It has turned. It is now, officially, cold. Two nights ago I should have known. Riding the Honda Shadow home in the now suddenly dark at 1900 Pacific Northwest, I instinctively reached down with my left hand to place it in closer proximity to half of its 600 cubic inch dis[placement. It gets hot down there and on one of the several straight and flat sections, I can navigate with confidence using only my right.
By the time I got home all ten digits were tingly numb. My cozy, rustic cabin is heaven on earth in the summer, but without a fireplace, the old one caved in about 15 years ago I am told, and the oil burning furnace which I refuse to use, I am left with a pitiful couple of options. One is to move to Southern California, Mexico or Hawaii. Not willing to pull anchor here just yet, that leaves me with option two. Plug in.
My gregarious and altogether wonderful landlady has insisted that my power be included in the monthly rent. I protested initially, eventually relenting to her generosity and concern for my health. As we closed the arrangement she said that it would be difficult for her to live with me looking like Jack Nicholson in The Shining’s final freeze frame should the worse it can be come to pass.
I have an electric oil heater under my desk that works well when I sit, type, surf and edit video. I wear a long sleeve mock turtle, hoodie and my Dad’s old wool jacket. Between my work station, the kitchen, with its bake/broil settings at max and my upstairs bedroom with heated fitted sheet and down comforter, the day’s work, if charted by GPS, would be a circle to and from those three waypoints.
It is very OK. True, in a perfect world I would be splitting, hauling and stoking a roaring fire in a wood burning stove, but the cabin is scheduled for demolition in the spring, so improvements of this nature have been nixed by the local building code enforcers.
When the sad day arrives, just ahead of the D-9 Cats, my proposal is to move into the RV, less than three football fields up the road, and get hired on the demo/build crew as laborer. Rent free and employed, all within close proximity of the beach, is a win-win, one I am actually looking forward to come Spring.
I am actually looking forward to that day for the other obvious reason as well.
Until then, we endure, managing a balanced harmony of work and play.
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