The pest war begins

You know you have a pest problem when you find them crawling in your toilet bowl.
We were invaded by large wood-burrowing black ants last night. These things were massive. I wanted to strap a saddle to one, call it Black Beauty and ride off into the sunset. Carpenter ants I am told. They don't bite or sting, but they burrow through the frames of wooden houses like termites and they don't die easily. During the first extermination attempt the floor was littered with a thousand corpses all killed by stomping. As soon as the first thousand were vacuumed up, two thousand took their place, scurrying about the living room and kitchen. We tried regular ant traps and insecticide, but alas, they did not die. Battles were fought and there were many casualties, but in the end we beat the little beasties. We tricked 'em with laced sugar.
As I silently celebrate our morbid victory over the ant colony, I try to ignore the shrill cry of victory that echoes across the forest as the pine squirrels return to their nest with plunder from our walls. One battle has been won, but the war has only begun...

Bananas into beer

I have not fallen off the face of the planet... yet. The internet connection is very sketchy up here and there is a little too much baking going on, hence the lack of current posts.
The Refuge Cove General Store has ordered more bananas than we can sell. They turn brown and then either sit in the freezer for a decade and a half or are thrown into the compost. I suggested bread. Everyone fancied that proposition and so I began baking. The banana bread frenzy that followed was good enough to put on the shelves next to the french and sourdough. I make a small profit because the most expensive of the ingredients are free. Because my aunt is kind enough to share her old flour and baking utensils, most of the funds acquired by this endeavor will be used to by beer for her fridge. Bananas into beer.

Other than that, the time that I am not working at the store is spent falling through boardwalks, repairing boardwalks, teaching belly dance, writing songs, washing dishes, tie-dieing, swimming, fretting about weasels in the walls and squirrels stealing our insulation, chatting it up with the locals, scribbling, and playing with my hair. It is summer and all is well when I allow that top layer of mush in my life to be scraped away - that annoying collection of misconceptions, grumblings and noise that seems to squish its way onto most activities. Yep, when all that yucky crap I seem to hang on to is gone, it really feels like a summer vacation up here.

shabbat far from home

Damn French labels on everything driving me nuts! I nearly lost it big time today stocking shelves and having to re-arrange every item so that the English side of the label was facing the audience of patrons. So frustrated was I that an electric fly swatter found its home resting on my fingertips. It was a pleasant jolt of electrical current that gave me the motivation to cheerfully return to work.

You ever have one of those days that just seems off? Everything you try to do goes a little wrong and everything anyone says just grates on your nerves. The funny thing about those days for me is that there is small niggling voice that is almost nagging, but not quite, that says things like:
"Sweety, just wash the extra dish."
"No. Clean it thoroughly."
"Yes, pick up that scrap of compost and put it in the bin."
"Now smile... on the inside, dear."
"Good start. Now lets try some joy on for size..."
"Pet the dog.... oh, please be gentle...."
"Ok, you may list your excuses in order if you must, but you know they are not going to change my mind. You still need to forgive him."
On and on the Voice goes, demanding greater and greater feats of self control, patience, forgiveness, love... until I find myself either doing what it demands or hiding my consciousness from everything that surrounds it. Last night it all felt like too much and I escaped to bed averting my eyes from everything I could manage so there would be nothing to feed on. It worked pretty well I thought. Understand now; if I can't see it, then it's not there. It seems to me that if its not there, the Voice cant tell me to do anything about it. But I couldn't close my ears. I could hear Brother on the phone in the other room talking with the family at home.
Stab.Scrape.Grit. Every word like nails on a chalkboard.
"You love him. Get over it." Came the Voice.
But he....
"Honey, I'm not really in the mood for your excuses. I'll listen, but you know what the answer is."
Grumble. Fine.
"Awe! See? Don't you feel better?"
I imagined the Voice had a huge approving grin on. That thought erased any sort of resentment I might have otherwise felt and I drifted into peace and sleep.
The Voice is never wrong.

The Bottomless Sea

"Flirtation With Satan" was the name of the ship
Upon which I'd set my sights
"Great boat for travel" read the gold flyer
And soon I'd sold the salesman my rights
to sail that ship across the bottomless sea

Well, "Flirtation With Satan" seemed to spring a leak
Just as the vessel caught fire
It sank to the bottom of the bottomless sea
An' I held on longer than I desired
and went down into the depths of the bottomless sea

Now I suppose I'd be drowned today if it weren't for that man
Who plunged to the bottom of the bottomless sea
He looked like he'd been through hell
And heck, I s'pose he had, just to get a sturdy grip on me
and pull me up from the bottomless sea

Hey, I'm a stout swimmer and I know I tried to help
But swimmin' down instead of up didn't work out too well
And if he weren't there dragging me toward the light
The dice roll holds that I'd be there and not alive to tell
about the bottom of the bottomless sea

Of Cod And Squirels.

