Amazing Day

Yesterday, something amazing happened. It had been a rough day. Autolycus, our bob-tailed boy, was sick with a terrible cold. Everything we did to support his health only seemed to sink him deeper into misery. I hadn't managed to get a word written since Monday. Those of you who know me, know that means that I'd begun disintegrating since it is writing that keeps me sane. Ish. By this time, the doubts had hit full force. Everyone else in the world writes faster, more, better. If you have a pursuit you love, you may know what I'm talking about.

Then. Out of the blue, on Facebook, I get this from my cousin:

"Thought I'd let you know that "Nightmare Ink" helped Betty get through her chemo treatment like "sliding through butter"! She started reading it off my tablet & didn't finish so I found my old Kindle & charged it up & surprised her with it the next week. She was giggling like a girl! So thank you so much!"

Yeesh. Still makes me tear up.

I think I've mentioned my Aunt Betty before now, but just in case, here's the story again. See, I was a lonely kid. My fault, really. I kept waiting for my passel of cousins to yell, "Come on!" No one ever did. So I got left behind a lot. (I don't wait for an invite anymore. I barge right on into the group.) One particular day when all the other cousins had gone off to have fun while I ended up sitting on my grandmother's porch feeling sorry for myself, my Aunt Betty walked up with a box and plopped it down next to me. "Here," she said. "Read these. You'll like them." It was her collection of Andre Norton books. I started one and I was hooked. Andre Norton and my Aunt Betty are directly to blame for infecting me with the writing bug. :)  How do you thank someone for something like that?

Yesterday, Aunt Betty, via my cousin, gave me yet another gift - the awareness that what I write might not be changing the world - but for the few hours it takes to read one of my stories, what I write might change one person's world for the better. Humbling. Easy to forget that story telling is a form of sharing love and energy.

The Worst Day Living on a Boat

The worst of living aboard a boat isn't when it's stormy and the boat is bouncing all over the place. It isn't when lightning strikes in the waterway not 100' from the boat - though that WILL get your attention. It isn't even when the temperatures are hovering in the single digits.

The single worst day living aboard a boat is the day the head (toilet) breaks. Because you never find out it's broken until you need to flush. And let me tell you, to fix the head in a boat requires taking the whole thing apart. Raw sewage is always involved. Bad day.

But second only to that are the days you walk all the way up to the showers, undress to get into said shower, and discover you left your towel on board the boat. A football field or more away.

For someone without a sentimental bone in her body, I am SO nostalgic over the days when my beloved would bring me a towel warm from the dryer as I got out of the shower. Sigh.

A Treatise by Autolycus

It is a fact of life. Cats like to walk on keyboards. Apparently, they get extra points if they can power down your box in the process - bonus bonus points if you're in the middle of working on something vital. Like a paper or a book on deadline.

One day, whilst editing the feline contributions to a document I'd been working on, it occurred to me that I'd had it all wrong. Maybe cats aren't walking on keyboards just to annoy us - certainly it's a factor - but what if it's not the actual point? Could they be trying to communicate? To someone or something? I resolved to find out. When one of the cats expresses interest in my keyboard, I open a blank document and let the feline author have free rein. I can't interpret what is produced. Not yet. And again, I'm plagued by the disturbing notion that the cats ARE trying to communicate. Just not with me. And I'm left wondering if not with me then with whom?

Reproduced below, 100% faithful to the original both in content and formatting is Autolycus's second, and thus far, lengthiest treatise. I have no clue what it means.

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Code? Instructions? A rant against the flavor of cat food served for supper?

My Thirty Degree, Guaranteed Cranky, Threshold

Barriers. I've talked about them before. These are the things that keep us from doing what we all know we're supposed to do. For some people (me) it's exercise. I know I should. And I want to - I really do. 30 minutes of moderate exercise each day staves off migraines in a big way. So, honest. I'm motivated.

And yet.

