around him.  Never a hair out of place.  The guy moved like a thoroughbred racehorse amongst old Shetland ponies, donkeys and various assorted asses of the urban kind. It was great to see him.

“How you doin’, Jack?  You look great.  Bit like Dorian Grey, tho.  Kinda spooky. You drink formaldehyde or something?”

“Yeah.  I do.  Yumm.  Along with Tums and a handfull of pills.  And I had surgery.  But I get that a lot.   What you don’t see is the heavy scarring.  I am broken inside but I look good on the outside.  Part of the job.  So, it seems is two heart attacks, a third wife, almost a bankruptcy and not just a few nasty lawsuits but, other than that, the last forty years have been a walk in the park.”

“Geez, man, heart attacks?  You don’t mean extreme romance?

“Yeah, I am sure they are all connected.  Karma through litigation.  They say that the next one might get me but I don’t intend to have another one.  I watch my diet.  Exercise at the gym every morning at 6:00 am.  Try not to take the stress home with me.  You know, try to relax more?”

“You mean you are not chasing skirts anymore?  Well, I guess lawyers and heart attacks are as common as lovers and partners splitting up, eh?  Sorry to hear that.  And I knew that you and Joanne separated and I suspected that you and Sarah would hook up but are you telling me she is also gone?  So who are you with now?”

“Jackie is my third wife.  She’s OK.  Kinda.  Great boobs!  But, I am really still with all three of them, ya know?  At least in support payments.  And then we have the kids together.  Two with Joanne.  And Sarah’s daughter.  Jackie and I still have two at home or at college or finding themselves in Europe or Thailand or something.  Who knows?  I am kinda supporting them all.”

“Jack!  Joanne was forty years ago.  You mean you have been supporting her for forty years?.  Dude, even doctors will take people off life support after a few years.”

“And there are the kids. It’s a cancer.”

“What kids!?  They are in their mid 40’s aren’t they? They aren’t kids!”

“Yeah, but you know, it has been hard for the last generation.  Barry got two degrees and his masters and still can’t get a job.  Overqualified for oh so many things and only qualified for a few things that he just can’t seem to find or else they choose someone else.  At his age, he kinda lacks the experience now, ya know?  It’s hard for him.”

“Damn!  Tough to hear.  So, what does he do all day?”

“Ahhh, let’s not go there.  Lives with his mom in the basement.  Lots of video games.  We don’t get along.  Don’t talk.  It is not good.”

“OK.  That happens.  Sorry.  How about Madeline?  She good?”

“No.  Not really.  She costs a lot, too.  Three grand kids.  All brats.  All the time.  Not married.  Unemployed. Depressed.  In therapy.  She won’t talk to her mother and she only talks to me to get more money.  She gets support from two ex-husbands but not enough.  I think she is on something, ya know?  Some kind of addiction…looks kinda unhealthy to me.  Lots of tattoos.  But, I don’t know.  I don’t know much of anything, really.  I just write the cheques.”

“Geez.  I am sorry to hear that.  It must worry you.”

“Well, oddly, it does not worry me so much anymore.  My first set of wife and kids has been like that since the very beginning and it has been going on so long now, it feels like the way things are, ya know? Like an STD you can’t shake.  Like Herpes.  Personal but ugly.  But how about you?  Still with Sally?”

“Oh, yeah.  Be a fool to quit that gig.  She’s great.  Absolutely wonderful.  Makes me happy and makes me dinner.  What’s not to like?  Nothing to complain about.  And she is really happy where we are now.  We live off the grid.”

“What, you moved from Tsawwassen?”

“Yeah.  Twelve years ago.  Remote island up the coast.  Built the house ourselves. Hammering.  Nailing.  The whole hippy, whole-earth, mountain-man thing.  I even call her Cougar Sally now. ”

“What does that mean, built the house yourself? You can’t build.”

“Can now.  Read books.  Asked questions.  Listened to the answers for once.  Sal did half, maybe more.  Up on the roof.  The whole shebang.  We could build anything now but, to be fair, it won’t look all that good.  Lot of blood stains.  But it will be structurally good.  Just a smidge ugly is all.  If it has cedar siding, we are on it.”

“Why?”

