Spring is coming!

OK, so we might have a winter event tomorrow night. At least, theoretically, it shouldn't lay on the ground forever, mutating into a deadly slick substance that even the dog can’t walk on.

Spring means life in the boatyard once again, with boats emerging from their plastic cocoons on land and heading for the water. Spring means I’ll have to get off my lazy duff and gear up for another season of boat canvas work.

Spring most likely means another season of the Shipyard Sh*tfight. In the boatyard where I lurk, there’s a particular bathroom that has been the domain of everyone in the working end of the yard (vs the marina slips end) for as long as both boatyard and bathroom have been in existence, sometime not long after the big bang. Last spring, one of the dinosaur business owners arbitrarily decided that the bathroom was his and no one else’s, based solely on its proximity to his shop. There were two sets of doors to enter before reaching the bathroom door, and he put three different locks on each door. A protracted fight ensued, but in the end, no one could, or wanted to, match his bitterness. We all just wanted peace, like there had been for all eternity prior to the boatyard bathroom battles. A few precious keys were doled out to the tenants deemed worthy of entering the castle. All other unworthy subjects had to truck quite a long distance to the bathrooms at the other end of the shipyard. The privileged, who had to deal with three keys and three locks, didn't feel so lucky every time they struggled to get in while doing a funny little dance of desperation.

After this cranky person left for the winter, there was a big celebration held, with the ceremonial ripping off of the locks. And guess what? Despite the doors being left wide open the entire winter, the bathroom is not trashed, and his shop was not broken into, as Mr. Dementia claimed would happen, here in this place where there’s never, ever been any crime. We’re saving our vandalism for this year’s battle, where we all crap on the carpet outside his shop in protest. No decisions yet whether it will be a group dump or if we’ll take turns.

Yeah, spring, bring it on. I’m more than ready.

Why Not

Okay, okay, for those of you giving me flack about my anti-marriage stance, and to all the happy married couples I know, let’s see, that makes….one, I apologize. Ya know, instead of calling or emailing me, not that I don’t love to hear from you, my dear three readers, (thanks to mom especially), but if you want to argue, or even agree, you could do me a favor and post in my comments, lifting me higher than #1591 http://humor-blogs.com/.

Just ‘cause couplehood ain’t for me doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with me. Well okay, there’s a lot wrong with me, but my preference to live alone is simply that- my choice. Seriously, I have a deep amount of respect for two people who can happily cohabitate. And just because I don’t want to do it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the idea. Let’s face it, we’re not all the same. Some people would never want to jump out of an airplane, even wearing a parachute, or climb Mt. Everest, or sail across an ocean on a small sailboat. And yes, life is sometimes easier with two people, especially when it’s time to reef the sails after the wind and waves have risen alarmingly. And have you ever tried through-bolting a toe rail back on a boat alone?
Friends are a good thing to have, and I’m blessed to have them in abundance. This one in particular:

I’m sticking to my opinion that having a dog is better in every way than having a man underfoot. Ever tried to get a man to do anything? The dog almost always listens and does what I ask.

So pardon me, but the sun is rising, the temp is way above freezing, the snow has melted, I’m feeling better, and am taking my best friend for a walk in the woods before work. Try to get a guy to do that, or anything at all, first thing in the morning!

Marriage

It is sooo good to be home in my clean, cozy cottage, cuddled next to the woodstove. I’m writing off this year’s vacation as a total woftam. (that’s an aussie term-waste of f**king time and money)

I’ve returned to discover that several people I know have gotten married. Some of them have tried it four or five times before, so they really ought to know better. First timers I can understand, especially those who are feeling that biological clock ticking. Gotta do it now, while I still can pump out some kids to pay child support to/be a single parent to later on in life.

Good luck to you all. Some things, like heroin, crack cocaine, and dinitrogen tetroxide, are best not messed with.

Just like I first wandered off alone in the woods at age four, freaking out my parents, ("why are you both so upset? I wasn’t lost. I knew the way, and just felt like going for a walk by myself."), I have found the reason why I can’t make a relationship work: At the end of the day, I prefer to go home to my own space that’s not cluttered up with any other bodies. This, more than anything else, is at the heart of the reason for all my relationships failing. ‘Cause at some point, as togetherness day in and day out becomes more important to the other person, I start to lose it. GO HOME, I think after a week or so. And when the realization hits that ohmygod he IS home, I start to go downhill. Go ahead, analyze me, tell me it’s a fear of intimacy, that I haven’t met mr. right, that couples are healthier than individuals, blah blah blah. Well, I met an absolutely wonderful guy a couple years back, and he didn’t go home either, so I had to leave him. As for intimacy, I love my friends and share everything with them, my brightest hopes ("I am going to win that lottery without buying a ticket!") my darkest secrets ("You wanna see my pre-cancerous growth?"), and everything I think and feel, ("Yes that shade of pink sucks on you.") as they do with me ("Kit, you need to get out more"). But at the end of the day, after sharing with friends, I just wanna go home, alone. I want sleep in the middle of my bed with no one to bother me. And first thing in the morning, while I’m struggling with the difficult task of getting my eyelids to stay propped open, the last thing I want to see or hear or deal with is someone in my face messing up my waking up process.