Something stands in my way. That's a barrier. The trick is figuring out what that barrier is. For some people, it's as simple as packing a workout bag and setting out exercise clothes so the morning is a no brainer. In my case, It's the cold. Once the outdoor temperatures drop below 30 degrees, I'm done. Guaranteed grump point. No. I will not go out on an interval training walk/run. My toes are already painfully frozen in my sneakers. There aren't enough clothes in the world to make it okay. Going out on a bike ride is out of the question, too. My fingers and toes ache. What I really want to do is go out into the frigid morn and slam my face into the wind chill that riding would entail. Ever frozen the snot in your nose? Trust me. Do not want.

Last night, it struck me that I've filled my life with ways to make life harder. Plenty of people don't have a dishwasher, so I can't complain about that. Much. I *do* when I'm washing my third sink full of dishes for the day. But you know, cooking. Just cooking is more difficult - I'm working with a two burner propane stove with an oven the size of a bread box. Not to mention a tiny refrigerator and no microwave. I can't pull something out of the freezer and put it on the dinner table an hour later. This has done unfortunate things to my culinary skills and to my diet. Heck. Just taking a shower means kitting up and walking the equivalent of a football field, in the freezing dark, so I can plug the marina shower with quarters in exchange for two minutes of hot water. Then there's the walk back. Managing electrical load - I cannot be warm and vacuum the floors at the same time. It will blow the circuit breaker. The heat has to be shut down, then I can tidy up. This is essential, because my other guaranteed grump point is having my floors crunch when I walk on them. I've tried to find a medication to treat that.

99% of my barriers come down to the cold. So many people are bothered by the lack of sunlight at this time of year. Not me. Couldn't care less. In fact, I'd be grateful for the return of the rain. It would be warmer and as a  boater, I have the gear for 40 degrees and rain slanting in sideways. Frost? Not so much. If it snows this year, I may snap, take an ax to the dock lines and aim for the south Pacific. I do still love my boat - even with the challenges and frustrations. And yes. I am well aware that makes me perverse. Hush up and help me find a place in Fiji or Tahiti where I can moor the boat.

Tropical Seattle

You know that annoying part of the year where you have to put on long pants and a sweatshirt in the morning or freeze, but by noon, you're suffocating and longing for your shorts? It's back. The summer of unbelievably fine weather (for Seattle) and lovely sunsets draws to a close. Even though I'm still wearing flip-flops, the rain comes back tomorrow and the unseasonably warm temperatures start falling. I'd be sad about it if the piles of clothes we have stacked around to accommodate chilly mornings and frying afternoons weren't driving me nuts. (Fun fact about Marcella: Want to drive the writer insane? Won't take much of a push, admittedly, but the fastest route: Clutter. O_o This makes me officially Not Easy To Live With.)

Halloween decorations started showing up in the stores at the end of August, but none of us can contemplate pumpkin flavored anything when it's still 80 degrees. I keep seeing photos on Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest of all the fall themed baking other people are doing. I get inspired and determine I'm going to make some fun treat-like thing. Cake. Bread. Something. But the weather has been so consistently, uncharacteristically tropical that turning on the oven isn't an option. I've always wanted to live in Hawaii. This year, I got Hawaii's weather without having to leave Seattle. Added bonus: No centipedes in Seattle.

So while I lurch through my days having to change clothes a dozen times to keep from roasting or freezing, regale me. What fall goodies are you baking or making?

Note: I'll be sending out my first attempt at a newsletter in the next few days - once I figure out how to get along with the software. If you're interested in pointing and laughing at my nascent newsletter attempts, sign up here.

Best Grass on the Dock

Two or three hundred feet up the dock from us, there's a dinghy. It's a sad, half-deflated rigid bottom inflatable tucked between the bow of its center cockpit sailboat and the dock. Until last fall, it hung on the dinghy davits off the back of the abandoned sailboat. A pair of seagulls had been using the dinghy as their nesting platform (and causing all kinds of havoc when anyone tried to pass by in the waterway behind the boat). The port finally called the owner and asked him to move the dinghy.

He did. He put it right there against the dock. Without cleaning out the accumulation of nesting material and guano.