“Why build?  Well, we felt we had to.  Or I did, anyway.  Some sort of ‘a man’s gotta do’ kinda thing.  Mind you, I wouldn’t have been able to finish without Sal so it was something I had to do and she had to help finish.  But here’s something I didn’t know.  If you build it, they will come. That statement from Field of Dreams applies to cabins as well as baseball diamonds in cornfields.  We got peeps and they come in droves.  Like a form of pestilence.  Who knew?”

“I’ve been meaning to ask someone and you are obviously the right person, what does off the grid mean?  I’ve heard that expression  a lot but I don’t get it.  What is it?

“Oh, it’s just a phrase like sustainable development, community building or love thy neighbour.  Means nothing, really.  Nothing you can nail down.  No one can be entirely off the grid anymore but a lot of us are trying to get away from something we seem to embody in the word ‘grid’.  Other people have referred to ‘the man’, or the ‘system’, or Big Brother. I personally think the life we have been brainwashed into believing is a good one is the Big Lie but I tend to the dramatic and coin phrases.  We are basically just looking to shed some of the life-sucking leaches and umbilicals of modern life.  Escape the matrix.  Get ourselves free of the cobwebs and cling-ons, ya know?  By some definitions, it means not on the road system, not on the electrical system, not on the giant water or sewer system. No home delivery.  Out there.  Remote.  Banjo music.

“We are moving away from all the modern systems and blatant consumerism but, of course, not when it comes to food stuffs and petroleum products or quilting materials.  We shop Costco so that we can go visit off the grid in spurts, really.  In a sentence, it is living simply, rurally and Green but unplugging as completely as is reasonably impossible.  And then flying south to Palm Springs for a month in the winter.  But we know people need people. And Sally needs chocolate.  I need scotch.  We are all in this together.  We just want to be as far away from it all as possible, that’s all.  And what happened to Sarah?  I liked her.”

“Well, that is what happened to her, actually.  Everyone liked her.  All the males for sure. Especially my ex-partner.  And she liked them.  And him.  I found out and so she divorced me.  Took half of the half I had left from when Joanne and I split.  Left a lot of debt that I picked up.  And support payments.  I’ve been paying her for almost twenty years, too.”

“She slept around?  And you didn’t tell me?  Twenty years ago?  What kind of a friend are you?”

“You are right.  I wasn’t thinking.  Shoulda been you.  Why not?”

“But why are you supporting her?  Didn’t she run off with your partner?”

“No.  That didn’t last.  They split, too.  She is almost 60 now.  No one is going hire her. She won’t apply anyway.  She has a kid from him.  Not mine.  But my ex partner with my ex wife made a kid for me.  Nice.   Since she is living in my old house and I pay for most of everything, his and her daughter feels a bit like mine.  She isn’t.  But it feels like it.  She won’t talk to her real dad, for instance.  But she talks to me. What can you do?”

“You could quit?”

“You mean, retire?”

“Yeah.  Stop working to earn enough to keep others in a lifestyle to which they feel entitled and just go do what you wanna do?”

“Well, that’s how I got into this mess.  Doing what I wanted to do.  OK, doing who I wanted to do, I mean.  I support three women because I liked to screw them.  Now I pay.”

“Well, you are right.  A man’s gotta pay for having hormones these days.  The provincial NDP won’t have them anymore, you know?  No Damn Penises is what the letters stand for now. But, you are 70 or so, right?  No hormones anyway except grouchy ones is my guess.”

“Hey!  I got ‘mones.  Just slower ones is all.  And I just told you about the Ho’s.  I belong to the Vancouver Club, the yacht club and my house is worth $7 million dollars.  I have a nice car, I winter in Whistler.  OK, I can’t actually ski anymore and my third wife lives upstairs and I live downstairs in our house so that part is not so good but I am pretty well off and I am at the height of my profession.  Does it get any better?”

“No.  Probably not.  Sounds successful to me.  I am glad you have all that money, I really am. I think you are wining at the game you play. ”

“Don’t lie to me.  I know sarcasm when I hear it.  I’m a lawyer, after all.  Are you happy doing whatever it is that you do off whatever island grid thingy you live on?”