If anyone ever wants to get a fishing license up here in BC, just go online and apply for one at: http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fm-gp/rec/licence-permis/index-eng.htm. It is simple and much cheaper, just make sure you have your Canadian address handy.

So we got Brother a license to fish. He went out in the HMS Floating Brick* and caught a huge cod. It was about two and half feet long and a chunk was taken out of its tail fin. It was delicious.
We turned half of it into Fish 'n' Chips and the other half is cod steaks in the freezer. You can find the recipe for the batter at my other blog, Inventor's Asylum.

Last night there was a squirrel in the house. More direct and to the point: there was a squirrel in our room. Even more undeniably unforgivable: there was a squirrel on Brother's pillow. I suppose it could have been a martin or a mouse of grotesque size, but the furry thing slunk along the top of his head and beneath my bed in the middle of the night and left no sign of itself other than the hole in the ceiling. The squirrels around here steal insulation from the walls and the martins steal food from the cupboards and since there was no food in our room, we have placed the blame on squirrels.

*our outboard propelled boat that moves like a barge

Lights! Thunder! Action!

I was knocked nearly out of bead this morning by a clattering banging noise over head. My room is below the kitchen and so I assumed that it must be my aunt up at some ungodly hour of the night dropping all the pots and pans. But then it didn't stop. Perhaps it's a drunk burglar rummaging through all the cookery and kicking the furniture down in his stupor, i thought, almost conscious. But there was no pause. My next slumber-plagued assessment of the banging, earth rumbling, tooth-jarring noise was that Russia had finally snapped and we were being invaded. I was prepared to wake my brother and head to the basement. And no, it did not occur to me that we were already in the basement. Only when the offending wake up call still persisted and I was fully committed to not sleeping did I recall the T-storm warning on the forecast the day before.
Leave me alone, I cant help what my sub-conscious is worried about.
It was a very impressive storm and luckily the rain came along with it, otherwise today would have been spent fighting forest fires instead of bagging groceries. A bolt of lightning hit the power grid at some point and our inverter was off and the Bee Man's house got struck as well, but he's alright. I haven't heard any news on the bees, but I hope they are all well and accounted for 'cause they make some mighty fine honey. Another house was struck but no one was in it, the battery is just fried.
After sleeping through the rest of the storm, I woke up and went to work to talk about the storm the rest of the day. Usually the only electricity we get out here is from the gas powered generator or solar panels, so it was pretty exciting.

Basement Lair

My basement lair is an impressive hundred odd feet above sea level at high tide. I know this rough estimate of a fact because I hike ninety-one stone steps from the board walk to the front door ever evening after work. Of course, my brother would have me point out that he sprints up and down those steps multiple times every day. The boardwalk usually sits about seven feet above the water at high tide so I figure a hundred feet give or take depending on the tide.
Within my lair, there is a bunk room that brother and I share. It is probably the cleanest room down here and there are no vampires in there because of the ever expanding spider population. There is a laundry room which is also the battery/tool shed of the house. There is a hall room with a sink, shelves, a non-functional microwave oven, and a gorgeous view of the entire cove. The other room with the sofas and electric piano is great to be in for a limited amount of time seeing as it is right next to the septic tank. At least there are windows.
At some point I will post pictures of this place, (probably when I get back to California and my usb cable). Every time I sit down to write about the beauty here, I just lose the words. I mean, I walk twenty steps up hill and I am submerged in north American rain forest, I walk twenty steps down hill and am faced with clean, clear ocean waters. It is summer and the weather is wonderful. We get water from a stream. Dinner could be caught in our front yard. I get the unsellables from my work, like old produce and expired rice milk. I walk through fairy land to reach the kind of lake you see in post cards in order to watch my younger brother leap off fifty foot cliffs. There are wolves and bald eagles in our back yard. Any anthropologist would salivate at the opportunity to meet some of the characters here. But as time goes on, I find it is easy to take it all for granted.
There will come a day that I will look back on this summer with a little grain of pain in my heart. The kind of pain that comes to fill in a hole that is made when you leave a bit of your self behind somewhere or with someone. I will not avoid that feeling, but I will not feel it yet.
Now I resign myself to my lair and will not think of that day.