As you can see, that dinghy grew a bumper crop of grass. How Hatshepsut found this so far from our boat is a mystery to me. And perhaps it's better that way. I have enough gray hair. Maybe she simply smelled the ripening odor of aging seagull poop and followed her nose. Whatever it was, we were outside on the docks one day and she led me down to this dinghy. She gingerly climbed inside and began eating the grass. This has gone on one each day it hasn't been raining. Mind you, I buy this cat grass from the local health food store. Wheat grass. Lush. Green. Fresh. She appreciates it. We go through a ritual when I come home with groceries. She sticks her nose in each of the bags looking while I sing "Hatshepsut, look! I brought you a treat!" I put down her container of live grass and she proceeds to mince up blades of grass and scatter them all over the white cockpit.

The grass in the dinghy is different. Sure, she pulls it out, too, but that grass she actually eats. Consumes it as if it nourishes her in some fashion that the wheat grass simply can't.

I know it's blurry, but your eyes do not deceive you. Those are bones. What this means is that my youngest feline prefers to eat only grass nourished by the corpses of dead baby seagulls.

The Easter Drag

Saturday morning dawned bright, mostly clear, and without a breath of wind. We prepped the boat and cast off for a trip across Puget Sound to go visit my family for the weekend. I'd tell you it was for Easter, but really, it was for food. Mom was putting a ham in the oven and making baked beans. If my husband could have teleported to her house, he would have. The boat was the next best (though it must be noted - not the next fastest way) across the water.

We hadn't taken the boat out since Christmas. The cats had kinda forgotten that their house moves, but they were 100% clear that they DO NOT LIKE that their house moves. Despite a seasick cat making a mess in the master cabin, it was a perfect trip across. We made excellent time. A line of clouds lingered on the horizon, but the sun shone and it was warm. We consulted the tide tables because hubby really wanted to anchor out rather than pay for space at the city dock. I mentioned that the weather was supposed to turn. He squinted at the sky, shrugged and went back to calculating tides.

It's the time of year for big tidal run. On Saturday, when we got to Poulsbo, the tide was going out a long way - 11 feet in just a few hours. We were going from a high of 10 feet to a low of -1.5. He picked a spot and signaled. I dropped the anchor and 70 feet of chain to the mud bottom.

Maritime trials over. We shut down the engine and kicked back. The still air stirred, then began blowing in earnest. The clouds shuttered the blue sky and rain slanted in sideways.

KACHUNK

The boat trembled. I got up and glanced around.

"I think we just straightened out all 70 feet of our chain in one go," I said, running to check the depth sounder. "And we are super close to shore. Super, super close. 8 feet of water underneath us."

We didn't drag - which is when your anchor comes up out of whatever was holding it on the bottom. In the case of Liberty Bay, that 'whatever' is stinky, black mud. Our anchor held just fine. The problem was the rode.

Rode is what connects your anchor and your boat. It can be a line (rope) or chain. Most people use a combination. We have 70 feet of chain on the anchor end, and another two hundred feet of line. The theory behind using chain is that it's heavy enough to rest flat on the bottom, which keeps your anchor at the proper angle to the bottom to help it dig in so you don't drag. When we anchor in Liberty Bay, we drop the anchor and then let out all of our chain. We count out extra feet of line based on weather conditions and what kind of scope (the ratio of your boat length to length of rode you pay out) we think we'll need to stay safely anchored in one place.

Thing is, if you're a boater, you already know we missed a step in the anchoring process. We didn't set our anchor. That's when you drop the anchor overboard and then gently back up until the anchor catches and stops the boat. THEN you put out the rest of your rode. Not that it would have made any difference for us. We'd forgotten the cardinal rule of boating: The wind always wins.

Because the tide was going out, we imagined that we'd swing with the current. Instead, the wind blew us against the current, into shallower water. And when the wind REALLY kicked, all 70 feet of our chain went from piled up in the mud, to straightened out in the goo and we went from anchoring in 20 feet of water to 8 feet.

Hubby started the engine. I got on my rain gear and went on deck to haul up the anchor. We could have repositioned and set the anchor in deeper water, but it would have meant rowing the dinghy into the city dock in the wind and rain. Instead, we motored to an empty guest slip and tied up for the weekend. It made the cats happy when the sun came out on Sunday morning and they could get out of the boat to roll on the concrete dock.