“Yeah.  Pretty much.  I chop wood, build sheds, write, watch Netflix on satellite.  Sal and I always have projects to keep us busy and, when that isn’t true it’s because we have guests running all over the damn place.  We are good.  Kids are good.  Health seems alright for now.  Doesn’t sound glamorous, I guess, but it is beautiful out there.  Healthy. Quiet.  Whales.  Ravens.  Sea lions.  We are pretty happy with it.  I am not so sure I could cut the mustard in the city anymore, anyway.  I get a bit jangled by the traffic now, if you can believe that.  Weird.  I used to love traffic.  I used to love the city.  Now, not so much.”

“Damn.  I gotta go.  It was great to see you.  Give my love to Sally.  When you come to town next call ahead, let me know, we can tee something up.  Bye.”

So, the poll is in: the majority of the advice is ‘be yourself’.  The second one is: ‘be yourself off the grid’.  So, we aren’t going fictional.  We aren’t doing a mystery.  No how-to.  Back to Dave and Sally frolicking OTG.  Great input.

OUR LIFE OFF THE GRID – The Geriatric Years

Which reminds me of a small problem….we don’t frolic much anymore.  Oh, we gambol like the little (old) lambs we are now and again.  We jump for joy (or because of a bare wire shock or a sharp point intrusion on the skin) once in awhile.  Sal jumps.  I might convulse or go into spasm. We even skip the trail lightly on a lovely day (well, Sal does.  I lumber down the trail ponderously like a hungover hippo but I am happy despite all indications otherwise).

The point: we aren’t as much into the ‘doing’ heroically as we were ten years ago.  Sal refuses the high tower competition, for instance.  I can’t get her to climb up the tower for love or quilting supplies.  She is balking at any more construction, too.  We both still seem OK with the chopping and schlepping but even that is being done without our usual smiley happy faces on.   But the nice faces come back when we have tea break.  Our desire to risk our physical well-being to add to the empire has waned somewhat.  What was once a grand adventure is now a grand lifestyle. Which is still very good.  We want this but we want it now without working too hard.

We are very lucky.  We managed to put in the time when we could.  We did what we could when we could.  We kept at it for as long as we could and we are 90% there with only a second bathroom and the greenhouse to finish.  Oh yeah…the lower funicular still has to be wired up when the motor controller comes.  But I think we cut it kinda close, to be frank. Age is catching up.  We did all that when we could and we know that because we are not as good or energetic at it as we were.  We get tired.

This year was the first year I felt old.

I am NOT old.  But I felt it.  I don’t like that feeling.  I preferred last year.  Or the one before that.

We went to town for a shop when the storm was blowing full-tilt the other day.  And, we came home yesterday with it all when it was dark and as cold as 7 of 9’s smile.  And everything felt heavier to carry (mostly because it was – we packed heavy this time).  We got in to the house with a temperature of 6C and it has taken til now to get it warm and comfortable.  It’s blowing November chills at about 20-25 mph and Sal went to bookclub today in the boat picking up a few locals on her way.  And all of that is just fine.  We love that.   Wonderful, actually.

But the point is: it was all just a little bit harder.  It is getting harder because we are getting older.  It is NOT the adventure that has become harder, it is we who have become wussier.  We are feeling it.

Feeling it is another way of saying ‘feeling alive’ and that is 90% still the reason for it all. But I knew I would get old or die trying and that meant that I had to plan ‘assists’ and aids for when I needed them.  And I could really use that lower funicular right now.  But it will come. It is close.  I am smidge late on that but not by much.  And I can still do everything and will likely be able to still do everything for a few years more even if I do not have the funicular and other physical aids to help me.  We are still healthy.  We are not infirm.  We are good.

But I want it to stay that way for as long as possible and that means getting in the aids and the assists as soon as possible.  Time marches on and my marching days with heavy loads are drawing to a close.  Time to finish up the empire so that Sal can quilt and I can do what I do best……

…which will be my next goal – to find out what that is.

A reader commented the other blog that ‘they are looking forward to my next book‘.  That was nice. Much appreciated.  But I could use a little help in that regard, if you don’t mind.

I am getting close to churning out another three hundred pages of gibberish (actually, it requires about 1000 pages so that Sal can cut and slash, lacerate and trash, reject and rewrite it down to 300).  But close is the operative word.  I haven’t started yet. I am having directional problems.  My literary GPS is out of whack.

What to write about?

“Never mind, honey, don’t sweat it.  You might be just a one-hit bit of mediocrity, anyway. Maybe you should take up cooking?”  Sal is losing her motivation in the kitchen and it is amazing how many times she suggests I turn my hand to the culinary arts rather than worry about the literary ones.  Support like that is hard to find.