I love you. Now go away.

Vacation Sucks

As I lay here in this moldy old trawler hocking up chunks of green mucous, I think, it’s time to go home. Back to my nice cozy cottage with the woodstove, with my nice comfy bed, to the snow and ice. Back to work so I can afford to go to the doctor and get some antibiotics. Even the dog is coughing.

If I coulda afforded a real vacation, I woulda. But spiky old FL was the best I could manage, and even that was out of my budget. But I was desperate; mixing my tropical mind set with snow three times a week was messing up my equilibrium. An escape from the frigid weather in the north seemed like a great cure.

Reality bites. The first week here broke records for cold. The second week has been spent being miserably sick. I did get a new alternator when I broke down on the side of the road, something one always dreams of doing 2000 miles from home on vacation. At least during my absence, all my friends up north got a break from winter’s harsh grasp. Almost as soon as I left, temps in New England rose well above normal, bordering on spring-like, and it never snowed a flake the entire time I was away. True to form, the day I get back, it’s supposed to snow. There you have it. I really do cart along my very own black cloud. Any cloud exorcists out there?

Even teaching the dog to like the water was a bust. She refused to swim, stopping short as soon as her feet touched the water. She stood and watched while five other dogs and one guy charged into the water. Turns out she was smart, because all of them came racing right back out, the man yipping the loudest. That water was COLD!

Still, I’m glad I came, because it’s important to change one’s routine and location upon occasion, to get a fresh perspective, especially when the brain has become all muddled up into an icy sludge. For me, this winter break has reinforced the notion that there really is no place like home, home in New England, despite that white crap that falls out of the sky and the inability to wear sandals and bikinis outside in January. Well, I could, but I like my extremities not amputated for frostbite.

Warning, friends, I’m on my way back north, dragging that winter cloud with me.

A blast from the past

While kicking my heels here in FL on vacation, what boat should happen along but my own former beloved Cal 36 Clarity, the boat I rebuilt from near derelict into a fine cruising yacht. Not only did I get to see her still in great nick, but I got to go on a three hour cruise, taking my dog for her first ever boat ride. The trip was nothing like the cruise of the Minnow, though. The boat moved flawlessly and fast, pushed with a brand new 40 hp yanmar engine. It was a bit mind blowing being aboard again, although after two years, I felt mostly disconnected. I did have a flash of waiting out that sweltering hurricane season in Fort Myers beach, grateful that a big windy never arrived. Then I remembered all that bashing to windward down the east coast, and squalls from every direction in the Bahamas. Ah, the good old days of cruising. Not that Clarity is cursed or anything, but the new owner has had nothing but wind on the nose since he set out. It’s not the boat, it’s sailing the east coast, I swear. Although it was great to see Clarity again, I had no burning desire to jump on board and beat my way to windward in search of the green flash. Guess I really am a gosh darned land lubber now.

Famous

Last winter I lived on a boat docked in a working boatyard where commercial fishing boats were built. I have a talent not many women can, or would ever want to, lay claim to. I can pee over the rail of any boat alive, whether it’s parked at a dock or bounding about in an active seaway. This particular boat that I stayed on had, like so many boats possess, a leaky, stinky toilet. Rather than deal with the spray of icky toilet water on my leg when I flushed, after dark and after the boatyard had shut down for the night, I would simply pee over the rail.

One night when I came back to the yard, the boat’s owner asked me if I had seen anything unusual that morning as I left for work, anyone in the boatyard, or any unfamiliar cars. Well, it was 6 a.m., still dark, and my eyes weren’t even open yet. It’s a miracle I could find my own car, let alone notice anything else around me. Turns out some stuff had gone missing. “That’s okay,” he said. “They’ll just review the camera tapes to see what happened.”

Huh? What camera tapes? “Oh, this whole place is under video surveillance, including the docks and boats.” Wondering vocally why this was the first I was hearing of this, he said, “oh, I thought you knew that. Besides, they never look at the tapes unless something happens.”

Well, stuff happens. If you ever see a youtube video of a girl peeing over the rail of a docked boat, that’s probably me. My moment of fame.

I was in prison

They call it a gated community, but I fail to see much difference.