The 4th of 09

Who ever invented butter must have been really angry or really bored. I just spent the greater portion of the last hour watching cream turn to butter. Riveting really. As the cream whips beyond its whipping point, fat separates from the milk and you've got butter. (And butter milk that sprays all over the kitchen because the blender speed was on too high.) Your white creamy milk has just become one of the most important substances in the galaxy, how do you feel?

Well, pretty darn tired considering I have been on my feet all day except for a ten minute lunch and a moment to open a box that was too awkward to open on the floor. It was my first day running the main store by my self and we got tubs of ice cream yesterday on the freight so there were plenty of people wanting ice cream cones. Exhilarating, but exhausting.

So exhausting that I didn't build some fireworks out of old pipes, oyster shells and lighter fluid. I'm so tired, I didn't dump a fifteen pack of Lucky into the cove protesting the ten cent deposit on every can. I'm too worn out to fantasize about flying Old Glory off the gas dock and watching the Canadians fume. Oh well. Happy Treason Day to everyone.

Now I am content to rest and recline in my basement lair, recording recipes and watching the light slowly dwindle on the surface of the water. Soon the moon will come out and cast sparkling reflections across the cove and illuminate the boats down there on the dock. The hippies across the sound on the other island have their bonfire blazing. It seems to torment my brother to no end knowing that there is someone over there using that light. I have eaten enough garlic to keep the vampires away for a while. And I am looking forward to another day of "Sorry" (pronounced with a long "o") and "aboot" instead of "about", and other bizarre terminology all jumbled together with "Ay?". I'm going to rest my weary feet on a bed with a matress and the knowledge that if there is a need in the night to turn on a light, the generator is on so the worst that would happen is a blown fuse. Yep, trapped on an island in Canada isn't too bad... So long as you don't pick up an accent.

Is It Safe?

Remember those famous last words?
Well, "Let's do something!" turned into, "You wanna go to the lake?", which was followed by, "Awe, that cliff looks too safe" and promptly became "That's got to be at least fifty feet! It's beautiful!" and I suppose his last words were, "Mom probably wouldn't want me to do this..."
Silence.
Splash!
Bubbles...
Shrill yelp of victory.
Glorious.

After hunting cliffs to jump off of, we managed to paddle the canoe against the wind all the way around the main lake in search of a particular inlet with a particular hope in our minds for a particular cottage with the possibility of finding food. When we couldn't find the inlet, we used the towel to sail our vessel toward the little rock that the seagulls nest on. To steal eggs? No. Simply wanted to practice our seagull dodging skills. It was very exiting. The dog gave up attempting to jump out of the boat at that point, so we figured it was about time to head back. The seagull squawked in triumph as we paddled away with a plot in our minds to return.
A plot to return and scale cliffs that no human has ever set foot upon and plunge into the depths of waters nigh untouched by man.

Quiet... for now.

Today is just one of those days. Beautiful and calm, as close to perfection as you can get here. There are blue skies over head, clear water down below and dry comfy moss surrounding on the hillsides. The float plane just arrived to drop off someone or something and is now heading out to take off into the wind. The trees are lightly rustling and you can hear the robins pestering the barn owl down the boardwalk. You don't need to go into to work today, heck, you don't even need to go into town! Just a relaxing day inhaling the mingled perfumes of salty sea air and warm mossy forest. Maybe you'll make yourself some herbal tea before the generator turns off and you are left with peaceful silence and limited power. Maybe do some yoga or pilates before you take that cat-nap on the window bench. You could even go sit on the porch and soak up that vitamin D producing goodness. Yep, just another day in paradise with nothing to do. At least, that's what your better judgement tells you in a desperate attempt to preserve your sanity and physical well being.

You see, my brother is almost eighteen. It's his day off too. He's not the kind of guy to sit still when there is a world outside, and I am the kind of girl who has learned that it is ok to just rest sometimes. Fishing seems to be the one activity that is always enjoyable solo, but he wont go fishing with out a license and he's an American citizen so a fishing licence would cost him just over a hundred dollars. (We have decided that he looks too male to pass for female Canadian citizen me.) He wants to do something. We've listened to music, invented lunch, bathed, and resorted to watching people out the window with the binoculars. It is one thirty and so far my better judgement is pleased. But the sun doesn't go down until nine...



"Lets do something!" he says. Famous last words.