“No.  I think this is something I have to do.  My fan base has needs.  And I need to fill ’em.  And, right now, the fan base is really quite small – in the dozens, if not less – and so the task is made so much easier by that.  If I write for Dwayne, Sid, John and DC, I should be good for the other dozen or so anonymice (my pluralization of anonymouses)”.

“Well, whatever you do, do not write about OTG.  I don’t think I can handle it.”

“OK.  Fine.  But waddya got?  Ya want me to do a mystery involving murders committed at bookclubs?  Quilting during the apocalypse?  Pregnant orphaned lepers living in culverts in Bangladesh fighting back at sexist factory owners?” (Chick-lit is full of that kind of stuff).

“You don’t know enough about quilting.  So, no!  Not that.”

“OK.  That leaves culverts, lepers, the apocalypse and Calcutta.  Is that what you are suggesting?”

“Well, I kinda like an apocalypse in Mexico plot where we are trapped in a resort in Puerto Vallarta with our dogs and have to scramble our way back home.  Has to be a comedy, of course.  Make one of the dogs pregnant if you want.”

“One of the dogs?  Shouldn’t the pregnant one be a given? And I am not so sure that an escaping elderly couple in Mexico with dogs during the apocalypse is the best foundation for humour.  You thinkin’ zombies, too?”

“No.  Of course not.  Now you are just being silly.”

“Right.  Of course.  I am just being silly.  But I am also being sincere.  I really do not know what to write about next.  I really think I am onto something with this ‘Old people OTG-thing.  I think it resonates.  I think I should do OTGll – The geriatric years.”

“Well, I am not keen on reading more about your ineptness and accidents.  It’s bad enough  living with it.  Have you considered writing a cook book?” 

It is clear I have to seek outside advice from people sane and grounded.  Do any of you know someone?

We met Billy Proctor and his co-writer, Yvonne Maximchuk, at the Campbell River Museum yesterday.  It was their latest book launch, Tide Rips and Back Eddies – Billy Proctor’s Tales of Blackfish Sound.

Yvonne is close to our age.  Billy is in the dwindling generation ahead.  He’s in his early to mid eighties.  Still fishing.  Still hunting. Still doing what Billy has always done – living in the great outdoors, off the grid and with the sea.  Billy is the real deal — west coast to the bone. Grew up and lived his entire life catching salmon, hunting deer, growing veggies and picking berries.  His mind is sharp, his body is strong and he has a great sense of humour just tickling at the surface of everything he says.

We should all be so healthy.

Yvonne is NOT his wife.  It’s Yvonne and Albert who are married (read the book).  Yvonne WAS his wife who passed away a few years back.  Two different Yvonnes.  YM is Billy’s friend and past-time deckhand when he fished more regularly.  It was YM who prompted Billy to start writing with their first book, Full Moon and Flood Tides, and that was not easy at the time — Billy could read but he could not write, neither literally nor figuratively. His signature is still chicken scratch.  But he persevered and he is now a full-on author as well as a west coast icon, museum curator, and growing legend.

I like Billy Proctor.

And I like Yvonne Maximchuk.

The reasons that spring to mind are that they are ‘authentic’ and ‘real’.  Then, maybe, amusing and honest with shades of kindness and a clear and strong passion for life.  You could do worse than have those two in your immediate community, methinks.

But what a deal!  OMG!  They came down for the book launch from the Broughton Archipelago.  Long boat ride.  Long car ride.  Long book launch (four hours what with the preparation, presentation and the obligatory book signing).  Then, when it was done, they packed up the old dog-and-pony bookstore and headed off to Sidney to do a repeat performance.  It was a lesson in book promotion that did not appeal to either Sal nor I.

(Which, I guess, is obvious since we haven’t done any except rely on word of mouth.)

“GAWD!!!  Small room, dozens of people (fifty plus) and an hour or so of reading excerpts from one’s book?  I can’t do that, Sally.  I wouldn’t last thirty minutes.”

“Neither would I and not in the least because I can’t stand listening to your stories for the hundredth time unless there are weeks of breaks between them.  Even then, it is tough. Thirty straight minutes or more and I’d have fifty witnesses testifying against me on homicide charges!  Actually, there’s a good chance they’d all be charged as accessories, too.”