The very first time I ever visited Florida, I was an escapee from the north, having just single handed the six day offshore passage from frigid NC. Anchoring in the warm, clear water, I was looking forward to my first shore trip. I expected everyone to be happy, relaxed, smiling, and friendly, basking in the balmy air. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Heading to the supermarket in search of fresh food, as I crossed the parking lot, I almost got run down numerous times by mean looking people in new German cars. Inside the market, everyone was cranky, pushy, frowning, and generally impolite. I should have known as I rowed ashore past the piles of condos. I guess it’s a sad thing, when you work your entire life, looking forward to retirement, the holy grail of American life. And what do you get? You get to sit there in a box, surrounded by other boxes all the same, staring at a box. Yeah, that would make me pretty cranky too. That was my initial thought, and while that was partially correct, there was more to it, as I later discovered when I got a job washing boats in a private marina in a gated community.

I biked every day, and every day, I had to stop, sign in, and get a pass before I was allowed to enter. And at the end of each day, I had to stop and turn in my permission slip. This meant sitting on my bike in a long line of cars, both in and out, while foot traffic could simply pass by. This in itself was a silly thing, because there were times I would get a lift and get dropped off at the gate, where I could simply walk in lugging a back pack full of explosives, no questions asked. But the warden at the gate was insistent that if it had wheels, it had to be properly signed in, no matter how many exhaust fumes I had to suck up. I tried walking in pushing the bike, but that wasn’t allowed either. Not long after that, I found a way around the useless entry procedure. I simply waded through the one foot deep moat, carrying my bike across and up through a gap in the bushes, and then peddled on down to the marina. This not only saved me half a mile of travel time, but speeded my entry by not having to wait to sign in. Before discovering the shortcut, I had often recognized residents walking the sidewalk outside the prison. If I said hello, they would recoil in disgust. And yet, if I ran into the same folks inside, they would be smiling, relaxed, and friendly. Aha, I see. They truly believe that they are safe in this protected world in here, and outside their gates it is a dangerous war zone, where their odds of being killed are extremely high. Now I get it. The prison walls, which I so easily breached, gave them a false sense of security. And anyone inside must be okay, because they passed the inspection at the gate. Outside, well, you just never know. I felt pity for these people who lived such fear-ridden lives. And I’m sure they felt the same for me, living so unprotected in the big bad world outside.

I was reminded of this when I went to visit a friend who lives in one of these places. Normally the guards are friendly, but on this day, the woman was cranky bordering on rude. At first I thought she was hard of hearing, as I had to repeat my answers to all the questions she asked. Then I realized that the TV inside the turret was blaring. Finally, after she grudgingly handed me a pass as though she was doing me a favor by letting me enter the promised land of double wide mobile homes, she motioned me to drive on in. As I did so, she yelled at me to stop and made a big deal of having to look past my bike mounted over the license plate, which required her to tilt her head a bit to the left to see the last two numbers. Then she had the nerve to approach my window to start a lecture on how I should not have a bike over my plate. I stopped her by saying very sweetly, “Gee, I’m so sorry you had to leave your TV for that,” and then shot off into the nirvana beyond the gate.

I’m glad I came to FL, even if it is about the same icy temp as at home right now, because it has reinforced my notion that I’m on the right track about deciding to settle in the frigid north. It may be miserable in winter, but there are no gated communities where I live. In fact, we only have a vague idea of how to work a lock. One of the best practical jokes to play on a friend is to go lock up their house while they’re not in it, because when they come home, they can’t get in. Keys? Door locks? Huh?

Don’t fence me in just yet.

A Different Kind of Pole Dance

Super Bowl Sunday.

I spent it stripping.

I drove a little over ten hours from Baltimore, to a campground just north of Charleston, SC
Once I reached the Virginia border, I unlaced my skates.
In Richmond, I reduced my footwear by one pair of socks.
Crossing into North Carolina, I joyfully peeled off my long underwear for the first time in ages. Yes, that is yuck.
In the middle of NC, I stripped the liner out of my winter coat.
Entering South Carolina, the water on my knee finally melted. At the next stop, the wool sweater joined the growing heap of laundry in the back of the car. I was now practically naked, wearing nothing but one pair of socks, one pair of shoes, one pair of pants, one turtleneck. Yahoo!

Once settled in the campground, I put it all back on. Not only that, having become the pansy landlubber that I am, I paid $5 extra for electricity. I had packed my tiny little space heater and an extension cord just in case the frigid air got stuck on the back bumper of my car and was dragged along on this trip. It did. But despite the cold, a long hike with the dog revealed not a speck of ice to be found. I stopped, knelt down, and fondled the earth. Beautiful dirt. Ice free. Life can’t get better than that, can it?

The next morning, after a quick hike in the nippy damp gray air, it was back on the road again.
Approaching the Florida border, heaps of rain began to fall out of the sky. Not only were the wipers going full bore, but so was the heater. It rained all day. The only plus side was getting the salt flushed off my car. So here I am, in sunny Florida, wearing my wool sweater, socks, my boots, both layers of winter coat, AND I thought about digging out the gloves I buried in the car. I’m so glad I drove all this way to thaw out.

For all of you who are enjoying early spring in New England, you’re welcome. But don't get used to it. I’ll be back in about two weeks, so keep your winter gear ready, and lube up those snow shovels.