“Is that how book launches work?  And, if so, why do ’em?  Can’t be for the book sales. Even if all fifty of us bought books that still does not add up as a financial incentive when you consider that the expenses for the launch had to be more than what the sale proceeds were.”

“Maybe they do it for the fun?” 

“Well, the first few times would be fun but what about the fifth time in three days?  Wouldn’t that feel a bit stale if not, at least, exhausting?”

“Well, I’m glad they did it.  It was great meeting Yvonne and Billy remembered our book club’s visit this summer.  I feel as if I have a connection.  Plus Billy liked your book.  Said it was funny and you had the right take on bureaucrats, to his way of thinking.”

“The best part for me was getting his opinion on the environment.  A guy who has lived, breathed and literally been fully immersed in the west coast for over eighty years has a truth and a perspective that has to be more accurate than the mumbo- jumbo and gibberish of politically slanted Department of Fisheries reports.  He didn’t have much time for the DFO, that’s for sure.”

“No.  But the main message seemed to be that the west coast is always changing and he has seen it all.  Billy has expectations of cycles but an equal expectation of cycles interrupted.  ‘You never know’, seemed to be the lesson.”

“Well, that is sure true for us too, sweetie.  We don’t know squat.  And likely never will.  Life is a crap shoot and it seems to be that way for everyone — even Billy and Yvonne.  And, if it isn’t a crap shoot, it would be boring. So, I guess the Chinese have it right: “May you live in interesting times”.

Last day of the elementary level of Conflict Resolution was yesterday.  All kids received their ‘certificates’.  I am glad it is over.  But it was fun.

On the last day, the kids did role plays.  They first argue about some false issue I give them and then they use the tools they were introduced to to resolve it.  Of course, kids can’t really ‘act’ 100%, and they revert to ‘self’ pretty quickly but they gave it a shot and they demonstrated that they knew the tools.  Basically.  It was not hard to praise them. But the best part were some of the solutions.

To the 8 year old who was appointed the president, owner and CEO of an oil company in Alberta meeting with an environmentalist (9 years old), the solution arrived at was to sell the company, close the valves and start a cotton farm together.

To the brother and sister who had the house to themselves over the weekend and it was a mess with the parents on their way home, the solution was to stop blaming each other and simply lock the doors, go to bed and pretend to have been sick for the entire time the parents were away.

They failed the ‘test the solution’ part of the process.

To the 60 year old volunteer who was married to the 12 year old and arguing about child care, the solution was to divorce, move next door and hire a nanny (a solution Jack Nicholson, the actor, made famous in real life).

“What are you going to teach next?”  Asked the teacher.  “I was thinking of stand-up comedy but they already know that better than I do.”

Maybe we’ll let that teaching opportunity mellow for, oh, say, a year?

After class, we went to the other island to work on the car.  It was sputtering and running poorly.  I had used my low-cost diagnosis computer-reader to determine that it was the computer-connected mass air sensor (MAS) that was the culprit.  You Tube suggested spraying it with a special cleaner.  Further googling revealed that the special cleaner is 99% rubbing alcohol. So, pouring a small amount of that in to a small container, we went over and removed the MAS, immersed it in alcohol and shook it up.  Then we replaced the part and tried the car. Perfect.

The remedy suggested by the mechanic in Vancouver (the sputtering has been going on for a while but we drive little) was a $700 replacement part and, of course, labour and taxes.  The part is the size of a lollipop and consists of two filaments like that found in a small incandescent light bulb.  $700 seemed extreme.  Lordco parts quoted $650.  The filaments were intact so replacing the part seemed ridiculous.  And a chimp could do the labour.

So, we did it.  All in all, we felt pretty good about our day.  But should we have?

The main underlying lesson of teaching conflict skills is that conflict is not only common, it is perpetual.  “If you guys want a career that has a never-ending supply of customers, consider becoming a mediator.  You will never run out of work.”

AND: “You are destined to fight a lot over the next few decades of your life.  May as well get trained.”  What a lesson!

The second lesson was – no one fixes anything anymore.  They just replace it with a new part.  Plug, play and pay.  In this case, the mechanic was NOT obviously crooked but simply analyzing at a superficial level and replacing the part without even considering fixing (in this case cleaning) the part. No wonder life is so expensive.  Especially in the city.  Who, in the city, has the time to analyze and fix their own car?  Delegating to specialists wouldn’t be so bad if it was necessary but that little example would have cost $1000.00.

And I would have had to make $1300 to pay the taxes to pay the bill that included $150.00 in more taxes.

Is it just me?  Or does our whole bloody system need some major in-depth analysis and some very diligent reaming and cleaning?

Death, I mean.  By drowning.  We lost a few people out here again recently.  And a few more came pretty damn close. The poor British whale-watchers off Tofino, a few salmon fishermen near Campbell River and a guy off a 60 footer just a few miles from us.  I don’t know the numbers but more than a few people drowned in October in our local waters.

Bang!  One minute they were dry, the next they were in the water and feeling very, very alone.  It is unpleasant at the very least, panicking for most people and completely disabling for some. Keeping your wits about you is the first thing for survival but even that will only buy you a little time. If you don’t panic, you will immediately start to worry.  And with good reason.  Hard to swim fully clad. Distances to shore can be taxing.  Darkness doesn’t help.  And disorientation becomes a major factor as hypothermia sets in.

Hypothermia is the really big danger to face and it is always the winner if you engage with it too long. They say, being immersed for 20-25 minutes and it will begin to work at you and I am sure they are right but many bulky, well-clad types have managed a few hours so long as they could keep moving.  Regardless, getting out of the water doesn’t eliminate hypothermia but it at least increases your chances.  People on land still die of exposure from accidents of this kind.

We tend to ‘accept’ our environment as having danger but not really as being dangerous.   And it is. And being is different than having.  Being dangerous is like Black Widow spiders or an angry hippopotamus.  Or being surrounded by water.  The danger is always present even if it is not presenting in the moment.

But having danger is more like a gun.  Unloaded, locked away or dismantled, a gun no longer has the potential for danger.  You can neutralize it.  Deep, cold, moving water is simply always dangerous.  The drowning danger out here cannot ever be neutralized even with life jackets and the ever-ready coast guard.  People with life jackets drown all the time if they are left in the freezing water too long.

It is almost impossible to see that when you live with it every day.  Jump in the boat, get mail, see a friend, do a little beachcombing……all good.  But maybe just a half hour from disaster at any given moment.  And I have been there.  Got wet.  Got frightened a couple of times.

No one plans to fall in.

I suppose heavy urban traffic is much the same.  But, heavy traffic seems like the danger it is. It presents as ugly.  And we have measured that danger pretty accurately.  Over 30 000 people die from traffic accidents in the USA every year while Canada has about 2000 to 3000.  Traffic fatalities have killed more people than all the world wars put together. Traffic is an omnipresent danger, and we see that, we know that and yet, we tend to be accepting and unconscious of it most of the time.  We wouldn’t get around much if we looked at urban traffic as the danger it really is.

We are like that, too, about the water.  We see it as ‘occasionally’ dangerous, not omnipresent dangerous.  We are only really vigilant in bad weather or at night.  During the day, we are complacent.  And we are wrong.  More so than traffic watchers actually. Maybe because somehow the water seems more benign, less threatening.

We are proven wrong about that every year by losing some poor soul to the sea.  This year no exception.

Making frames for the greenhouse glass, I am.  1 x 1 angle steel welded together to make a ‘T’ and then, in the middle of the length, an upside down four foot long ‘T’ to sister onto the 9 foot long right-side up ‘T’.  Makes a + profile.  I am hoping that it is strong enough.  It is, I am sure, but the glass is heavy.  Maybe 300 pounds for each of the three  9 x 5 sections of double-paned glass on the roof?

The problem is not the steel, it is me.  I am not the world’s best welder (maybe the worst) and I also made the angle of the roof pretty shallow (10 degrees) so it is just a bit better than flat.  Kinda had to – given the various configurations of puzzling out the odd-sized panes to try to make a box of any kind.  It has been a challenge, this greenhouse, and it is not over yet.

I mention all this for a few reasons.  One, I have other things to do and having to do this project now on my third iteration, I am irritated.  I should be further along.  And there is little if any guarantee number three is the charm.  I may end up with the Greenhouse Mark Vll edition or worse.

A second reason is that time marches inexorably and it is now November.  The 2015 Greenhouse may very well become the 2016 Greenhouse.  And it is unlikely to be ready in time to try growing anything this winter.  Did I mention that I was irritated?

A third reason is my lack of zen-ness over this sort of thing.  Zen-types don’t get irritated. And THAT irritates me all the more.  I’d like to punch a zen-type smack in the face right about now.

Breathe……10….9…8….7…..

“If that is all you have bothering you, you are pretty lucky, sweetie!”

She’s right, of course.  I am very lucky and that is about all I have bothering me.  The rest of it?  I am pretty happy.

Still, I have chores and they are piling up again.  Mostly because I have cut my hard four-hour day down to an easy just-short-of-four hours a day.  I get going by 12:30 and quit at 4:30 but, well, you know…if it is raining…or I am expecting an e-mail….or the mail came….need a cup of tea……  OK, maybe I should be describing it as a hard three-hour day?

Winter does that to me.  The weather, the lack of light, the cold, the rain…just makes you less inclined to get out there and build, ya know?  I am not alone.  Most of the locals ‘hibernate’.  They may wait a bit longer – like January – but they hunker down, too.  I am really just acclimating, getting assimilated into the local sloth-like culture.  I may even be eligible for head sloth this year.

Now THAT would be a competition.  A lot of contenders for head sloth out here.  Some of them pretty good at it, too.  Been slothing a long time, some of them.  Real veterans.  But the question is really oxymoronic, isn’t it?  Sloths competing at slothdom?

Never mind.

I guess what I am saying (to myself) is that I have to get off the rock sometime this winter. I have hardly been off at all this year so far.  It was a great year for staying put.  And I am OK with that but it does make your world smaller.  Something shrinks a bit.  Moss grows on your shoes.  You pretty much have to re-immerse yourself in to the simmering cauldron, the stinkin’ cesspool, the maelstrom of madness we call civilization (for short) now and then, I think, to get some perspective.

I balk, of course. But I also notice my perspective narrowing if I don’t go exercise it.  I may have to get out a bit this winter.

And then take a long hot shower and vow never to do it again. 

That is what I am saying.

So, old guys, eh?  Loners, grumpy, ugly, anti-social…what’s there to like?

Well, if we are talkin‘ the old guys themselves, there is not too much.  Trust me.  I know some of ’em. Turns out, I am one.  Yuck!

‘Cept that ‘loner’-thing kinda keeps us hidden from view and, as a rule, we don’t tend to get as regularly underfoot as say, bookclub members or visitors or young people…ya know? I mean, there’s a lot to be said for some old dude hidin’ out in the forest who knows how to do stuff but doesn’t wander into the general marketplace of life very often.  He’s kind of a hidden natural resource.  Think Yoda.

OK, Shrek is close enough.

But, if we’re talkin’ about being one of them old guys, well, that’s another perspective altogether. Being an old recluse is a recipe for personal bliss.  ‘Specially, if you got a workshop and a beautiful, sweet wife who can cook as a bonus package.  Then?  Well, then it just doesn’t get any better. Shrek and I are both very lucky but I am the luckier of the two (have you seen Fiona?!).

As you can tell, you prescient ones, this is a slightly-late Thanksgiving blog.  It’s the end of the harvest season and, although we still reap and pay at Save-On, harvest at Costco, we still put away stores for the winter and we tend to hunker down some.  Now and then.

I.e: the fire is on every day now.

We got it partly right again and it was a bountiful, happy year for us.  And next year promises to be even better when the greenhouse comes on line.   We are thankful.   I am very, very thankful.  It was a very good year and our cups runneth over.

So do the freezers.  We got stuff.  Lots of stuff.  Frozen stuff.  And we are getting to that time of year when the sun don’t shine and we have crap stuffed in dark places (freezers). That means less electricity and inevitable thawing.  Or running the genset. Or eating a lot of frozen stuff. We are opting for eating our way out of this problem and then shutting off the summer electrical powered freezer.

Now there’s an OTG tactic I never considered – seasonal freezer use skillfully timed to coincide with depleting food levels.  Timing, they say, is everything.

Actually, timing is more than everything, it is critical to survival.  We are running out of fuel and, even though we are pretty frugal in that department, we still rely heavily on a small amount of gasoline for boats and gensets – especially in the winter.  And this month, we are cutting it a bit too fine. Fuel barge comes in a week.  We have three to four days of normal-use fuel left but, with care, we will make it.  I may look around for an extra tank.  I hate seeing the bottom of tanks.

Our summer friends are back in the city dealing with lawn care, doctors, socializing, visiting, Film Festival, bills, traffic, neighbours, rules, Starbucks and forced exercise regimes not to mention strata council meetings, parking, shopping and maybe even working still.   If not working then providing free day care for their working children.  Then there’s the doctor’s appointments that result from the first doctor’s appointments mentioned in sentence one.  Specialists, don’t you know?   Home, boat and car maintenance.  And the list goes on.

Well, not out here.  Out here it is quiet.  Sally quilts.  I look at Honda repair manuals. Scotch and Netflix follows a fabulous day and even better dinner.  It would almost be hard to be grumpy if it weren’t bred so deep into the older male’s DNA.

Nature knows what it is doing.

….we are ‘on’ the greenhouse again.  Work is progressing.  Things looking good.  This is a very positive step for mankind, if not just a little embarrassing for me.  I have to admit; I need Sal.  I need her nagging.  I need her strong pair of hands.  I need her ‘Let’s do this thing!’ attitude.  I even need her somewhat abbreviated attention span – such as it is: ‘Hey, look!  A squirrel’.

Don’t ask me why.  I just need it, OK?

The empire is slowly getting to the finish line.  Of course, it will never BE finished but the scope of the plan is almost complete, the planned jobs have all at least been started (save the guest bathroom but it is a must do and so will get done next) and we can kinda see an end in sight to major construction projects.  Which is good because we are already starting to see major maintenance projects looming up so, like I said, it never ends.

But it does slow down.  OMG have we slowed down!  Well, I have slowed down. Sal has been more distracted and, for the last year, by more than just squirrels and playing fetch in the middle of chores.  Now she has quilting on the brain.  Addicts have habits.  But Sally has all consuming obsessions.  And Quilting is looming to being the biggest one yet.

Anyway, she wanted to quilt and I am man, spell me m-a-n and so I went on to start the greenhouse a month or so ago without her.  Trust me, I did not go graciously to the site but, like I said, she was obsessed.  And so I had to go.

It wasn’t hard to go it alone. Not in the beginning.  ‘I can do this’.  Measuring long things without someone at the other end is a pain sometimes but not so much.  Lifting things into place is awkward and a smidge unsafe at times but planning your work eliminates much of that (or so I am told) and holding things in place while you put in a nail or screw can be tricky but, in a pinch, she would come out.  I started my work with confidence.

Best laid plans…mice…m-e-n.  

Even the first few mistakes did not daunt me.  Not too mcuh.  Mistakes are my mddile name.  I am comfortable with mistakes.  We spend a lot of time together.  Having to take the frame down more than once was getting on my nerves but, really, I am n-a-m and sllep me anyway that will just stay up for a $%$#@! second!

It got annoying.

“Hey, Sal….?  You know how you are always bugging me to measure twice and check with the plan or the directions and bugging the hell out me when we build with squirrels and crap?”

“Yes, sweetie.  I know I drive you crazy.”

“Well, it would appear that I need that.  I am much the worse for working alone.  In fact, I can’t seem to get anything done without your nagging and asking stupid questions.  I may even need to have the squirrels pointed out to me now and then.  I really don’t know at this point what the correct way to do anything is anymore.  I am shaken.”

“That’s fine.  I’ll put down my quilting and help.  Be right out.”

Whew.

“So, sweetie.  What are we building again?  Is this the greenhouse or the spare bathroom? And have you seen the fantastic Marigolds blooming so late?  Come see!  They are just beautiful, don’t you think?  Did you bring my gloves?  Do you want me to bring tea?”  

“OK, I admitted it.  I admitted it out loud with people nearby and I am sincere.  I need you. I really need you.  But surely that does not mean that you can immediately start the job with a string of goofiness.  Marigolds!  Please.  Not that fast.  Please….I need to adjust to it, the madness, the tangents, the questions….just give me a bit of time to get used to such stuff…OK?”

“OK, sweetie.  But what are we doing?  All I see is materials lying about and I thought you had been hard at work on it for the last week or so?  And so where is the plan?  And did you bring my gloves or not? And why are you being so mean to the Marigolds?”

Medically assisted suicide should be legal but there really should be a lot of checks and balances, ya know?  It should NOT be easy. Jus’ sayin’…………..